The Essential Secrets of Songwriting App

"The Essential Secrets of Songwriting" iPhone App contains everything you need to know about how great songs work. It describes eleven basic principles that are absolutely ESSENTIAL to writing good music. To put it simply: your best intentions will not ensure that you write good music. If you aren't following the eleven basic principles of good songwriting in this book, your songs are going to have problems. They are principles derived from the hit songs of the past four decades. These eleven principles show you exactly how the world's most successful music works.

The Essential Secrets of Songwriting iPhone App, by Gary Ewer and Walking Library, is a complete product that shows you everything you need to know about how to write songs: how chord progressions work, how to write a good melody, what makes a good lyric, and more.

It analyzes the hit songs from the past four decades, showing you how the world's best songwriters have constructed their songs.

• sound examples
• why song form is so important;
• how a great hook works;
• writing intros and outros;
• how to create chord progressions that work;
• how a bridge works, and how to write one;
• what to do about writer's block;
• the difference between copyright, performance rights, mechanical rights and royalties.
• a discography of songs that demonstrate all the concepts discussed within the book.
• a glossary of musical terms.
• and much more - EVERYTHING you need to know about songwriting!

The Essential Chord Progressions App

The Essential Chords Progression is a companion App to "The Essential Secrets of Songwriting". Chords that work! From basic progressions to ones that change key - dozens of chord progressions for you to use in your songwriting. With over 280 audio samples of the progressions! For every aspiring songwriter who plays the guitar or the piano or any other chording instrument.

Eliminating Chord Muddle

Chord progressions are the part of writing songs that has many composers stumped. For those who find it to be a mystery, their chords sound, at best, like chord successions, and at worst, chord muddle. What is chord muddle? Have you ever felt that you can't get one chord to feel like it needs to go to another? Do you feel that your progressions just meander from one chord to the next, without feeling like anything's making sense? That's chord muddle. You can spend a lot of your precious time learning the theory of how chords progress from one to another (and I believe you should!), but you want to get going with writing songs! In this app, we have included dozens of useful chord progressions. Feel free to use them in any of your songs: as such, chord progressions are not protected by copyright, so you don't need permission to use any of them.

About the chords in this App

The chords in this App are completely modifiable, and it's certainly not an exhaustive list. But hopefully they'll be enough to inspire you to get writing, and keep writing.

So we encourage you to take these progressions and modify them any way you like. Don't be afraid to let your ears have the final say. If you like something you see, use it. If you like a progression, but feel you'd like to change it – that's what you're supposed to do!

We have written the chords using guitar fret board notation, but the suggested voicing is exactly that... a suggestion. It's assumed that you will voice these chords on your guitar or piano or organ in whatever way suits your song. The same directive applies to the musical notation. The notes are meant to only indicate to you the notes found in each chord. Always use your imagination (and good taste!) to decide how to ultimately voice these chords.

More than anything, these pages give you lists of chord progressions that work. It's up to you to decide how and when to use them. Remember, simplicity is more important than complexity. Just because this app contains dozens of progressions doesn't mean that you are supposed to try to use as many as possible in one song. In fact, most songs will become jumbled and confusing if you try to use more than two or three different progressions. An important goal of songwriting is to create something that listeners will remember, and they won't remember songs that use too many chords, melodies or words.

The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6 E-book Bundle (PDF)

If you struggle with writing a great song, and you can't seem to finish any song you start, Gary Ewer has written a set of songwriting e-books designed to get you doing the thing you love. Let those six e-books be your guide. They'll show you how to improve your writing skills by showing you how lyrics, melodies, hooks, chord progressions, and every other aspect of good music works. The books take a look at hit songs from the past, showing how and why they became winners. And more importantly, how YOU can write hit songs! Includes all six of Gary Ewer's e-books, including the 9-lesson songwriting course!

The Essential Secrets of Songwriting E-book (PDF)

The Essential Secrets of Songwriting, by Gary Ewer, is a complete e-book (204 pages) that shows you everything you need to know about how to write songs: how chord progressions work, how to write a good melody, what makes a good lyric, and more.

Essential Chord Progressions (PDF)

"Essential Chord Progressions" is full of progressions. 53 pages, to be exact. Progressions that will stimulate your imagination and allow you to get going writing the songs you've been wanting to write for ages.

More Essential Chord Progressions (PDF)

"More Essential Chord Progressions" is full of interesting chord progressions that you can use in your songs as is, or modify as you see fit.

How to Harmonize Melody (PDF)

If you find yourself banging out the same three chords over and over again, trying to harmonize a song melody, this e-book is going to help you. Most people stay in the safe zone of those three chords, afraid to venture further a field simply because they don't understand how chords work. This e-book describes the whole process of taking a melody and adding chords. A must for every songwriter!

The Essential Secrets of Songwriting LESSONS (PDF)

Many people think of a good song as something that just "happens" - as if it's magic, or hit-or-miss. That's just not right. You can practice the art of songwriting, and this course allows you to do just that. Watch your songs go from humdrum to winners. This 9-lesson course covers every technical area of songwriting!

Chord Progression Formulas (PDF)

There's nothing much new that you can create when it comes to chord progressions. So if you're looking for that new "killer progression" that will set your song apart, stop looking. You're wasting time. Every progression that can be thought of has been done. As a songwriter, you need either or both of the following:

• Good progressions that work, so that you can start writing melodies that fit them.
• Good progressions that fit the melody you’ve already written.

So what you need, in short, are chord progression formulas, and that is what these chord progression formulas are going to give you. The exciting thing about "Chord Progression Formulas" is that you can be creating dozens of progressions in mere minutes!

"I've been teaching music theory for many years, to students from elementary school  through to college-level. So if there's one advantage I have regarding the teaching music theory, it's years of experience."

You probably didn't know that music theory could be this easy, or this fun!

The Essential Secrets of Songwriting

Essential Chord Progressions

Gary Ewer's Easy Music Theory