If you learn and study the songs of the masters of Tin Pan Alley, you will develop an unusually strong understanding of songwriting harmony.
Chord progressions are the raw material we often start with as songwriters, creating grooves that seemingly vamp forever in our hands and brains.
Time for a little story.
From the time I was a little kid, I loved songs from every genre – show tunes, pop, jazz, classical, rock. I just loved songs, picking out melodies on my grandmother’s piano.
I sang all the time – that is, when I was alone.
When I started playing trumpet in fourth grade, I learned fifty percent of my favorite melodies by ear and the other fifty percent by buying song folio books at the local music stores. Again, I played these songs all the time – when I was alone.
I saw things at jazz workshops in junior high called “fake Books”. They were illegally produced lead sheet compilations of hundreds of standards. No one seemed to know where to buy them. The buzz was that if you were caught with one, you might be sent to jail!
That only made me want to buy two of them, learn all of those songs, and be a REAL outlaw musician!
While I knew a little music theory going into high school, I didn’t understand it’s applications to composition, orchestration, or song writing.
Downbeat, the most popular jazz magazine, published several Buddy Rich arrangements from his album “Big Swing Face” in their end-of-year special issue when I was in high school.
I took it upon myself to write out the sixteen-to-eighteen parts for the individual instruments for our jazz band, which required me to transpose from the C score into the key of the instruments in the brass and reed sections.
Lots of transposition, paper, and pencils!
And I started to see patterns in the music, patterns that would belie other larger architectural structures.
I was also playing double bass in a weekly folk mass with two talented guitarists who were very knowledgeable with chords and chords substitutions. They couldn’t read music but buy, could they play it.
They often used capos – more transposing for me! It didn’t bother them to play a song in D major at capo three but that put the song in F# major for me, not the easiest of keys for a young double bassist.
Again, I started to recognize the patterns in song structure, harmonic rhythm, and melody in all the keys.
In high school, we had a “dance band” because jazz was still a bit taboo in some areas - but it really was a jazz band. At our first rehearsal, I was given a box with over five-hundred arrangements in it – songs from the twenties to the present.
We rehearsed every week and always had to sightread and learn new tunes. While I knew many of the melodies, the harmonies and counterpoint were exelierating and I would often check out my friend’s parts in the sax or trombone section to see how they were designed.
All of this informed my songwriting that I started after I graduated from college and started working in an elementary general music gig.
After taking the gig, I realized I had no knowledge of elementary lit or choral rep – so I started writing my own.
By that point, I had so much raw material in the form of song structure, harmony, form, and melodic couture that my first songs were . . . only so so.
I threw away at least twenty songs before I ever shared one with my students.
I had purchased a guitar after graduating. Guitars in universities were like jazz bands in high school – not the establishment’s cup of tea.
A co-teacher had a copy of the Beatle’s “Complete”, the first all-inclusive book with every Beatles song in it.
We would run through songs, sing in harmony , pretend we were like John and Paul, and had a blast.
But I had a gradual revelation.
Almost all the chord progressions that the Beatles used could be found in the songs of Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, and George Gershwin of Tin Pan Alley fame.
The chords remained the same – it was primarily the groves and lyric vernacular that changed.
It hasn’t been widely discussed but all of the Beatles grew up in homes where songs of the Great American Song Book were listened to and sung around a piano. Those songs had a profound influence on their development as songwriters.
Flash forward:
I’m still learning songs.
At this point, I have over 1,500 lyric PDFs in my music app. I have most of the music memorized and can play most of the songs in several keys.
For example, I gigged for three hours straight Friday night in a casino restaurant – vocals and piano.
The first two requests I got were for Patti Page’s “The Tennessee Waltz” and Johnny Mathis’ “Chances Are”.
While I probably played done “Tennessee Waltz” decades ago on a big band gig, I had never done it solo before – but I knew the melody and the chord progression. I dialed up the lyrics on AZ Lyrics and nailed the tune. I had the lyric for “Chances Are” (I actually had a request for it about five years ago) so that was no problem either.
The point is this:
Songwriting was not a “buy and guitar and write a song in the first hour” situation for me.
There was no short path to create my flow in songwriting for me – and there might not be one for you, either.
Mastering songwriting was the culmination of a ton of work, practice, experimentation, failure, over many years.
The more raw material about songs that you have in your brain, the easier it will be to create flow and have your songs come to fruition.
The Great American Song Book is a great place to start. There is a reason why those standards have remained standards and in the lexicon of popular music. The Beatles catalogue is another good place to build your knowledge of songs.
For about every fifteen to twenty songs I know, I written one.
So learn lots of songs.
I mean like right now.
Get off the internet and learn some songs!
Chord progressions are the raw material we often start with as songwriters, creating grooves that seemingly vamp forever in our hands and brains.
Time for a little story.
From the time I was a little kid, I loved songs from every genre – show tunes, pop, jazz, classical, rock. I just loved songs, picking out melodies on my grandmother’s piano.
I sang all the time – that is, when I was alone.
When I started playing trumpet in fourth grade, I learned fifty percent of my favorite melodies by ear and the other fifty percent by buying song folio books at the local music stores. Again, I played these songs all the time – when I was alone.
I saw things at jazz workshops in junior high called “fake Books”. They were illegally produced lead sheet compilations of hundreds of standards. No one seemed to know where to buy them. The buzz was that if you were caught with one, you might be sent to jail!
That only made me want to buy two of them, learn all of those songs, and be a REAL outlaw musician!
While I knew a little music theory going into high school, I didn’t understand it’s applications to composition, orchestration, or song writing.
Downbeat, the most popular jazz magazine, published several Buddy Rich arrangements from his album “Big Swing Face” in their end-of-year special issue when I was in high school.
I took it upon myself to write out the sixteen-to-eighteen parts for the individual instruments for our jazz band, which required me to transpose from the C score into the key of the instruments in the brass and reed sections.
Lots of transposition, paper, and pencils!
And I started to see patterns in the music, patterns that would belie other larger architectural structures.
I was also playing double bass in a weekly folk mass with two talented guitarists who were very knowledgeable with chords and chords substitutions. They couldn’t read music but buy, could they play it.
They often used capos – more transposing for me! It didn’t bother them to play a song in D major at capo three but that put the song in F# major for me, not the easiest of keys for a young double bassist.
Again, I started to recognize the patterns in song structure, harmonic rhythm, and melody in all the keys.
In high school, we had a “dance band” because jazz was still a bit taboo in some areas - but it really was a jazz band. At our first rehearsal, I was given a box with over five-hundred arrangements in it – songs from the twenties to the present.
We rehearsed every week and always had to sightread and learn new tunes. While I knew many of the melodies, the harmonies and counterpoint were exelierating and I would often check out my friend’s parts in the sax or trombone section to see how they were designed.
All of this informed my songwriting that I started after I graduated from college and started working in an elementary general music gig.
After taking the gig, I realized I had no knowledge of elementary lit or choral rep – so I started writing my own.
By that point, I had so much raw material in the form of song structure, harmony, form, and melodic couture that my first songs were . . . only so so.
I threw away at least twenty songs before I ever shared one with my students.
I had purchased a guitar after graduating. Guitars in universities were like jazz bands in high school – not the establishment’s cup of tea.
A co-teacher had a copy of the Beatle’s “Complete”, the first all-inclusive book with every Beatles song in it.
We would run through songs, sing in harmony , pretend we were like John and Paul, and had a blast.
But I had a gradual revelation.
Almost all the chord progressions that the Beatles used could be found in the songs of Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, and George Gershwin of Tin Pan Alley fame.
The chords remained the same – it was primarily the groves and lyric vernacular that changed.
It hasn’t been widely discussed but all of the Beatles grew up in homes where songs of the Great American Song Book were listened to and sung around a piano. Those songs had a profound influence on their development as songwriters.
Flash forward:
I’m still learning songs.
At this point, I have over 1,500 lyric PDFs in my music app. I have most of the music memorized and can play most of the songs in several keys.
For example, I gigged for three hours straight Friday night in a casino restaurant – vocals and piano.
The first two requests I got were for Patti Page’s “The Tennessee Waltz” and Johnny Mathis’ “Chances Are”.
While I probably played done “Tennessee Waltz” decades ago on a big band gig, I had never done it solo before – but I knew the melody and the chord progression. I dialed up the lyrics on AZ Lyrics and nailed the tune. I had the lyric for “Chances Are” (I actually had a request for it about five years ago) so that was no problem either.
The point is this:
Songwriting was not a “buy and guitar and write a song in the first hour” situation for me.
There was no short path to create my flow in songwriting for me – and there might not be one for you, either.
Mastering songwriting was the culmination of a ton of work, practice, experimentation, failure, over many years.
The more raw material about songs that you have in your brain, the easier it will be to create flow and have your songs come to fruition.
The Great American Song Book is a great place to start. There is a reason why those standards have remained standards and in the lexicon of popular music. The Beatles catalogue is another good place to build your knowledge of songs.
For about every fifteen to twenty songs I know, I written one.
So learn lots of songs.
I mean like right now.
Get off the internet and learn some songs!
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