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How To Use Tension And Release In Your Melodies

April 23, 2007 By Graham English

Music, much like life, is fundamentally a swinging pendulum between tension and release. Fortunately, with music, this is easy to represent objectively and to utilize in your music composition. Taking a look at the C major scale, you can see that … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose Tagged With: composing, composing strategies, consonance, counterpoint, dissonance, fundamentals, harmony, HowTo, improvisation, intervals, lessons, melody, music fundamentals, Music Theory, scales, soloing, stability and instability, tension and release, Writing Music

Songwriting Challenges – Where Do I Begin?

March 8, 2007 By Graham English

One of the most common challenges I hear about songwriting is not knowing where to begin. With the lyrics? With the music? Or something completely different? It's a rather simple challenge to find a solution to, really. Start with a single note or … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose Tagged With: challenges, composing, composing strategies, creative process, creativity, CreativityHacks, exercises, image streaming, imagination, listening, listening practice, listening skills, lyric writing, melody, random word generator, song writing, Songwriting, songwriting process, songwriting techniques, songwriting tips, strategies, writing lyrics, Writing Music

NaSoAlMo: National Solo Album Month

October 29, 2006 By Graham English

NaSoAlMo is a free yearly competition where musicians write and record an entire album during the month of November. The idea came from NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, where writers attempt a 50,000 word novel during the same month. It's … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose Tagged With: competition, GTD, inner-critic, productivity, songwriters, Songwriting, Writing Music

4 Things That Will Make Or Break Your Song

October 16, 2006 By Graham English

Learn these 4 tricks to help you write the best songs of your life. It will take you just 10 minutes to learn, too. The First 10 Seconds Imagine being inside the mind of a busy A&R guy or in-demand producer. It's running over important … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose Tagged With: lyric writing, Songwriting, Writing Music

The Rules and Principles of Counterpoint

August 18, 2006 By Graham English

Counterpoint

These rules of counterpoint are simple and easy to memorize. Use them during the arranging phase of your music producing. Counterpoint: a composition which is written strictly according to technical rules. In earlier times, instead of our modern … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose Tagged With: arranging, chord progressions, composing, composition, consonance, counterpoint, dissonance, fundamentals, harmony, modes, motion, Music Theory, rules, Writing Music

If Leonardo da Vinci Were a Songwriter

May 3, 2006 By Graham English

Adapted from the book, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci was a brilliant musician. If he were alive today... He would have an insatiably curious approach to songwriting and an unrelenting quest for continuous … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose Tagged With: Art, craft, creativity, don't tell, Ear Training, inspiration, Leonardo da Vinci, lyric writing, paradox, show, Songwriting, story, writing lyrics, Writing Music

List of Opensource Music Software

March 8, 2006 By Graham English

Please don't let your financial situation stop you from writing and recording great music. Here's a list of opensource music software for capturing and recording audio. I've used Audacity for a couple of projects and it works great. There's even free … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose, Technology Tagged With: Audio, MIDI, music software, opensource, Writing Music

Songwriting For Busy People

February 10, 2006 By Graham English

Mind Hacks posted how choice is demotivating when there are too many options. "Offer students a choice of 6 essays, rather than 30 essays, for extra-credit and more will take up the opportunity if there is less choice of essay titles - and, what … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Music Education, Prose Tagged With: GarageBand, GTD, harmony, iPod, iTunes, Logic Pro, lyrics, melody, MindHacks, mood markings, music notation, recorded audio, rhythm, song titles, Songwriting, tags, tempo, writing lyrics, Writing Music

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Graham is a singer/songwriter and jazz-trained keyboard player, music producer and studio musician, best-selling author of Logic Pro X For Dummies, and serial entrepreneur.

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