In this interview, we will hear again from songwriter and musician Neil McSweeney, as he plays us some of the songs he is currently writing. He demonstrates how he has worked through possible solutions and evaluates the merits of different ideas, giving us a unique insight into his songwriting process.
There are some key things to take away here:
- Through the development of his ideas, Neil shows us how it’s important not to become too attached to particular elements especially as people will listen to songs in different ways.
- A song isn’t going to pop into your head fully formed - songwriting is all about working through different options and sometimes you have to be brave enough to know when an idea isn’t going to work and go back to the beginning.
- Neil emphasises that you don’t always need to have lots of chord changes in a song. Staying on the same chord can be quite effective and will give greater impact to the moment when the chord does change - for example in the chorus.
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