During my gap year last year, I spent a fair amount of time playing different chord progressions in my own time, but I never thought to look at why certain progressions work in the abstract, or maybe I’d notice certain progressions re-occuring but not understand why. However, Robyn’s lecture7 showed me how much easier it …
Author Archives: Jachin Mee
Entry 5 – Writing To A Brief
Writing to a brief is a new concept for me (having never been commissioned to write a song for anyone before) so it was constructive to have the key elements of that process outlined by an industry professional. As someone that enjoys the complete creative control that comes with writing my own music, learning about …
Entry 4 – Melody Part 1
While it always felt intuitive to write melody that is appropriate for a given situation, sometimes it’s hard for me to know why certain melodies seemed to work. Before this topic was presented in the lecture, I had only really encountered tension and release in relation to harmony, so while in hindsight it seems obvious, …
Entry 3 – Lyrics Part 1
Robyn’s lecture4 highlighted an interesting technique that inspired my musical listening for this week – internal rhymes. I found a lyricist named Daniel Dumile that employs this technique masterfully, poring through multiple songs he wrote under the name Madvillian to gain a further appreciation for utilising internal rhymes. Here is an example from the song …
Entry 2 – Song Form
Initially I didn’t think it was important to analyse song form at first – an aspect of writing I had often taken for granted. However, it became apparent the value of understanding something properly before then breaking those rules – as Robyn explained the names and structure of the various song forms (such as ), …
Entry 1 – The Creative Process
The class focus and ensuing discussion on the creative process caused me to consider my own creative process and how I formulated my music. I looked at the earlier drafts of some of my songs and reflected on how they had been constructed – I often started with a chord progression, and then developed lyrical …
Jachin's Songwriting and Performance Journal 