Hi Pat,
Thank you for your uplifting comments! I'd better send you some money via PayPal.
For what it's worth, here's how I mostly go about my chord progressions and my songwriting ...
When I begin, I often start with something that's already been devised. I'm a great believer in not re-inventing the proverbial horse. There are three main ways in which I do this.
ONE Load in a BIAB style demo song and use that chord progression as the starting place.
TWOHave a look through my music books and see if there's a song I like and use that progression as the building block.
THREEGet the audio for a song I like and run it through the Audio Chord Wizard and use that progression as the foundation for what is to come.
Every now and then, I simply start from scratch.
When I have a starting chord progression, I then use my knowledge of theory to play around with it. To do this, I usually work with chords in Roman numeral format (because of my classical background) although I have started using the Nashville system recently which is pretty much the same only with Arabic numerals. This is one of the main reasons that I use BIAB for creating my songs. I love being able to switch between the different types of chord notation so that I can see how the progressions work.
Another thing that I do with my chords is to use inversions by putting different notes in the bass. This is where I have found that classic theory comes in very very useful. In many ways, it is this part of the songwriting process that's the most fun for me.
In this particular song, I started with a chord pattern in Eb major (I like the key) ...
Eb |Ab |Eb |Ab |Cm7 Fm7 |Cm7 Fm7 |Eb Bb7 |Eb
In Roman numerals this is ...
I |IV |I |IV |VIm7 IIm7 |VIm7 IIm7 |I V7 |I
Once in this number system, it becomes easier for me to see how inversions might work. From a classical perspective, a pleasant sounding way to get from I to IV is to use the first inversion of I. Classically, this is notated as I6. Also, when a work has a perfect cadence (i.e. V to I at the end of the section), if a I chord precedes V, the cadence is enhanced by having the I chord in second inversion. Classically this is notated as I6/4. These considerations led me to ....
I I6 |IV |I I6 |IV |VIm7 IIm7 |VIm7 IIm7 |I6/4 V7 |I
... or switching back to alphabetic notation ...
Eb Eb/G |Ab |Eb Eb/G |Ab |Cm7 Fm7 |Cm7 Fm7 |Eb/Bb Bb7 |Eb
That was how the A-section started out.
Sometimes I look to see if there are chord substitutions or chord extensions that I might use. In the instance of this song, I did not go any further than the above although I did fiddle with some more chords a little later.
Once I was happy with my chord progression, I selected a style and tempo and started speaking rhythmical phrases against the accompaniment as it played. Eventually words came to my mind. When I had some lyrics that were feeling suitable, I set about crafting the melody.
At this stage, classical theory again comes in very useful. When working on my melody for the above chord progression, I kept in mind that if I'm using a first inversion chord, I don't really want to have the melody note on G (the same as the bass) unless the two different notes are approached in contrary motion. For the second inversion Eb chord (i.e. Eb/Bb) it's ok to have Bb in the melody. I also watched out for consecutive perfect octaves and consecutive perfect fifths between bass and melody. While these may sometimes not be all that noticeable, other times they can weaken the harmonic texture.
... it goes on from there
You probably didn't want to know all this but once I started typing, I couldn't stop! Hope it's of some interest to you.
Once again, thank you!
Noel
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