Which comes first: chords or meloody? That's the chicken and egg question facing any music maker staring at a blank DAW screen, and there's no right answer as to which you need to nail first. And ...

It almost goes without saying that a good chord progression is fundamental to a good song, but when you find yourself facing the dreaded blank screen, how do you string a suitable set of chords ...

The presence of a well-crafted and performed chord progression can often be the glue that gels the song together. If executed well, it should support your melody and lyric, while grabbing listeners on ...

Popular music can be categorised into a multitude of genres, but probably the broadest are mainstream pop and R&B. This is the kind of thing you hear on the radio every day, and possibly the genres ...

A lot of the elements that make pop music successful relate to it being catchy and familiar. As a songwriter, there are many ways to engender this feeling in listeners, to do with song structure, ...

You may have seen one of the various online videos in which a musician will demonstrate ‘100 songs in 4 minutes’ or ‘play 50 songs with only these 4 chords’ and so on. There is a slight technical flaw ...

In this video, we explore the role of the sharp nine when playing over altered dominant chords in a minor ii–V–i progression. From theory to phrasing, we look at ways to add color, tension, and ...