The four rhythm basics that most improve songwriting are the backbeat (accent beats 2 and 4), subdivision (feeling the “&” between beats), the push (changing a chord an eighth note before the downbeat), and harmonic rhythm (how often your chords…
If every song you write sounds sad, you’re almost certainly defaulting to E minor — and the fastest fix is to re-center the exact same chords around its relative major, G major, then brighten toward D major (D–A–Bm–G), add a…
Borrowed chords are chords taken from the parallel key — usually the parallel minor — and dropped into an otherwise major progression to add color and emotion; the most famous is the minor iv, like the Cm that darkens Radiohead’s…
You can write a complete song in one hour by looping a I–V–vi–IV chord progression on a looper pedal, then using three theory moves: build the melody from one pentatonic scale, start the same loop on the vi chord to…
The fastest music theory hacks for writer’s block are constraints that remove choices. Roll a die to pick chords from your key, rotate or borrow one chord in a progression you already know, switch the key’s 7th to change mode,…
The fastest music theory hacks for writer’s block are constraints that remove choices. Roll a die to pick chords from your key, rotate or borrow one chord in a progression you already know, switch the key’s 7th to change mode,…
The chord progressions every songwriter should know are I–V–vi–IV (the four-chord pop progression), its minor-first rotation vi–IV–I–V, the ’50s progression I–vi–IV–V, the 12-bar blues, ii–V–I, the ♭VII rock move, the Andalusian cadence, the borrowed minor iv, the Pachelbel sequence and…
The biggest gear mistakes beginner songwriters make are writing with too much distortion (which turns minor chords like Am into A5 power chords that lose their sadness), writing with reverb and delay on (which hides weak parts and shaky timing),…
Turnstile writes songs rhythm-first. Most start as a groove or riff that singer Brendan Yates builds alone in his bedroom, the band fills in chords around that rhythm, and on Glow On (2021) they kept songs short (15 tracks in…
To analyze a song you love with music theory, find its key, give every chord a Roman numeral, and circle the one chord that doesn’t belong to the key. That “outside” chord, such as the C minor in Radiohead’s “Creep”…