Write Music That Appeals To Peoples Emotions

By: Richie Gilbert

Whether you choose to write music first or start with the lyrics, please remember one thing: The melody is always king! I want to explain why I believe that statement to be true. I know when it comes to songwriting all of the elements must fit together just so. There has to be a perfect marriage of lyric, melody, structure and feel. That is the hallmark of a great song. But I have heard too many songs that seem to focus primarily on the lyrics. The writer has poured out his or her soul to create a truly touching and beautiful story. Then those wonderful lyrics are paired with a mediocre, or even (gasp!) boring melody. The result? A mediocre, boring song! Those lyrics might work wonderfully on their own. But a monotonous unimaginative melody drags them down. Appeal To The Emotions As a songwriter, writing melody that appeals to the emotions of your listeners should be your top priority. Why? Because it's the melody that our brains latch onto first. A melody on it's own can make you cry, laugh and everything in between. It truly can be a direct communication to the soul. An interesting mood-evoking melody commands our attention. It makes us sit up and take notice. Only then do we start to pay attention to the storyline. To the lyrics. And if those lyrics are top-notch: Bingo! You've hit the jackpot. Write Lyrics As Good As Your Melody Now, this scenario can also be looked at from the opposite side: You write music that is truly inspiring. You then settle for the first lyrics that pop into your head. You don't bother rewriting those lyrics. You figure that since they fit the melody and tell the story they are good enough. I did this for years! And I was always secretly embarrassed by my lyrics. As songwriters, we must strive for that perfect balance. And it takes time and effort to master. (I'm still working on completing my apprenticeship!) Work On Your Weakest Skill If you only want to write music or you only want to write lyrics, that's okay. Collaborating with writers who excel at what you do not is a great way to write songs. If you love to write melody, find yourself a great lyricist. Or vice-versa. Most of us are better at one aspect of songwriting than we are at others. For me, it's always been writing melody that seems to come naturally. As a lead guitarist I usually opted for the slow, melodic, soulful lead over the fast shred. Through the years I've written quite a few instrumentals that I am proud of. Lyrics have always been a struggle for me. That's why I tend to spend a lot more time working on the words to my new songs than I do the melody. But I spend quite a bit of time on writing melody too! Because I understand how important a great melody is. Listen To Your Melodies Listen to the melodies you are writing. Are they as strong as your lyrics? Perhaps more importantly, can they stand on their own? A melody should be able to stand on it's own. It should be moving, interesting, somewhat predictable and a little surprising at the same time. I say somewhat predictable because we need familiarity. If every line goes off in a completely different direction you will lose most listeners. People must have something that they can grasp onto immediately. Especially in the chorus. So go and write music that moves you. If you do this, you can be sure that it will move others too. Happy melody writing!

Richie Gilbert has been passionate about writing songs for many years. He spends too much time in his home recording studio, and is active in pitching his songs to music publishers. To learn more about the craft and business of songwriting, please visit his website at http://www.inspired-songwriting-tips.com Article Source: http://www.ArticleBiz.com

Learn To Play A Guitar For Free - Assembling Your Tools

By: Ricky Sharples

When you decide that you want to learn to play guitar you are starting out on a journey. Every day you need to continue and you need to be able to practice and experiment without the help of a teacher who is being paid to keep you on track, correct your mistakes and reassure you when you are feeling like you are getting nowhere in your guitar playing. So you need some tools that you can get from the internet for free and you need to remember to use these tools, otherwise you will find your guitar playing getting stale or stopping altogether. Let's start with the next best thing to having a teacher helping you. Guitar forums. There are lots of them on the net, some specializing in particular guitar playing styles, some with boards for focusing on aspects of guitar that need special attention. The members of guitar forums are a mix of newbies and seasoned guitarists. They all have one thing in common in that they have been where you are now. They know the difficulties of learning the basics of guitar and they are more than willing to help new guitarists get over the first bumps on the road. Forums are driven by member participation, so once you join, you will find that there is a place for newcomers to introduce themselves. You would usually go to that thread and write a little about yourself and then visit the other threads to see what the forum has to offer you. The next thing you need to do is find yourself some videos to watch on sites like YouTube. To take advantage of the enormous number of guitar video lessons available for free on the internet, you need to be very focused on what style of music you want to play. Have a list of songs and start looking for videos that teach you to play them. As you go along you will also get to know the names of some guitar playing techniques that you need to learn and you should look for video lessons on these. There is no guitar technique that is really hard to learn; they all just take practice. The thing is though, explaining how to do them is not too easy. With learning to play guitar a video is worth a thousand words. As you get to become clear on what kind of guitar music you want to play, you can do internet searches for tabs and chords for your favorite songs. There are many sites that archive free guitar tabs and you will have no trouble finding and downloading the material you need to get you started on playing. One thing to remember is that sometimes when a guitarist posts a video on YouTube he will provide a link to his own site where he has made tabs available for you, so check out the info printed alongside the video. The rest of the tools you need are bits of software that are essential for helping you learn to play guitar. You can get free metronomes and guitar tuners from the internet. You just download them for free and install them. If you do a search for them the first results you get are usually the big software download sites, so you should have no problems with viruses or spyware. There are also guitar tab editors that you can get for free or on a trial basis. Some of the trials are unlimited timewise but some of the features are disabled. Tab editors enable you to read the tabs and hear the tablature as MIDI files. GuitarPro is a good one that is free and you will find many GuitarPro files for songs and instrumental pieces in all guitar genres.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.