How to Use Assonance in Lyrics: The Core Method You use assonance in lyrics by selecting one or two target vowel sounds and repeating them across the stressed words of…
What Is Word Painting In Lyrics? (And Why Modern Songwriters Should Care) If you have ever heard a melody leap upward on the word ‘rise’ or a drum pattern stutter…
What Is Melisma in Music? If you’ve ever heard a singer stretch a single “oh” across a cascade of notes, you’ve heard melisma—the technique of singing one syllable over multiple…
At its core, a leitmotif is a compact, deliberately recurring musical or thematic idea that is permanently tied to a specific character, location, object, or abstract concept within a story.…
Stop Thinking Like a Pianist: Voicing Chords for Singers Starts With the Voice To voice chords for singers, you need to do one of two things: arrange vocal harmonies that…
Close harmony means arranging voices so that all parts stay within a narrow pitch span—usually an octave or less—while moving in tight, interdependent lines. If you want to know how…
The Fastest Path to a Real Counter Melody (And What It Isn’t) When producers ask me how do you do a counter melody, I give a blunt answer: take your…
The Fast Answer: How to Write a Renaissance Vocal Piece If you want to know how to write a renaissance vocal piece, here is the practitioner’s shortcut: pick a poetic…
A villancico is a Spanish-language poetic-musical form that began in late 15th-century Iberia as a rustic, often secular song and later morphed into the Spanish and Latin American Christmas carol…
How To Arrange A Gospel Choir Song: The Core Blueprint To arrange a gospel choir song that moves a congregation, you must abandon the static SATB block harmony mindset and…