The Importance of Strong Chord sequences Over the last couple of weeks, Songbay has had the pleasure of welcoming some truly talented artists who deserve mention for their masterful use of chord sequences and firm grasp of harmonic theory. Take for example the latest upload from Mike Lea Jones. His outstanding song-‘Lonely’ uses the incredibly mellow progression of Eb minor 9 to Eb minor 9 added 6 (listen to ‘Lonely’) or the equally strong submission from Stephen Pickering, his song-‘Sick Continue

  The Beatles are known as the most successful music group in music history, selling over a billion records worldwide. The songwriting partnership between Lennon and McCartney is legendary. The Beatles collectively were also songwriting Ninjas, but they employed many tricks that anyone can add to their songwriting tool box. Here are 5 less obvious examples: 1. Mutate Your Chorus As well as starting songs with the chorus, some of The Beatles’ greatest hits open with a chorus hybrid that previews the title and Continue

Writing strong Lyrics. Personification never hurts! Personification is a technique for  giving human qualities to non human objects. Example: The  smiling moon, a jovial sun, a lonely road, the  sad ocean, etc As an example, in the poem”Mirror” by Sylvia Plath, the mirror (referred to by the letter ‘I’ in the first line) is given the ability to speak, see and swallow, as well as other human attributes such as truthfulness and preconception. This makes the words so very ‘poetic’. “I Continue

42 Different Ways That Artists Can Earn Money… Ever wondered what all the revenue sources are available to you as a songwriter or lyricist? We came across a brilliant article from Paul Resnikoff, publisher and founder of Digital Music News. Previously, head of music initiatives at Lycos, starting out at Sony Music Entertainment (Epic Records). He lists the following ways that artists can receive payment for their work. Useful to know! Songwriter & Composer Revenue 1. Publisher advance Bulk payment Continue

What makes a Good Lyric? In advance of our lyric trading functionality arriving next month at Songbay, we thought we would share with you our top tip for writing good lyrics-know the elements! In the same way that a composer must understand the fundamentals of song construction, i.e., melody, harmony, rhythm and arrangement, a lyricist needs to know what makes a strong and catchy lyric. Over the past twelve months we have received and reviewed hundreds of lyrics, some good, Continue

More Choices at Songbay Hi Songbay users! It’s been a very busy time for us of late, the upgrade to our our online service of Music and Lyric Sales is almost here. We have made many changes which offer greater choice and autonomy to our users. Specifically, we will be expanding our service by offering these additional features: • Lyric sales • Sample sales • Digital downloads • Entire Copyright Sales • A New Single use audio/ video synchronization licence Continue

Texture is one of the basic elements of music. When you describe the texture of a piece of music, you are describing how much is going on in the music at any given moment. For example, the texture of the music might be thick or thin, or it may have many or few layers. It might be made up of rhythm only, or of a melody line with chordal accompaniment, or many interweaving melodies. Below you will find some of Continue

In Western music, there are twelve pitches within each octave. (The thirteenth note starts the next octave.) But in a tonal piece of music only seven of these notes, the seven notes of a major or minor scale, are used often. In a pentatonic scale, only five of the possible pitches within an octave are used. (So the scale will repeat starting at the sixth tone.) The most familiar pentatonic scales are used in much of the music of eastern Continue