5 Music Theory Tips To Aid Your Songwriting Abilities

When writing music, understanding the fundamental concepts of music theory can drastically aid in your ability to write songs, from creating melodies on the spot to writing chord progressions to accompany your arrangements and much more.

To help improve your knowledge of music theory, we have compiled 5 helpful tutorial videos that will assist you in becoming more knowledgable about music theory so that you can utilize these techniques whilst composing music.

5. Minor Scales – Natural Harmonic and Melodic
While the nuance between natural harmonic and melodic minor scales may seem to be insignificant at first glance, they are quite different in the way that they end up sounding – as you can clearly hear in the video. Experiment with both while writing melodies or practicing your instruments and pick which one suits your style the most!

4. The Circle of Fifths – How To Actually Use It
The circle of fiths… that seemingly daunting music theory technique that, after doing a small amount of exploration, turns out to be a fairly simple topic to grasp. Not only does understanding the circle of fifths help cement the various key signatures in your mind, but it is a useful resource for constructing chord progressions and understanding a melody’s relationship to its corresponding scale.

3. How Time Signatures Work
While the concept of time signatures may not feel as entertaining as understanding the circle of fifths, this topic is equally important as it relates to formal music theory. Time signatures are particularly important for music compositions when there are many musicians playing the same piece at once, such as with a chamber orchestra, as each musician knows the precise time at which to play each note in a score.

While time signatures are moreso on the technical side of music theory topics, they can still be used quite creatively! For instance, you can automate a time signature change in your song (capable in most DAW’s) to create a completely new rhythm in your song. Some common examples of this include switching from 4/4 to 3/4, or 4/4 to 6/8!

2. Building A Chord Progression
Chord progressions are undoubtedly one of the most important aspects of a musical arrangement, capable of continuously emphasizing the key of a song through its entirety, being responsible for carrying the rhythm of a song, as well as providing a mold for a melody to form.

1. Writing A Melody
While there are a vast amount of useful techniques available for writing melodies, such as creating contrast and variation, in addition to the fantastic tips discussed in the below video, there are no exact rules for creating a great melody. Perhaps the only rule that every artist will swear by, is that it must be played in the main key of the song.

We hope that you found these music theory tutorials to be helpful for you! If you are an electronic musician that is interested in diving even deeper into expanding your music theory knowledge, we highly recommend our course, Music Theory for Electronic Musicians: https://www.adsrsounds.com/product/courses/music-theory-for-electronic-musicians/

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