If you look in the right places, the guitar is great guide for how chords relate to each other. For instance, pick any fret on the lowest three strings on your guitar (tone-wise) and you've got the bass notes of the three major chords in a scale. I've picked fret three for my example, which is the key of C: 1. The middle string of the three is the Root chord, the note the key is named after--in this case C. 2. The note on the lower string (tone-wise) is the V Chord--in this case G. Or if you aren't …

Here's a different presentation of the same idea I posted yesterday--that the C F and G chords hold all the notes of the C major scale. The "ruler" at the top shows how each chord relates to the notes of the C major scale in a single line. If you were to play a C major scale on a single string this is how the chords would relate to the notes.

Below that is your run of the mill C major scale in 1st position with chord charts in the place of their related notes.

 

Every note of the C Major Scale (i.e. Do, re mi, etc…) is contained within the chords C, F and G. Did you know that? These are often the first three chords you learn on an instrument so it's easy to start feeling confined by them and yet they have all the notes on which most western music is based. Here's a quick chart I put together mapping out the details as best I could. 1. Do re mi… There as a reference for the major scale since basically everyone knows it. 2. C d e F… the notes …

 I left off yesterday with my set of awful, awful lyrics from a few years ago. Since then I've sat down with Pat Pattison (in book form) and we've discussed how we to progress. "Object writing" was the obvious first answer--it starts Pat's book. You pick an object, a specific thing, like "couch," or "butterfly", or "screwdriver," and write down the thoughts it evokes with your focus honed on taste, touch, feel and smell--sight will take care of itself. Ten …

  I've decided to work through Pat Pattison's "Writing Better Lyrics" page by page. Editing my songs has been a stone in my shoe for a long time, basically since I fell in love with doing Fearless Songwriting weeks. So I dug up an awful set of lyrics this morning. They seem to come from my second ever Fearless Songwriting week ever. The plan is to put them through paces of Pat Pattison's program and see if perhaps they progress. Hopefully, even if they don't, I will. So without further …

Timmy asked me to put together a some thoughts on what Song School means to me and what I got out if it. For those that don't know, Song School is 4 days of classes with some of the best songwriters in the country. Here's a great article about it: http://www.boulderweekly.com/article-9473-pilgrims-of-the-stage.html I first came to SS in 1999. I had never played out and never completed writing a song. I had to close my eyes to play in front of people and even then, I would have no air to sing. I was …

Finding Inspiration and Creating A Unique Vision In Songwriting. by Jane Fallon I have done the “Seven Songs” thing before. In fact, I wrote a book that incorporates a seven-song challenge with the memoir of my father. That may sound like a strange combination, but I come from musical family and my dad’s Southern gospel upbringing has contributed a lot to my music. I like theme challenges – it is fairly easy for me to get going with a song if I am given a theme. But how does one …

Over the years, I've realized one of the secrets of songwriting--and perhaps anything, is finding a community to support you. It's pretty simple, when I'm accountable someone to write a song it gets written. if not--maybe it does? So I'm starting to build the accountability that seems to work best for me into The Fearless Songwriting challenge. Talking to a friend, deciding on a prompt that we'll both write on, and then writing a song by the end of the day. Yesterday Diana Korpi and I decided to write …

I gave myself an hour to write after I woke up this morning, after that the song was going to be done. I've been diving in on the "Fearless Songwriting" thing for a long while now and that's basically how it started out, to the best of my recollection. And over the past couple years as I've put more pressure on myself during the weeks (or the month of the "Song Bomb") things have gotten stretched out. It started out with maybe doing a free write of some kind of to develop some ideas. …

So it's been a while. Last I wrote a song was back in February, which admittedly, may not seem like that much time to some people. After the Song Bomb--The Song Bomb is when I sit down and write 28 songs over the course of February--it was time to take a break. Time to stop obsessing about music. It was time to find a hobby. Or at least something else to obsess about for a while. I'd found the end of that particular rope of creation by exertion. Creating by what felt like waterboarding my muse. Saying …

"Sheldon? No, no, you did not have great sex with Sheldon;" -Harry Burns from When Harry Met Sally John Prine names names in his songs. He names six names in his song "Hello in There" alone. His are titled things like, "Billy the Bum," "Sam Stone," and "Donald and Lydia." Noted as a songwriter who creates great characters, John Prine often names those characters. Naming those characters gives them substance. "Angel of Montgomery" leads with the …

"In rock climbing... crux moves are the most challenging moments of the entire route, they often require you to push physically, emotionally and intellectually. The interesting thing about [Climb ratings] is that they aren't based so much on the difficulty of the entire climb as... on the crux." -Jonathan Fields "Uncertainty" I went bouldering at a local rock climbing gym a while ago, climbing around on the low rocks where you're meant to work developing your skills. The idea is to …

"No one ever wrote a song or improved their songwriting by having an opinion on their own song or someone else’s song. The only way to improve is to write." --Jack Hardy Judgment is easy for us to fall into. For many of us it feels like a shortcut to greatness. Since we all know what we like and what we don't like, it's easy to say, "That's no good. The melody of that bridge is the same as the verse's melody. They should have varied the tempo more between the verse and the chorus. I …

Here's an oddity. I usually find book introductions far more helpful than the actual books. I pick up a how to book, especially one from the self-help section, and read the first few pages and feel energized. Let's say it's a book on meeting people, networking... booking gigs. Something useful and necessary that I have an aversion to that I haven't quite worked out yet. The book say that it has a method, a secret that will help me to do these things. And here's the important part: In the back of my head …

Hey everybody! It's February again so I'm writing songs everyday all month. So are a bunch other cool musicians. This week Joe Jencks, Ells, Cary Cooper and Putnam Smith have all posted brand new songs at www.thesongbomb.com . You should check it out! Now back to our regularly scheduled blog post: Sophmore year in biology, we were asigned the task of collecting 50 leaves from different trees in our area, pressing them and labeling them all in a proper scientific manner. There was a kind of competition …

Here’s the gist of a blog post I saw a while ago that struck me as the least helpful advice you could ever give a struggling artist. Five Steps to Improve Your Songwriting : I [the unnamed author] have been asked so many times how do you write a good song. Here are five main ways you can use to your advantage: 1. Song Structure 2. Compose Good Lyrics 3. Compose Good Melodies 4. Developing good chord structure and background music 5. Artistry and Intangibles Thanks for the advice Einstein. …

"Your understanding is still in your head, it's going to take a while to make this all a part of your process." --Robert Olen Butler Here is a problem, you may have run into it: When we start working on a skill we often aren't as good at it as we'd like to be. Let's say your goal is to lead a happier life. So you read a book that will give you a happier life. It reads: It is your worries that are making you miserable. Worries are thoughts about the future, if you're just present in the now, …

The last couple times I've gone to the gym I've been listening to Pema Chodron's "Getting Unstuck." She's talks about mediation and working with difficult emotions, but she may as well be talking about writing. The practice of working with and abiding with the things that may scare us in each is essentially the same. In mediation we are taught to just sit, to make a commitment to sitting for say 10 minutes, or 20 minutes. The goal is to simply watch one's breathe and when you realize that your …

Writing the music that sounds good to us is good. It feeds our soul. It feels good to express ourselves. And often, after we've done it for a while, it may begin to feel a little boring. It may start to not sound so good to us anymore. This is when it may be worhtwhile to try doing something you don't think sounds good at all--or to at least experiment with things that feel awkward to you. How often have you hated a song, or a person that you eventually came to love? The first time I heard "Houses …

From Ira Glass . . . “What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot …