songwriting Archives - Page 10 of 11 - Dave Wall Music

How to write chord progressions a pro would love, part 8: Chord progression patterns

January 24, 2014 No Comment

First some review. Remember the seven chords in the key of C from part !? I know. Hard to forget since you’ve been using them consistently for…however long you’ve been looking at this blog. But I need to write them down again because I’m going to do something new with them.

Cmajor D minor E minor F major G major A minor B diminished

I ii iii IV V vi vii

Roman numerals! I know. Exciting! And it is exciting, because you’ve now risen to a new level of knowledge.

Well, ok, not yet. First you need to understand what these are for.

Roman Numerals?

Don’t ask me why we use roman numerals, and not regular arabic numerals for chords. The answer won’t help (I’ll tell you at the bottom of the page; you’ll see). I’ll tell you why they’re useful, though. They’re useful because they point to a chord’s function.

The function of chords

A chord function is basically what the chord is generally used for. For example, the function of the I chord (the C major chord in the key of C) is to provide a sense of coming home. That’s why it’s almost always at the end of a song. It makes things feel final. The V chord’s function is to create tension, and goes to the I chord most of the time: G (V) to C (I). All the other chords have functions as well, but they aren’t quite as well defined as these two.

Instead of telling you what those functions are, I’ll show you. They’re basically defined by where the chord is most likely to go.

How to sound like you know what you’re doing

This roman numeral thing has been around for centuries. Some of the most familiar chord progressions you’ve ever heard follow these rules. And you know what they say about rules. You have to know them to break them. If that wasn’t the case, I wouldn’t be showing this to you.

Here are the rules:

The I chord (C major) can go to any chord it wants.

The iii (E minor) chord almost always goes to the vi (A minor) chord.

The vi (A minor) chord almost always goes to the ii (D minor) chord or the IV (Fmajor) chord.

The ii (D minor) and the IV (Fmajor) chord almost always goes to the vii (B diminished) chord or the V (G major) chord, and those two almost always go to the I (C major) chord

If you like diagrams, it looks like this:

iii – vi – [IV/ii] – [V/vii] – I or E minor – A minor – F major or D Minor – G major or B diminished – Cmajor – anywhere.

As we go forward, I’ll plug the roman numerals onto chords that I use. After a while it’ll make sense. Don’t force it. Unless you’re one of those people who like forcing things, in which case be my guest.

Ok. So now use that song form from the last post and write a chord progression for it. Follow these roman numeral chord movement rules I just outlined until you get used to them. Then start breaking those rules, and see what happens.

Then read the next post where I do the same thing.

songwriting, Uncategorized

How to write chord progressions a pro would love, part 7: Process II

January 22, 2014 No Comment

Simple is better

In the last post, I gave you six choices for a verse/chorus song form. Let’s use number 1: the 8 bar verse/8bar chorus. Keep in mind that there are lots of variations; we”l look at some of those later. For now, it’s important to keep it simple.

The container

The verse/chorus form (any form really) is a container that we place ideas into. In our case, we’re placing chord progression ideas there.

Take a look at our container below. There are 16 bars to fill up. Before we do that though. we need to talk about some of the things you might be wondering about.

Letters = sections

First, those letters in boxes. “A” is the verse, and “B” is the chorus. Why not just go with “verse” and “chorus”? It’s a good question. For this example, the letters aren’t really necessary, but you’ll find them useful for describing other types of forms. For instance, the standard AABA form.

Aside from that, letters allow you to think more abstractly than “verse” and “chorus.” Verse and chorus are distinct things that go in particular places. “A” and “B” are just…letters. We can put them together any way we like. How about ABAABA? You don’t normally see verse and chorus in an ABAABA sequence.

And yes, you can put “verse” and “chorus” together in any way you want, too. But certain words can send our brains down well-worn paths without our awareness. For songwriters, verse and chorus are two of those words.

Think in letters, and you can create possibilities you may not have thought about.

Double bar lines

Next, the two vertical lines at the end of the second staff. Those are called double barlines, and they’re used to signal the end of a major section and the beginning of another. The end of the fourth staff has a different type of double barline, one line being thicker than the other. This type of barline is always at the end of a song.

Filling it up

Ok. You need a strategy. Is the verse going to have a lot of chords, or just a few? Will there be one chord every bar, or one chord every two bars? Maybe you want two chords in every bar. Identifying the possibilities like this is the first step.

But that’s only one possibility. Another big one is chord quality (meaning major chord or minor chord). Will you use mostly major chords in the verse, or minor chords? Will there be more of one than the other?

Contrast

I’ve only mentioned the verse so far. Define clearly what you want here, because the chorus should contrast it somehow. If you start the verse with a major chord, you might want to start the chorus with a minor chord. If there aren’t many chords in the verse (which means it has a slow harmonic rhythm) you may want the chorus to be busier (fast harmonic rhythm).

Keep this in mind as a useful technique. Imagining the different ways you might contrast the verse and chorus increases possibilities. This produces more ideas.

The next post is for all you people who aren’t comfortable with the do-whatever-you-want approach to choosing chords. There are actually chord progression patterns that have been used for centuries. I’m going to tell you what they are.

songwriting

How to write chord progressions a pro would love, part 6: Song Form

January 20, 2014 No Comment

The Forms

There are three major song forms:

1. Verse/Chorus form

2. AABA form

3. AAA form

Verse/Chorus is what most people know best, and the only one I’m going to deal with. Sheila Davis has a series of books on songwriting. The Songwriters Idea Book has an overview of all three. And there are resources all over the web.

All I want to do is give you a proven form you can start with. You can use what I give you here for any form.

Verse/Chorus form is any song that has a section that gets repeated at regular intervals. Think every Beatles song. Don’t think rap.

The chorus is the most important part (that part that gets repeated). It’s the part that you remember the easiest. This is partly because it gets repeated, and partly because it usually because it has the most distinctive hook. It also contains the title of the song, and the main message.

Hook

That musical idea that (hopefully for the songwriter) you can’t forget.

The story of the song is told in the verse. Sometimes there are two verses before the first chorus, sometimes one. You decide.

Length matters

What you need to know right now is how long the verse is, and how long the chorus is. And guess what? There’s no solid answer. The verse can be between 8 and 16 bars. The chorus is usually between 8 and 12 bars. And there are variations (we’ll talk about those later).

Here’s what you do to get started.

So many choices

Write down the possible lengths for the verse. Like I said, it can be between 8 and 16 bars. Let’s narrow that down and say that the number of bars has to be in multiples of two. That gives us the possibilities of 8, 10, 12, 14, and 16 bars. You rarely see 10 or 14 bar verses, so let’s get rid of those.

So now we have 8, 12, and 16 bars as choices. And yes, you will find songs with 10 bars, 14 bars, 9, 11, 13 bars. I’m dealing with the most common possibilities so you can get started. Too many choices causes inaction. Start simple.

Using the same approach, the chorus will be 8, 10, or 12. Get rid of 10 and you’ve got 8 or 12.

Making it manageable

Now we figure out combinations of verse length with chorus length (I know this is getting complicated, Stick with me here).

1. Verse – 8 bars; Chorus – 8 bars.

2. Verse – 12 bars; Chorus – 8 bars.

3. Verse – 16 bars; Chorus – 8 bars.

4. Verse – 8 bars; Chorus – 12 bars.

5. Verse – 12 bars; Chorus – 12 bars.

6. Verse – 16 bars; Chorus – 12 bars.

Six choices isn’t too bad, but it can still feel overwhelming. Choose one to use each week. In less than two months, you’ll have experimented with all six choices.

Next post: back to process. This time we’ll use more than 2 chords. And more than 2 bars. It’ll be awesome.

songwriting

How to write chord progressions a pro would love, Part 5: The process

January 17, 2014 No Comment

The act of creation

Making stuff involves organization and experimentation. At the end of the last post I outlined one way to do it, but some people like to break it down.

First: organization. Choose from a pool of chords to make your song. The pool we’ve been looking at so far is the chords in the key of C. Don’t us them all, but include them all as possible choices. This allows for experimentation.

So we have our possible chords: C Dm Em F G Am Bdim. But which ones do we use?

Time to Experiment

Try this. Take the C chord and place it at the beginning of the first bar. In the next bar, place a G chord. Like it? Now do the same thing, but use an Am chord in the second bar. Do this with every chord: go from the C major chord to the F major chord, E minor chord, D minor chord and B diminished chord. If you pay close attention, you’ll notice that you have a different emotional reaction to each pairing. Write down those reactions in a journal.

You’ll be tempted to fill in those empty bars at the end of each line. Resist this impulse.

Now change the harmonic rhythm. Same thing: pay attention and see how each chord pairing makes you feel. What you’re doing here is getting your personal reactions to what the possibilities are. This connects the feeling in the music to feelings in the lyrics.

Now try putting the second chord on the 4th beat instead of the 3rd. Maybe wait until the 2nd beat of the 2nd bar. There are quite a few possibilities and we’ve only used two chords in two bars. Just think of the fun you can have. Remember: write every new idea down.

Discipline

This takes discipline. But if you stick with it through all the possibilities (and it won’t take that long), then when you add that third chord, you’ll feel like you’ve entered a new world. Make sure you write down how you feel about that.

Of course, you can just write down some words, and then hammer out some chords while saying those words…

So far…

We’ve talked about chords in the key of C, and we’ve talked about harmonic rhythm. We’ve talked about a process of discovering how to use these two things. We haven’t talked about lyrics. For that I’m referring you to Sheila Davis’s books. She’s better at that than I am.

Here’s a couple:

The Craft of Lyric Writing

TheSongwriters Idea Book

And another one by Pat Pattison:

Writing Better Lyrics

Next post: song form! You get a container to put all this stuff into!

songwriting

How to write chord progressions a pro would love, part 4: Writing down the chords

January 15, 2014 No Comment

Let’s take a look at some of those chords from part 2.

First, those diagonal lines. Those are called hash marks.

Hash Marks

Diagonal marks that show the beats in the bar.

A chord at the beginning of the bar always starts on beat 1. If you place a chord over the third hash mark (like our example above) it’s played on the third beat. Place it over the second hash mark and it’s played on the second beat.

I hear you saying, “Didn’t he say that we’d be writing 8 bar verses? All I’ve seen is 4 bar examples.”

Good point. Here’s 8 bars.

So if you’ve printed off a couple of sheets of staff paper like I asked you to, you’ll see 8 staves with nothing in them. No hash marks, no bar lines, no treble clef.

Go ahead and put some hash marks in those blank bars to get the image above. Then put in some chords from the key of C. Be aware of where you’re placing your chords. Are they mostly on the 1st and 3rd beats? Experiment by placing them randomly without worrying what it’ll sound like. Then play what you’ve got, and decide what you like.

Bar Lines

The vertical lines on the staff that separate hash marks into groups of four.

Treble Clef

The thing with all the curves at the beginning of each staff. Don’t worry about this. It’s used for figuring out notes. We’re only talking about chords right now. I’ll deal with notes in another post.

How to put in chords

The first thing you want to do is draw bar lines. Draw in five on the first staff. One at the beginning of the staff, one at the end, and three in the middle. Do the same on the staff below it. Then draw in the hash marks. Use the example above as a model.

Now you need the chords. Remember the chords in the key of C from part 1? Taking those, write in one chord per bar. It doesn’t matter which ones go where for now. Just put in some chords. You can always change them later. Once you have the chords written down, play what you’ve got. Pay attention to what you like and what you don’t. Change the harmonic rhythm if you feel it needs that.

It’s easy to say all that. It’s not as easy to do it. Part 5 and 6 will outline the process in detail.

songwriting

How to write chord progressions a pro would love, Part 3: How long is the verse?

January 13, 2014 No Comment

Normally the verse is either 8 or 12 bars. But really? It can be as long as you want. We’ll keep it simple, and stick to 8 bars for now.

Knowing how many bars you’re working with is crucial when you’re trying to figure out where to place the chords. Sometimes you can get something great by just sitting down and jamming it out. Other times it won’t work until you sit down and think about it.

Writing it down

Staff paper is good for this. You can get it for free all over the internet. Go to the address below and click on 8-stave paper for parts or lead sheets.

http://people.virginia.edu/~pdr4h/musicpaper/

Staves

Plural for staff. A staff is the 5 horizontal lines that musical notes are placed on. You’ve seen it before in part 2. Here it is again.

Parts

If you write music for more than one person, each person needs sheet music to read from. That sheet music is called a part. A bass player’s part will be different than a piano player’s part.

Lead Sheet

A lead sheet is a copy of the song. It usually has the melody, lyrics, and the chords.

Sometimes everybody just gets a lead sheet. Sometimes everybody just gets the chords without the melody or the lyrics. And sometimes you just teach it to them. It’s a good idea to get into the habit of writing it down, though. At least the chords. It’s a simple skill to develop, and musicians really appreciiate it. They’ll be more likely to want to play your music if you give them something on paper.

Here’s what you do: Print a couple of sheets of staff paper from the above site. Now go to part 4.

songwriting

‹ 1 … 8 9 10 11 ›