This is a really awesome topic for beginner songwriters to get into for spicing up chord progressions.  However, it is going to require that you understand Roman Numeral Analysis and Major and Minor scales.  Here’s a post on Roman Numeral Analysis Explained Simply if you…

So you’re writing songs and trying to figure out chord progressions and you came across the topic of chord inversions and want to know how they are used in songwriting.  Let me start by saying that although it might sound like a complicated topic it…

Improvisation is a whole world in and of itself and it can get really complicated. In this article I’d like to keep things simple and just give you some tips to pick scales to use over chords and chord progressions. This will help with your…

As a songwriter and musician, there are some situations you will run into where you will want to know what the key of a song is.  One of these might be that you wrote a song entirely by ear and now you’re editing it to…

Let’s talk about the Mixolydian mode and how to use it to write a song that has its unique sound.  Like all modes it has a certain level of brightness or darkness compared to other scales. This is one of the brighter sounding modes, although…

This is a mode that is great to get a feeling of floating in your songs since it has a floating, ethereal and epic type of sound.  This mode is said to be brighter than the Major scale. In a way it sounds a bit…

If you think of all the modes as having different levels of darkness and brightness, Phrygian is one one the darkest, second only to Locrian (which sounds downright disturbing lol). Because it sounds so dark it’s often found in genre’s like Metal and Rock but…

Many songwriters look for ways to make their songs sound more captivating, and one of the most popular ways is to create songs that are based on specific modes.  You may have heard about modes and might have an understanding that it is a scale….

Let’s say you are the Batman of songwriting. You have all the moves. Your chords, scales, pentatonics, knowing how to write melodies, etc are your kicks, punches, chokeholds, grapples, etc.  Another huge tool in your belt must be to be able to do Roman Numeral…

Believe it or not the Circle of Fifths is actually a tool to simplify your life even though it may look really technical at first glance. It’s particularly helpful for people who are very visual and like seeing diagrams rather than learning through reading. Many…