All posts by Christine Bourne

What is Your Music Saying?

October 30th, 2018 by

music lyric songMany of us started out as players or instrumentalists before we began writing songs. Our instruments inspired full songs from a simple guitar riff, melodic motif, or piano lick. From those short but foundational pieces we were able to build a verse and chorus and bridge, all stemming from a single seed.

Use both intuition and tools

Sometimes it’s intuition that tells us where to move to when we write the chorus section after a verse. Sometimes it’s a mixture of intuition and tools, knowing that a rise in pitch and shorter rhythms can create more energy for the chorus section, or that longer notes can contrast beautifully from the short notes we just left and reignite the listener’s attention. Wherever we move to, we can often feel a sense of consistency within the song – as if the ideas are linked rhythmically and melodically and harmonically to each other by some common thread. Many times that thread is a mixture of those elements, whether it be a pattern of pitches or rhythms, or harmonic progressions. It’s the repetition of these patterns that give our song a consistent identity, rather than a feeling of randomly assigned notes. (more…)

Songwriting Tools to Outline Song Ideas

August 9th, 2018 by

Songwriting Tools to Outline Song IdeasWriting a song from start to finish can be a daunting task without tools and strategies. I’d like to share with you one tool for to outline song ideas stemming from an understanding of the structure of our songs. Let’s explore various methods to outline song ideas using different songwriting tools.

Song Structure

When I say song structure, I’m talking about the form.

This is perhaps the most common and widely used structure there is, highly effective in getting right to the main point without much dallying around. (more…)

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  • Songwriter Tip:

    While it is true that you can use any form and insure a maximum amount of both repetition and musical interest, always remember that a spare lyric at a slower tempo has more of an obligation to be interesting. You’re making the listener wait for that lyric to unfold, and it had better be worth the wait. The same is true of the music.