Songwriting Secret - Thursday Theory with Thtuart!

[00:00:00][music] >> I have a little songwriting tip for you.

[00:00:05]It's like a songwriting tip / songwriting analysis video.

[00:00:12]You ready for this? I'm going to show you two songs, two of the most famous songs of all time. Do you recognize this one?

[00:00:20]>> [music] [music] >> Do you know that song? Stairway to Heaven. Okay, what about this one?

[00:00:35]>> [music] >> Blackbird [music] by the Beatles. My name is Stewart Alexander Lyman Brown.

[00:00:44]There's something both of these songs do a bunch of other songs do as well. Wait, what about this one? You ready?

[00:00:49]>> [music] >> Ah.

[00:00:53]Never mind. I don't want to do that one.

[00:00:54]Forget it. Both of those songs have a a chromatic pattern that links together all the chords.

[00:01:03]Those first chords to Stairway to Heaven >> [music] >> they're kind of wonky to play.

[00:01:12]And like the melody it's fine. It's nothing crazy.

[00:01:20]But there has this one thing that links all the chords together. Look, look, it's this note right here.

[00:01:25]>> [music] >> See how it's just going down one fret at a time?

[00:01:35]>> [music] >> I think that's pretty cool, right? I think it takes all of those kind of weird chords and just chains them together in this this really cohesive way. And then what about Blackbird by the Beatles? During that little that the ascending part, look.

[00:02:01]>> [music] >> Look, look, look.

[00:02:13]>> [music] >> See?

[00:02:18]>> [music] >> Uncle Stuart, you don't seem very excited about this. And why are you looking at me like this?

[00:02:26]I don't know. I just I'm I'm I just found out that Oliver Tree died in a helicopter accident, and it really kind of spooked me.

[00:02:35]Being totally serious.

[00:02:42]So, I think that both of those songs, the pattern of that chromatic, just moving one fret over at a time in the guitar, the bait is specifically in the bass note, like the lowest note. I think that was a big part of the songwriting for each of these songs. I think that was part of how they came up with these parts, is they were just following these patterns on the guitar. So, I guess what I'm saying to you is you don't have to like understand the theory behind every single chord change in a song you're writing. You could just put some patterns in there like that. I feel like does that sort of thing all the time.

[00:03:21]I feel like most good songwriters who write on guitar have at least some songs where certain riffs were not really thought of in like an analytical way. It was really just like a little pattern. Like if you were going like Like look, I'll bet you this is going to sound good. Boom!

[00:03:39]>> [music] >> I don't know. Sounds fine.

[00:03:49]I think the point of this is that I think the point of this is that no one's the boss of you.

[00:04:00]You get to carve your own path and follow your own dreams.

[00:04:06]He was only 32 years old. This is really young. I just feel really sad about it.

[00:04:12]>> [music]