My Songwriting Coach

If in addition to being interested in songwriting and/or actually writing songs, you are also a guitarist or interested in adding guitar playing to your repertoire, you should definitely like the Guitar Lesson Expert page so that you don't miss Facebook "Live" videos that explore guitar playing as well as timely guitar oriented posts. You can like the page here: https://facebook.com/guitarlessonexpert

A Facebook "Live" done earlier today that has some great info and suggestions for upgrading your songwriting knowledge and skills.

Whether you are an absolute beginner with chords and harmony, or you are super advanced, this video can help you see how harmony helps your melodies unfold.

I've been teaching songwriting for a long, long time, and I couldn't have said the things Pat Pattison is talking about any better. I too teach a tools based approach, helping students to fill their toolbox with diverse skillsets in order to greatly improve their songwriting. Watch this video and take it to heart.

I love all of the peripheral advice that Pat Pattison gives regarding being a better lyricist. All his tips are actionable. Keep in mind that every application of his principles into the lyric may require a subtle alteration in the feel of the melody or the platform created by the chord progression. Ideally, the three parts work together with each other.

How did YOU get to be a songwriter?

For more advanced songwriters, here is a pretty cool discussion with Donald Fagen about the harmonic structure to Steely Dan's song Peg. It gives insight into how he and Walter Becker looked at chord groups. He even used a term that I use a lot in calling stepwise chord groupings "sequences." Be sure and watch part 2 which follows immediately on Youtube.

Elton John demonstrates that when you have mastery of the elements of melody and harmony, you can set any lyric to music. I add that while Elton certainly has profound genius in this regard, the internal process he is going through to accomplish what he does in this video is teachable. Who wants to learn it?

The world of songwriting education is so flooded with lyrics first methods for composing that one might think that's the only way to do it. Here is a very helpful video for those whose song ideas come as melody and harmony first. I get a lot of students who have a tremendous need to better understand this approach.

If you want to be a successful, professional songwriter, this is worthwhile information.

You can't ever tell what's going to happen when songwriters get together who haven't worked together before. A fun glimpse.

This is a discussion originally designed to enrich an instrumental soloist's choices for melodic expression in a solo, but I find it also useful for singing melody construction and variations in chord usage for song composition.