Frankly it often takes me months to finish a song. There are few exceptions when something came together in a few days, but that is a rarity. I have pieces of songs that have been put on hiatus for years, only to be dragged out again when I’ve discovered a missing piece that I can now incorporate. For me, this lengthy writing process happens because I think that songs have a certain way that they want to be. No, I don’t think that a song is cognizant of itself, or has a self-image, or is like some fully formed spirit that is ready to be born. This is just metaphor. To clarify: I think that there is a way in which a good song is put together that is right for that particular song. I feel that in the writing process you need to work with that, and respect that in order to have a solid flow.

Say you’ve come up with this great riff, and you want to expand it into a full tune. That riff will have a personality. It will have a tone, and poise. It will suggest to you where it wants to go, melodically speaking. If you do not listen to that suggestion, if you try to make that riff into something it is not, or fit it into other structures that it does not get along with, then that song is destined to languish in some notebook. The imaginary, future song that you were going to write from this seed, had a form it was going to take. Your job as a songwriter is to discover that form.

I see this happen in my own writing. I’ll write out some lyrics, sit on them for awhile, then try to fit a melody around them. Sometimes the style I had in mind at the time the lyrics were written is completely not the style that ends up working. The words have a certain rhythm, and natural intonation that suggest one type of melody over another. When the lyrics were first written, those forms weren’t apparent as I was not focusing on constructing melody at that time. If I were to try to stick with the original vision, the song may sound awkward. I would not have respected the way the melody wants to be.

Never throw anything out. I have notes, binders, and scraps of paper going back to almost the time I started songwriting. The reason for this is that, snatches of tunes, a neat chord progression, a couple of lines that you wrote years ago may find their way into the song that you are writing today. Mine your failures for gold. Often you will find that the songs that didn’t work, failed because part of them wanted to be something else.

For example a song that I’m working on now, the refrain comes from a song that I wrote about 10 years ago. The refrain I had always liked and it was pretty much complete, with the exception of one line that needed tweaking. The verses that I had originally wrote to go with this refrain didn’t make the grade. There was no cohesion and lyrically it was a mess. So that song stayed in the notebook. The new verses come from a song that I had written a few years earlier. That song I deemed a failure for the same reasons as the first. It did have one thing going for it: musically the verses were quite strong. It wasn’t until recently that I was going through my notes revisiting old tunes when I saw that these pieces could be combined and work well. I had discovered parts of songs that wanted to be together, but I didn’t know it at the time. Now the only thing left is to write new lyrics for the verse.

If you ever find that a song just isn’t working for you, don’t trash it. Tear it apart, save all the pieces, and rebuild it, working  in the direction that the song is taking you, because you built it wrong in the first place going in the direction that you wanted. I guarantee you will end up with better songs for it.

A quick primer on time signatures

4/4, 4/2, 7/8, 8/16 … Arrrgh! What does it all mean? Let’s take a look at how metre works. Imagine, if you will, a sheet of music full of uninterrupted notes. One note leads to the next, which leads to the next and so on until the piece is finished. Makes sense right? After all that’s how we hear music, isn’t it? Well I am 100% certain that 98% of musicians sitting in front of that sheet music would complain. Their chief concern would be that of losing their place. To aid the hapless musician, order is brought to chaos and the bar (or measure if you will) is born. Yes, with the simple application of vertical strokes at predetermined intervals, this whole Gordian knot of notes becomes sensible.

But where to draw those lines? Hmm … If we’re going to decide that we should structure our music into little chunks of notes, then we need a way to determine what size those chunks should be. Well lucky for us there exists a system to do just that. That fraction (X/Y) at the beginning of each stave is a condensed way of telling you that each bar is X number of Y length notes long. So in 4/4 time the bar is 4 quarter (1/4) notes long. 3/4 it is 3 quarter notes long. 6/8 is 6 eighth (1/8) notes long. You probably won’t ever see Y going over 16. It just becomes too muddy to count at the resolution of a demisemiquaver, much less a hemisemidemiquaver!

But wait! What does it matter?

If a melody has a string of say …  3 quarter notes, an eighth note rest, then two eighth notes followed by one half note … does it really matter how we divide it? Aren’t the note lengths really what’s important? We can’t hear when one bar ends and another begins, can we? What makes one time signature preferable to the other? In truth we can hear when one bar ends and the other begins. We hear it in the accent. See, not all notes are created equal. Some notes get played more forcefully, while others get a lighter touch. Accented (or stressed) notes are often played at regular intervals throughout a piece. This regular patterning of accented notes is one component to a piece’s rhythm and helps give that piece a certain flavour. Think, for example, of waltzes. One of their defining characteristics is their time signature (3/4).

So the whole concept of time signatures is a means of describing the placement of accented notes. It is the spacing and concordance of accented notes that give the overlying music a specific feel, and which makes music done in one time signature sound different from music done in another time signature.

How does this help me?

Since so much music is written in 4/4 time, writing a piece that eschews this convention is a way of making your song stand out. It won’t necessarily be something the listener can point out, it will affect them in more subtle ways.

Once you’re comfortable with playing and writing music in odd time signatures, you’ll have at your disposal another means of expression; one that is not implemented by a great majority of songwriters (in Western music at least). You will have a songwriting secret weapon to help get your music noticed.

Break the cycle

It may seem difficult to count to an odd number when so many songs are written in 4/4 time. Counting up to 5 may feel downright silly. How does one get started? Well how does one get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice! Let’s start out with an easy one; 5/4 time is a good place to begin. Now this doesn’t seem too much of a stretch right? It’s just like 4/4 time with an extra beat right? Well if you think of it that way, you may have more difficulty in getting the hang of counting it out. I say this because counting to 4, then trying to append another beat on will not come naturally at all. Through years of exposure to 4/4 time, your habit is to start counting over once you’ve hit 4. Your brain will halt as it tries to figure out if it should keep counting or not. Let’s not try to break that habit, but rather form new ones.

The number 5 can be broken down in four different ways: 4 and 1, 1 and 4, 2 and 3, 3 and 2. As mentioned before, I want you to stay away from counting it out the ‘4 and 1′ way. Also I want you to stay away from the ‘1 and 4′ method too. Maybe once you get a hang of odd time signatures you can go back and try it, but for now I think there is a better way to start. My reasoning goes beyond what I mentioned above. I want you to focus on counting out beats in groups of 2’s and 3’s because any number (above 1 obviously) can be decomposed conveniently into mixed groupings of 2 and 3. Moreover, we can change the feel of the time signature by reordering those groupings.

Try this, count the following out loud and preferably with a metronome going:

1 & 2 & 3 & 1 & 2 & |1 & 2 & 3 & 1 & 2 & |1 & 2 & 3 & 1 & 2

Okay, now try this:

1 & 2 & 1 & 2 & 3 & |1 & 2 & 1 & 2 & 3 & |1 & 2 & 1 & 2 & 3

Now while these are both three measures of 5/4, we’ve shifted the stressed beats around to give a different rhythmic feel to each. The same sort of thing is accomplished in 4/4 time when you shift between playing downbeat to playing back beat. While there are no rules as to which beats in a measure are stressed, and which are unstressed, we shall try to avoid having two stressed beats occurring sequentially (although it may make and interesting piece to count 1 & 2 & 3 & 4, but master the basics first before taking flights of fancy to uncommon rhythmic lands).

On to bigger numbers

Now that we’ve stretched a bit, we can start to tackle bigger things. Another popular odd time signature is 7/8. This one has a rushed feel to it which is good for tense pieces. If we were to do some fancy math, we could say that this is 3.5/4 time. The rushed feel comes from our mind assuming that we’re cutting of normal 4/4 time half a beat too early. Try counting it out that way:

1 & 2 & 3 & 4 |1 & 2 & 3 & 4 |1 & 2 & 3 & 4

If the tempo is not too fast you may wish to count each eighth note (little tip — Say ‘sev’ instead of ‘seven’ so that the extra syllable doesn’t foul your count):

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 |1 2 3 4 5 6 7 |1 2 3 4 5 6 7

If we were to consider it in our groupings of 2’s and 3’s, since we’re dealing with eighth notes, there are three distinct patterns.

You can get a feel for the rhythmic differences by counting in groups of 2’s and 3’s. I’ll just write out the first example:

1 2 3 1 2 1 2 |1 2 3 1 2 1 2 |1 2 3 1 2 1 2 |

Go forth and experiment

You can begin to see that once you start delving into odd time signatures, a whole world of rhythmic expression opens up to you. Also consider that the time signature doesn’t have to be the same throughout the piece. Indeed it can change every bar if you want it to. The signature is there to map where the accents are in a melody, it should be descriptive, not prescriptive in nature. That said, it is good to have the stability in a piece, and you will find that while there are plenty of songs that have changes in metre, a great majority do not, and very few where the metre is changed consistently. Again, this is often due to the repetitious nature of music itself.

You have the tools now to start making music in odd time signatures, I wish you the best in your songwriting endeavours. Do try writing at least one piece that is not 4/4 time. I think you’ll find it very rewarding to add another variable to your music. Cheers!

You may have heard about

How It Works

There are two ways in which the major and minor keys (which are two classes of modes in the diatonic system) are related to each other, they can be relative or parallel to one another. Say we’re starting with a major key, the relative minor has a different tonic note than its major counterpart yet has the same key signature ( the pattern of sharps or flats). To start with the simplest example the key of C major has no sharps or flats, the key of A minor also has no sharps or flats. This makes A minor the relative minor of C major. In this diagram of the circle of fifths, the inner circle shows the relative minors of the outer circle.

Click to learn more about the Circle of Fifths.

Now as you can see if we were to try to use a relative key to borrow chords from it wouldn’t add any chromatic interest as you would not be introducing notes into your piece that aren’t already in the key in which it was written. In contrast, the parallel minor has the same tonic note yet different key signatures. In this case C minor is the parallel minor of C major. They both start on C, but the C minor scale has three flats (A-flat, B-flat, E-flat). On a quick side note: I’ve been speaking of parallel and relative minors, but the inverse relationship applies as well. C major is the parallel major of C minor and the relative major of A minor. Parallel and relative just describe the type of relationship two keys have. So remember: parallel — same tonic note, relative — same key signature.

That you use a parallel key to borrow from is the secret behind modal interchange. The pattern of intervals that make up a key is termed its mode. Of the seven modes (Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, and Locrian) in common use in tonal music, the major scale corresponds to the Ionian mode and the natural minor scale corresponds to the Aeolian. So what you are doing by substituting chords and notes with those from a parallel key is literally interchanging the chords and notes between modes.

I think that I should be clear on something here. So far the discussion has limited itself to borrowing between two specific modes, the Ionian and the Aeolian. To be certain, there is no rule that you must limit yourself so in modal interchange. Indeed you can borrow from any mode you please with varying degrees of success. I suggest trying the Phrygian next.

Modal Interchange in Action

Let’s run through a quick example of what simple modal interchange might look like. Here is an easy progression in C major (Ionian mode):

C (I) / G (V) / F (IV) / Am (VI)

Play it through to see how it sounds. Now we’re going to make a slight alteration by replacing the G chord with it’s counterpart in the C minor scale (Aeolian mode). Play this one through and listen to how the tone of the progression changes.

C (I) / Gm (v) / F (IV) / Am (VI)

Notice how the progression becomes more ‘serious’ and less ‘light’, yet we don’t have to leave the major key to obtain this effect (completely leaving one key for another would be modulation). By just including the B-flat in the Gm chord temporarily, we can avoid wandering into the ‘sad’ sound of a full-on minor key. In a sense we are making the key less distinct without abandoning it completely. Thus modal interchange is a great way to spice up your song’s harmony; it becomes less predictable and more expressive than it would be if you stuck completely to one mode. In its own right, the natural experimentation with modal interchange will shake you out of the rut you’ve made for yourself of using the same chords over and over again. Think of it as a way to squeeze the creative juice out of your brain.

If you need some reference as to what chords go with what scales check out my chord transposition chart, and here is a great post on building progressions and charting the chords that belong to certain modes.

Traditional Music Library is this huge repository

• OLD-TIME (OLDTIMEY) MUSIC
• BLUEGRASS
• ETHIOPIAN MINSTRELSY, MUSIC-HALL & VAUDAVILLE MUSIC
• TRADITIONAL DANCE
• BAWDY & DRINKING SONGS

They even have a section on Musical Education. Within it are all sorts of articles on playing instruments, writing songs, and musical theory. Hell, there are even instructions on making your own Spanish guitar. This site is well worth a poke around, even if traditional and folk music are not up your alley.

When, the dust settles, two-note chords live on a Möbius strip, three-note chords live on a solid, twisted triangular doughnut, and larger notes live on higher-dimensional analogues, whose shapes become difficult to describe nonmathematically. The boundary of each space, or shape, is geometrically unusual (“singular”)–line segments appear to “bounce off” the boundary, rather like billiard balls reflecting off the edge of a pool table.

The circle progression is a powerful and often used

In chord number talk I to IV is a circle progression. So is ii to V, and iii to vi, and so on. (take a look at this chart for a mapping of chords to intervals in various keys). So if we were to flesh out a full circle progression in a major scale it would look like this:

I — IV — vii° — iii — vi — ii — V — I

As we can see, each new chord is a perfect fourth above the last one, or a perfect fifth below (thank you inversion). Let’s re-do this for a minor scale now. The progression now looks like this:

i — iv — VII — III — VI — ii° — V — i

As an example, in C major the chords would be:

C — F — B° — Em — Am — Dm — G — C

Try playing this right now to get an idea of how the circle progression sounds. This progression is considered to be harmonically very effective. The V naturally wants to fall to the I making the V — I cadence , also known as the ‘Authentic Cadence’, have the strongest sense of finality. So a progression that is a string of authentic cadences pulls you along until you hit bottom at the tonic.

Now consider that you can embellish any or all of the chords to give the progression a different quality. Make them into 7ths, 9ths, sus4ths. Add pedal tones to them.  Try changing up the rhythm, and for that matter, choose your starting point at will. Try C/// — Em7// — Am7// — Dm/// — Gadd9/// and see what I mean. You can adapt the circle progression significantly to suit your needs yet still maintain its harmonic strength. This makes it a great springboard for writing great songs.

Let us start with the property of the circle that lends it its name. If you start at the top of the outer circle at C and move in a clockwise direction the next note offered is G. The more astute of you will immediately notice that G is the fifth of C. Now try this trick again starting at G. Lo and behold we find D, which is of course the fifth of G. This property also applies to the inner circle of Minors.

Click for full scale image.

Now your saying, “So? Is that all it does? I don’t need a chart for that.” Well, this little chart of ascending fifths has even more fantastical properties. For one, it is also a circle of fourths! Ha. That’s right, by moving in the counter-clockwise direction you see what the forth for each note is. This is exactly what should happen when you descend by a fifth in the diatonic scale. You land on the fourth of the root.

What, still not impressed? Need more? Well it also lets you easily transpose. Say you’re playing something in E and you want to play it in G, find the root of each chord you’re playing on the chart and move back 3 notes in the counter-clockwise direction like you did to get to G from E. To give another example: the simple chord pattern of C — F — G is transposed to the key of D by shifting everything 2 spaces clockwise, and we find the new pattern to be D — G — A.

This leads us to another handy trick, and it goes like this, the fouth, the fifth. That is to say the I, the IV, and the V. It is well established that these intervals have a certain harmonious relationship that keeps coming up again and again. These intervals are the basis for the three-chord-trick, and countless turn-arounds have been built from them. The specifics of that harmonious relationship are not the subject of this post, and maybe in the future I’ll write about it, but for now let’s just say that these chordal intervals sound good together. Now if you’ve read the last few paragraphs you may have guessed this trick already. Choose the root of any key and you’ll find the fourth one space counter-clockwise and the fifth one space clockwise to it. Now you can bang out your punk power chords in any key.

So is that all you do with the circle of fifths? Transpose things? Well the circle is a tool primarily for working with relationships between keys, but I find that it can be useful for inspiring chord progressions. While it is not a harmonic tool, chords whose roots are near the chosen key do tend to sound better together. Fishing around in the general area of the key can sometimes lead to novel and good sounding progressions, and break writer’s block.

Other things of note: The circle will tell you how many sharps or flats are in a particular key. Starting from C and moving clockwise we get progressively more sharps in the stated key. So the key of G has one sharp, the key of D has two and so on. Moving counter-clockwise in the same fashion tells you the number of flats. When incorporating modulation into a piece the smoothest transitions will be between keys that are next to each other on the circle. This is because it is organised in such a way that the keys next to each other vary by only one note.

Since the circle maps a relationship between notes, and all 12 notes are represented, then there are bound to be all sorts of patterns in moving about the circle of fifths that are present in music. I encourage you to toodle around and find them. For example this guy has a whole bunch of other fun things you can do with the circle. I hope this has helped to illuminate the meaning and mystery of the circle of fifths.