A Pop Songwriter’s Introduction to Jazz Chords
Songwriters and producers, ready to get jazzy? Here’s an introductory guide to building and using jazz chords in pop music!
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How Secondary Dominants Can Make Your Chord Progressions Less Boring
It’s not hard to break out of predictable chord patterns with a new mindset on harmony, and a bit of easy help from secondary dominants, too.
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How to Make Chords From Scales
Learning to read or write music? Here’s a quick guide to making chords within the various scales and modes you might encounter in music theory.
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How Do Key Signatures Work?
Learning to read or write music? Here’s a quick-yet-deep primer on how key signatures work across major, minor, modal, blues and other tonalities.
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Scale Mode Cheat Sheet: How to Remember Each and Every Mode
Modes and Key Signatures have a variety of different characteristics and are great for outside-the-box songwriting. Here’s a cheat sheet to remember them!
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How to Make a Boring Chord Progression Sound New and Fun
Here are five ways to spice up that same old chord stuff you always find yourself playing and create a progression that sounds new and fresh!
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Quick Tracks Nº 8: Change the Tonality of a Popular Song
Welcome back to the dance floor, Quick Trackers! Once a month, we hook you up with a short production or songwriting challenge, aimed at helping to up your musicianship. To respond to the challenge, just email us, leave a comment, or post to social media with the hashtag #quicktracks and tag us @learntosoundfly. This week’s challenge is a fun way […]
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Chartmania!! I Broke Down Every Song That Reached the Billboard Top 5 in 2017
Alright songwriters and song-guzzlers alike, strap on your boots for a knowledge voyage with more divergent rectangles than the NYC skyline: that’s right, the top pop charters have now become 2017’s top pop graphed. The Top 40 song charters that is, but why 40? Well, besides this number’s significance in pop music as a result of […]
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How to Add Bittersweet Emotion to Your Chords with 7ths
You might understand the construction of a chord or triad, but here’s how to make your music express the heartbreaking lilt of a seventh chord.
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A Primer on Tool’s Use of the Drop B Tuning
The Drop B tuning has primarily two different variations, both of which have been used almost entirely in the post-grunge rock of the early ‘90s. Pentagram guitarist Victor Griffin is credited with inventing the tuning, and he makes a point to tell players that the tuning sounds great when played “gingerly” as opposed to “heavily.” Yet today, we’re […]
