BLOG 3 – Creation of Chords

Now after having a direction of where I want to take my song, it has now allowed me to go ahead and create my chords to go along to my lyrics. Having the basis around the idea of my song, and the message that I want to convey across in my music made it quite clear to me that the song leant itself towards a more minor chord set approach to match the emulated message reflected in my song. It is often in songwriting that we tend to use chords to evoke the desired emotion that we want to channel. However it is still not uncommon to use major chords in a song that still gives off a melancholy atmosphere, for example in Hank Williams’ country classic (1949) ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.’ Surprisingly, this song includes no minor chords, and is instead given the mournful atmosphere by the choice of notes and the creation of the melodic line (Blume, 2016).
I’M SO LONESOME I COULD CRY (1949) by Hank Williams – YouTube (Embed Josh)

Usually I tend to start the foundation of my songwriting by using only a few selected chords to match the lyrics, and then further develop them later on when adding other instrumentation to the song. David and Heartwood describe this process perfectly:
‘Writing a song is very much like fitting pieces of a puzzle together: once you get going with an idea, it’s a matter of laying your pieces out on the table and then getting them to fit’ (Davidson and Heartwood, n.d., p. 4).

Initially when writing the chords to fit the lyrics there were only four chords for the whole piece, these being A, Am, D and Dm7. I wanted these chords to form the foundation for the instrumental to my piece. When in the process of developing my chords I still wasn’t quite settled in the direction I wanted to take the piano part. At first there was a lot more movement in the piano part, however I changed this and went for a more minimalistic approach so that it left room for adding in other midi instruments and audio files, as was needed to hit the criteria for this project. This also allowed me to play the chords in the piano in the right hand while still enabling me to create a slow walking bass in octaves in the left hand of the piano as shown below.

Next Steps:

1. Get a good recording of piano
2. Get a good recording of Vocals
3. Begin to create develop song further in Logic Pro X

Reference List:
Blume, J. (2016) ‘5 Tips for a Happy Marriage of Music & Lyrics’. Available at: 5 Tips for a Happy Marriage of Music & Lyrics | MusicWorld | BMI.com [Accessed 3rd February]

Davidson and Heartwood. (n.d.). ‘Songwriting for Beginners: An Easy Beginning Method.’ USA: Alfred Music.

Hank Williams. (1949) ‘I’m so lonesome I could cry’. [Official video]. [Online video]. 2009. Available at: [Accessed 2nd February].