Have you ever wondered how jazz musicians can play along to a new song that they have never heard? It is all thanks to chord progressions. And there are only about 10-20 of those that musicians use ...

A lot of the elements that make pop music successful relate to it being catchy and familiar. As a songwriter, there are many ways to engender this feeling in listeners, to do with song structure, ...

Lo-fi is to audio what black-and-white or sepia-tinted film is to visual. Often lo-fi tracks will loop a sample from an old vinyl record, complete with scratches and crackles, then drop it over a ...

Listen up: scales aren’t just torture devices invented by guitar teachers... When you use a scale, say, C major, you are playing ‘in the key of C’. The word ‘diatonic’ simply means ‘within a key’, so ...

Which comes first: chords or meloody? That's the chicken and egg question facing any music maker staring at a blank DAW screen, and there's no right answer as to which you need to nail first. And ...