Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Songwriting exercise

I was in a bookstore a couple of weeks ago, and happened to be skimming through a few books on songwriting. One of them had an exercise that I thought would be useful to try. The book listed several chord progressions - the exercise is to write a melody for each progression. Just for the record, the progressions are:
  1. Bb Fsus Cm7 Eb Bb Fsus Cm7 Eb
  2. Eb Bb E/B Bb Cm Eb/Bb Bb Eb
  3. Bb Gm7 F Eb Bb Gm7 F Bb
  4. G D Em C C Am Bm Em - G D Em C - G Am Bm D G
  5. G G/C D7 C D G C/G D7 G
  6. F F Bb Bb F F/A Bb C
  7. C G G D Dsus G G C Dsus D7
  8. G C G/B D7 G C G/B Dsus Em C G
  9. G C D7 D7 - G C D7 D7 Em C G
  10. G C D7 D7 G C D7 D7 C D G
  11. A A7 D A7 Bm7 G G D/F# A7

Given the context of the chapter, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that these progressions belong to songs I know. I don't recognize any of these progressions, but there's only a few songs that I would recognize on sight - most of them I'd have to hear.

I've started playing with Progression #7 on my keyboard, and it is suggesting a melody to me already.

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