Songwriting: Writing the Music

If your notebook is full of unused lyrics and you’re struggling to find inspiration for the music, this course is for you. Whether you are an experienced songwriter looking for new ideas or a beginning songwriter learning to read music, this course will lead you to a rich source of songwriting possibilities.

Led by award winning songwriter and Berklee College of Music professor Scarlet Keys, you’ll learn to construct strong, expressive melodies that your audience will remember as well as experiment with new chords to break out of any harmonic rut. Whether you are new to writing music or are looking for new ideas to change up your songs, this class will teach you how to make deliberate choices with your harmonies and melodies to best emulate the emotions you want your audience to feel. You will start by discovering common chord progression and tying specific emotions to each chords in a scale. Then you will practice changing the harmonic and melodic rhythm of a song to better highlight important lyrics. Finally, you will learn to create melodic hooks and simple techniques to help you generate new melodic ideas.