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Power positions are lines of lyric inside your song (and any song you listen to) that naturally command more of a listener’s attention. Because of where they sit in the structure of a section, they are bathed in natural spotlights – a listener will hear them louder and clearer, feel the details you put there,…
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Our next Songwriting Sprint is coming up, and I thought I’d share one of the 4 prompts from the current 8-Week Sprint. You’re welcome to try this yourself, and if you want the structure, support, and accountability of deadlines, feedback, and community—join us for the August Sprint! Listen Like an Anthropologist Prompt You are going…
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Why Finding Something to Write About Is One of the Biggest Songwriting Challenges One of the most persistent challenges songwriters face isn’t finishing songs—it’s knowing where to begin. Whether you’re writing your first song or your hundredth, the same questions often appear whenever you sit down with a blank page: Where do I start? What…
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One of the prompts inside our current Songwriting Sprint is the “3 + 3 Chord Challenge.” The idea is deceptively simple, and we want to share it with you so you can feel its immediate impact in your own writing! The Challenge We are focusing on chords – and I warmly invite you to take…
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You know how to find it. There’s a storytelling mistake that shows up in songs all the time. And it has nothing to do with rhyme schemes or chord choices. It’s this: We bury the most interesting idea. This came up inside one of our live feedback sessions this week — the real, live, slightly…
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Using Song Maps has been one of the most transformative tools I’ve ever learned to take any idea I have, and know how to find a pathway to finishing that song. What’s a Song Map? A Song Map is really very simple: it’s a plan for how your song will start, develop, and escalate. It…
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Writing emotional lyrics doesn’t have to be hard. Discover how lyric structure shapes feeling—and how to break free from 4-line verses.
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I was in Queenstown, New Zealand last week with my best friend from high school. We were there before setting off on a 3-night hike on one of the ‘Great Walks’ of New Zealand — the Kepler Track. Queenstown is stunning — right on a lake, wrapped in mountains, with a kind of Swiss-village energy…
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Most beginners try to write their lyrics from the top down — first line, first verse, chorus later. It feels logical, right? Start at the beginning and work toward the end. But that’s actually one of the biggest reasons songs fizzle out halfway. When you start with the beginning, you’re guessing at what the song is about.…
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You’ve probably heard it said — or even thought it yourself — that the chorus is simply the part where the lyrics repeat.But that’s not quite right. If the chorus was just the repeating part, that would be like saying your favorite TV show is “the bit where people talk to each other.” Technically true, but not remotely…