WRITING A SONG FROM A CHORD PROGRESSION

Steps For Starting With Just the Chords and Finishing With a Complete
Song

Copyright © 2016 by Pantomime Music Publications

All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. This book is protected by
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1:  The Benefits and Problems of Chords-First

Songwriting............................................ 3  
Introduction .......................................................... 4  
Songwriting: How to Get the Process Going ............... 5  
The Three Main Ways to Start a Song ....................... 6  
Why We Like Starting With Chords ........................... 8  
We Need a System................................................10  
CHAPTER 2: Finding a Melody Within
a Chord Progression ..............................12  
Choosing a Good Chord Progression ........................13  
Generating Melodies – What’s a Good One? ..............15  
CHAPTER 3: Writing a Good Song Melody, Using
“Stitches” (Shawn Mendes) as a Model......20  
About the Melodic Design of “Stitches” ....................22  
STEP 1: THE VERSE MELODY ..................................25  
STEP 2: THE PRE-CHORUS MELODY ........................26  
STEP 3: THE CHORUS MELODY ...............................27  
STEP 4: THE BRIDGE MELODY ................................30  
STEP 5: CREATE A LYRIC .......................................31  
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS .........................................32  
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CHAPTER 1:

The Benefits and Problems of

Chords-First Songwriting
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Introduction

This manual is going to help you to write

songs by starting with nothing much more
than a chord progression. It’s going to refer
to some standard principles of songwriting,
and so if you feel that you need a bit of a refresher on
how songs work, you might want to start by reading a bit
of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting”, part of the
eBook Bundle that you received with this manual.

But starting right here, in this book, you’ll get a clearer

understanding about why we like to start songs with
chords, and how to make that work for you. If you get
confused about any of the statements you read about
verses, choruses, bridges and so on, that’s when you’ll
know that you might want to take a step back and start
working through the rest of the bundle.

Good luck, and have fun!

-Gary Ewer
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Songwriting: How to Get the

Process Going

Try popping the words, “how to start a song” into a

search engine, and the number of people looking for just
this information will astound you. And the question is
very specific; it’s not “how to write a song”, but more
specifically – perhaps you might say, more simply – how
to get the process going.

It’s not a silly issue. Wrapped up in that question is the

implication that if you start well, you have a better
chance of ending well, and there is some truth to that. If
you want to, for example, take a good journey, it helps if
you at least get started by going in the right direction –
preferably to an airport.

Most of the time, starting a song means that you’ve got

several musical fragments that you’re tossing about in
your mind. Those fragments are usually:

-­‐ bits of lyric

-­‐ a phrase or two of melody;
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-­‐ a chord progression.

If you’ve got a bit of all three bouncing around in your

musical brain, you’ve got the makings of what could be a
hook. From there, you begin the process of working out
something longer. Ideas that are good are kept; ideas
that are bad get thrown out. You simply hope that you
keep more than you throw, and you eventually end up
with a song.

The Three Main Ways to Start a

Song

But if it’s a question of trying to start a song completely

from scratch with no particular idea in mind at the outset
– well, that’s when songwriting can get tough. You’re
pulling ideas out of a vacuum, or at least it seems that
way, and it’s not easy. When you’re in that situation, you
get the impression that there are three main ways to
start a song from a musical vacuum:

1. Melody first.
2. Lyrics first.
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3. Chords first.

But in reality, it’s rarely that cut and dried. Because this
is closer to reality:

1. You think of a bit of lyric, but you also likely

consider the rhythm of those words.
2. You think of a bit of melody, but you likely also
consider the chords that are implied by those
melodic notes.
3. You think of a short chord progression, but you
also likely consider a rhythmic groove that will
give those chords life.

It’s that last point – the creating of a song starting with

nothing more than a short chord progression – that is the
focus of this short manual. Because of all the potential
ways for starting a song, beginning with a chord
progression is the one that can exist with almost nothing
else to hold it up. Start strumming a chord progression,
and all that will occur to you at first is some sort of
syncopated rhythm. And you likely know this already, but
you can keep strumming that chord progression for a
long time before anything else happens.
8

And it’s worse than that: it’s possible, after a number of

months of strumming the chords, to convince yourself
that that’s the song! Yes, the chords become the song. I
know this because of the number of songs that get sent
to me for my perusal that are nothing more than a series
of chords with a bass line and drums. The melody tends
to be whatever the top notes of the chord voicings are, to
which a weak lyric is added. That’s it and that’s all.

Why We Like Starting With Chords

Creating a melody first almost always implies chords and

rhythm. Creating lyrics first will also make you think of
rhythm and, to a certain degree at least, the melody (if
you think of the inflection of the voice as you say the
words). Creating chord first comes with the curse of
having not much else, and it can leave you feeling
frustrated.

So why do so many songwriters find it important to get a

good chord progression working first? Why do we like
starting with chords? It probably has to do with the fact
that of all song elements, chords are the least unique.
You can create two completely different songs that use
 9

the exact same chord progression. It gives the impression

(a true one, I believe) that there aren’t a ton of
progressions out there for your use. And so at least
getting that part right feels more important.

Here’s another way to look at that. There are hundreds or

more beaches in Hawaii. The one thing they all have in
common is: they’re in Hawaii. If you want to go to the
best beach in Hawaii, you have to start by considering the
one thing all those beaches have in common: you need to
get to Hawaii. Once you’re there, you need to drive down
the unique set of roads that gets you to the one beach
you’re looking for.

So there’s a feeling in songwriting that you want to start

with the musical element that is least unique (if you’ll
permit the term) – the chord progression and
accompanying rhythms – and then move to the elements
that are truly unique – the melodies and lyrics.

There is a problem, however, in starting songs with

chords, which is that in chords-first songs, melodies and
lyrics tend to get ignored. With lyrics, that’s not an
insurmountable problem. Lyrics can be constantly
tweaked and shaped until you get something better and
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better. Melodies are harder to tweak, because they’re

inextricably linked to the chords you created in the first
place. So that limits the notes you can come up with. And
then there’s a second problem: The voicings you choose
when you play your chords place certain notes as the
highest ones. This in turn causes you to hear those
highest notes as a kind of melody, and that further limits
your musical imagination and stifles your ability to “hear”
other (better) melodies. And trust me, the melodies that
are implied by the top notes of chords are rarely good
ones.

We Need a System

So what can we do about this? If you find chords easy to

create, but hard to do anything else with, this booklet is
meant to help you. And it will help by showing you a way
to find possible melodies based on your chosen chord
progression, using an existing song as a model. Its great
benefit is that you can create songs with little or no initial
ideas! Just a chord progression, and away you go!

In reality, it’s not so much a system as it is a series of

potential steps that will help you get the most out of
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chords-first songwriting. Done well, you’re going to love

what playing around with a chord progression can do for
your songwriting. Rather than limiting your ideas, we
want to turn chords-first songwriting into a world of
possibilities.
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CHAPTER 2:

Finding a Melody Within a

Chord Progression
 13

Choosing a Good Chord Progression

Starting the songwriting process with chords means:

1. Finding a good chord progression, or

2. Creating a good chord progression.

Finding a chord progression shouldn’t be a tricky

problem. There are many published books that feature
progressions that you can use. And since chord
progressions on their own are not protected by copyright,
you’ve got no problem, even if you use a progression
from someone else’s song. (You do have a problem if you
use a chord progression from someone’s song, and then
also borrow the rhythms, the backing guitar riffs, the
drumbeat pattern and other components. Don’t get
greedy.)

Creating a chord progression is where things can get

interesting, but remember this: chord progressions have
all been discovered. The only ones that don’t get used are
bad ones that don’t work, and I really mean that. There
are no chord progressions left to discover. In the same
way that someone somewhere has put pickles and
14

popcorn in a bowl and covered them with a purée made

from Worcestershire sauce, tomato paste and strawberry
ice cream, it’s very likely that nothing is left undiscovered
in the world of chord progressions. That’s bad news for
those of you who think that the killer chord progression is
still out there waiting to be revealed. So when we talk
about creating in this context, we’re simply talking about
chords that you’ve put together without having been
prompted to do so from a published manual.

That’s not a bad thing, the fact that your chosen

progression has been used before. You may have painted
your walls blue, and it shouldn’t bother you that someone
else has already thought of painting their walls blue. It’s
unimportant. Just choose or build a chord progression,
and get on with the next step.

You’re not going to find, by the way, lists of chord

progressions in this manual. That’s a job for other books,
and “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” eBook Bundle
contains several books devoted to listing them, and then
showing you how to create your own by looking at an
existing melody. Let’s go on the assumption that you’ve
got a chord progression that you like, but don’t know
what to do with it.
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Generating Melodies – What’s a

Good One?

The main focus of this manual is to generate ideas for

melodies, starting with a chord progression. It
automatically begs the question: What is a good melody?
Because we don’t want to turn this manual into a long
philosophy text, let’s admit that there is no one good
answer to that. But certainly, we have to have at least
some idea of what would make an acceptable melody.
Without knowing that, that’s exactly where you’re going
to get stuck.

Sometimes, to find the answer to tough questions, it

helps to reverse the picture and ask the question in a
different way: What is a bad melody? Since we know that
a song is good if all the components are partnering well
together (that’s a basic songwriting principle), a bad
melody is simply one that doesn’t support the other
elements within the song. That can mean any of the
following:
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1. A bad melody keeps emotional lyrics from

their fullest potential. This can occur if the
melody notes that happen on emotional
words/phrases/thoughts are low in pitch, and do
very little to allow those words to shine. For an
example, think of the melodies of the following
songs, and how they make great use of up and
down motion in partnership with the emotional
expression of the lyric: “Tears In Heaven” (Eric
Clapton, Will Jennings); “My Love” (Paul
McCartney, Linda McCartney); “Photograph” (Ed
Sheeran, Johnny McDaid).
2. A bad melody strains the relationship
between itself and the chords. Generally, music
is an alternating pattern of strong beats and weak
beats. Most of the time, you want melody notes on
the strong beats to belong to the chord of the
moment. Between beats, and even on weak beats,
it’s OK to have the melody visiting notes that don’t
belong to the chord. For a good example of this,
listen to Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep.” The opening
melody features several notes that don’t belong to
the C minor chord that’s being played. The same is
true of many of the melody notes that happen
 17

afterward as the chords change. But it all sounds

effortless and natural.
3. A bad melody fails to draw important
distinctions between song sections. This
means that all sections of the song (verse, pre-
chorus, chorus, bridge, and any other optional
parts) all feature a melody that sits in the same
range – not a good scenario. The audience hears
all melodies using the same few notes, with little or
nothing to distinguish themselves. If you want an
example of what it sounds like when melodies
make a good attempt to change from one section
to the next, listen to Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’”. The
verse and chorus use the same notes, but the
chorus places them an octave higher, making a
very obvious change from the verse.
4. A bad melody doesn’t make good use of
repetition. Practically any melody you can name
will use repetition – either exact or approximate.
Repetition taps into the human desire to find
patterns. We feel a sense of musical pleasure
when we hear something exactly like, or similar to,
what we’ve heard before. So when we hear
“Heartbreak Hotel”, there’s a satisfaction that
comes from hearing that opening melodic fragment
18

(“Well, since my baby left me”) repeat almost

exactly, to form the second line (“Well, I found a
new place to dwell”). Even the third line, which is a
bit different, has a similar feel to the opening line.
Repetition works like musical glue. You can have
too much of it, so you have to know when to break
away from simply repeating the same thing over
and over. That’s one of the skills of songwriting.

As you might gather then, a melody is good not because

it follows a set of rules, but rather because it adheres to
certain principles. That gives you a very large palette
upon which you can design a melody. It also means that
what you consider to be good may not sound good to
someone else, and that’s music for you!

So before you dive in to the rest of this chapter (or

indeed this book), it’s worth the time to sit back and try
to vocalize what you like about melodies. How do you
know if you’ve heard a good one? What do you like about
your favourite songs? This may seem like a fairly
subjective exercise with no correct answer, but that’s
only because… it’s a subjective exercise with no correct
answer. But what thinking about it does is allows you to
pinpoint and describe your own taste in music, and that’s
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going to be important if you want to be able to write a

good tune.
20

CHAPTER 3:

Writing a Good Song Melody, Using

“Stitches” (Shawn Mendes) as a
Model
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So here’s a set of steps that can help you do the thing

you might have found difficult in the past: writing a
melody using a chord progression as a starting point. It
helps if you have a song in mind that you can use as a
model to help you work through the process. That’s
because there are many ways to write melodies, and we
can’t cover them all, at least not in this manual.

So for this process, let’s use “Stitches” (Danny Parker,

Teddy Geiger, Daniel Kyriakides, recorded by Shawn
Mendes) as a kind of template for how you’re going to
write your own melody. It’s going to help if you give that
song a few listens to get as familiar with it as possible.

“Stitches” uses a verse/pre-chorus/chorus/bridge formal

design. What makes it a good choice as a song model is
the simplicity of the melodies, as well as the simplicity of
the chord progression and the clear and obvious song
form. It’s a great reminder that pop songs that work are
rarely complex. Almost always, simplicity trumps
complexity. “Stitches” uses a short 4-chord progression
(Bbm Ab Db Gb) in the verse, and modifies it only
slightly in the chorus. In fact, the entire song is built on
various arrangements of just those four chords.
22

Let’s create a simple progression – something nice and

short:

Am C F G

Play that progression over and over, and get as familiar

with it as you can.

Now before we use it, let’s see what we can learn about
the melodies we find in “Stitches”.

About the Melodic Design of

“Stitches”

“Stitches” uses what we call an ABAB design for the

verse, which means that you get a first phrase (“I
thought that I'd been hurt before”), followed by a second
phrase that moves lower in pitch (“But no one's ever
left me quite this sore”). Then the two melodic phrases
repeat. Those four phrases form the complete verse. That
idea of starting higher, and then moving lower, is
something we want to replicate in this exercise.
 23

First phrase: Second phrase: Third phrase: Fourth phrase:

“I thought that I'd “But no one's “Your words “Now I need

been hurt before” ever left me cut deeper someone to
quite this sore” than a breathe me back
knife” to life”

And as you can hear, the second phrase of the melody

acts as a kind of answer to the first phrase, so phrase 1
and phrase 2 operate as melodic “partners”. The same
goes for phrases 3 and 4.

You’ll also hear that for each phrase, most of the

rhythmic activity happens in the first half of the
phrase. So it’s during Bbm and Ab that Mendes sings
most of his words. The last two chords of the first phrase
(Db Gb) just has Mendes holding a note, or resting.
That’s a common trait in most songs’ lyrics: the singing
rarely goes non-stop. In good music, silence from the
singer can be as important as the actual singing.
24

The pre-chorus is constructed in much the same way as

the verse, in the sense that it consists of four short
phrases, over a very simple chord progression (Gb Ab
Bbm) .

The chorus is also four short phrases long, but it works a

little differently from the verse. First, you’ll notice that
each phrase is very short: half the length of each verse
phrase. Second, notice that the first short phrase is
repeated, then a 3rd different phrase happens, and then
repeats. You get this as a form: AABB. That gives you
something half the length of the verse, so the entire thing
is repeated to give you a chorus that’s the same length
as the verse:

AABBAABB

This is followed by a bridge section, but let’s leave that

for now and come back to it.

So let’s create a verse, pre-chorus and chorus section

that uses the same formal design elements as “Stitches,”
but with (of course) new melodies of your own creation.
It helps at this stage if you have a sense of what this
song is going to be about, so you may want to take some
 25

time to work that out, as well as perhaps come up with a

few lyrical phrases, and perhaps a title. But when it
comes to dealing with melody, you can still do these
steps even if you haven’t an idea yet what you’ll be
singing about.

STEP 1: THE VERSE MELODY

1. Play your chord progression (Am C F G)

several times, and try to work in a rhythmic
pattern. Start by strumming each chord for 4
beats. What you’re trying to do is get a sense of
the basic feel of your song. Don’t move on from
this step until you’re sure that you’ve got the feel
of the song firmly in your mind and under your
fingers.
2. Create a first phrase that comprises the four
chords. And as with “Stitches”, try to have most of
your melodic activity happening on the Am and C
chords; use the F and G as a place to rest the
melody. Even if you don’t know what words you’re
going to be singing here, try to come up with a
catchy rhythm. That rhythm will likely change once
26

you add lyrics. (Paul McCartney made up

“Scrambled eggs” as kind of “placeholder words”
when he came up with the melody for
“Yesterday”.)
3. Create a second phrase that also comprises
the four chords. Since we’re patterning this after
“Stitches”, have your second phrase move
downward. Again, keep the rhythmic activity to the
first two chords, and use the last two as a place to
rest the melody.
4. Join the first and second phrase together. Do
you like what you hear? Does the first phrase lead
naturally and easily into the second phrase? It
might help to make up some placeholder lyrics to
help you remember and shape what you’re doing.

STEP 2: THE PRE-CHORUS MELODY

1. Take your four chords and rearrange them to

give you something different for your pre-
chorus. So you might try: F G Am G. In this
case, I decided to drop the C chord, but you can
choose any three.
 27

2. Create a first phrase that moves upward over

the four chords. It might be a good idea to start
low in pitch, because you want to keep the melody
from getting too high or out of your vocal range. In
“Stitches”, there’s melodic activity over all four
chords, so you will want to create a melody that
keeps your voice moving.
3. Repeat that melody to create a second
phrase. But this time, end the phrase differently,
setting up the chorus. In “Stitches”, his voice
jumps up (“Move on”) to create a unique ending to
the pre-chorus. When you create your ending to
the pre-chorus, you may want to change what you
do with the chord progression. It might be
something like playing 3 instead of 4 chords, or
you might again change the order of the chords.

STEP 3: THE CHORUS MELODY

1. Switch back to using Am C F G as your

progression, and create a short, 4-beat
melodic fragment that lasts for the first two
chords (Am C). This is something that you’re
going to repeat, so it’s good if that 2-bar melody
28

will work with Am and C, and then work with F and

G. It’s OK if it doesn’t; an approximate repeat may
be all you need. Be sure to create something that
differs considerably from your verse melody. Don’t
just create something that sounds like a variation
on what you’ve already done. Contrast is an
important requirement for making song sections
sound suitably different from each other. Chorus
melodies usually sit higher than verse
melodies, so the melody you create here should
be near the upper limit of your vocal range.
2. Sing that melodic fragment the final two
chords (F G), and modify it if necessary to
work with the chords.
3. Repeat those 2 instructions, and you’ve got
an entire chorus.

At this point, you’ve written a verse, pre-chorus and

chorus. It’s up to you now how you proceed from here. I
might recommend figuring out a bridge. Bridge sections
are great for songs like this. Why? The melodies you’re
creating are purposely of simple construction, and
relatively short. Bridges will allow you to do several
things:
 29

1. It will give you an opportunity to change

temporarily the harmonic direction of the
song. This song has been using Am as a kind of
tonic. So you might consider writing a bridge that
moves strongly into the key of C major, and that
provides a nice musical variation to the constant
Am.
2. It will give you an opportunity to modify the
musical energy of the music. So if your song up
to this point has been energetic with a driving
tempo, you can use a bridge to calm the music
down and build it again as it approaches the return
of the chorus. The contrast will strengthen the
structure of your music.
3. With short verses and choruses, you may
need a bridge to finish the lyric. In other words,
whatever your verse is describing may need more
time to finish, and the bridge can provide a final
opportunity for you to do that.
4. Pop songs typically come in at 3-4 minutes in
length these days, and so a bridge will help
you achieve that format.
30

STEP 4: THE BRIDGE MELODY

1. Rearrange your chord progression, and

consider adding a new chord. Adding a new
chord can help to breathe new life into the
progression. So you might change the focus to C,
and then perhaps add a Dm somewhere, just for
variety. Something like this: C F Dm G. Using a
non-diatonic chord (one that doesn’t naturally
occur in your song’s key) is also a nice choice for a
bridge. Flat-VII chords can be very good additions
to progressions. So you might see about working in
a Bb chord.
2. Think of your bridge as a chance to wander a
bit. There really are no rules to how you might
construct a bridge melody. In “Stitches”, a short
melody is created and then repeated over and
over, jumping up an octave with the addition of
backing vocals. This bridge works well because it
starts quieter and then uses the octave jump to
help build energy back to where it was for the
return of the chorus.
3. Remember that the end of your bridge needs
to connect back to the chorus. And that means
 31

that you need to have the last chord of your bridge

move nicely to the first chord of the chorus.

STEP 5: CREATE A LYRIC

Now you need to get an idea of what you’re writing

about! You may have found yourself blurting out words of
lyric as you get a feeling for what direction your song is
taking. It might be beneficial to sketch out words and
phrases as they occur to you. At some point, a more
complete idea will start to form, and you’ll find that it
may be best to move your focus toward writing lyrics and
less toward melodic ideas. But that’s normal for
songwriting. It’s not too often that you’ll follow a
complete set of steps that give you an entire song
without having any idea what you’re going to be singing
about. So don’t be surprised if you find yourself moving
back and forth from writing melodies to writing lyrics.
That’s normal.

Also, you may find that once you start to add lyrics, you
may feel the need to modify the melodies you’ve created.
That might happen in order to place emotionally
32

significant words higher in pitch. It will also more likely

mean that you’ll be adjusting the rhythms of your
melodies to fit the natural rhythm and pulse of the words.
All of these changes are a normal part of the songwriting
process.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

As this is just a short manual and not a full book, we’ve

just looked at one song as a demonstration of how you
might start with a chord progression and create a
complete song. To be sure you feel comfortable with this
method, why not go back and try again with a new chord
progression.

Once you’re familiar with writing a song this way, try

using a different song as a template. Or if you want to
explore the method described in this manual and see
what you can do with it, take the following 6 chords, and
create unique verse, pre-chorus and chorus progressions:

C Dm F G Am Bb
 33

This time, don’t use all 6 chords in each section. You may
choose to create a verse progression that uses 5 or 6, but
then limit your progression to 4 chords for your chorus.
(Chorus progressions are typically shorter and stronger
than verse progressions.)

When you create songs by starting with a chord

progression, the danger is that the melody gets
neglected. So be sure that as you create melodies you’re
paying attention to the important characteristics of good
melodies. Some songs may benefit from using a lot of
single repeated notes (“Like a Rolling Stone”), but you’ll
find that most move the voice up and down, using
repetition of phrases and recognizable patterns. Good
melodies place emotionally significant words higher in
range, and, when all is said and done, are relatively easy
to sing.

And one last piece of advice: don’t start every song you
write by working out a chord progression first. Any time
to stick to one particular formula for solving a songwriting
problem, you’ll find that there’s a tendency for all your
songs to get an unpleasant sameness about them.
34

So if you’d like some ideas for other ways you might start
songs, think about the following two possibilities:

1. Try thinking of melodic shapes first. It will

amaze you that most of the time, when you simply
try to generate a melody completely from your
imagination, without even the help of an
instrument, you can actually do it! And what you
come up with often sounds reasonably good. You’ll
also notice that the melodic shapes start to imply
certain chords. Try it – I think you’ll enjoy
improvising melodies as a first step.
2. Create a lyric (or part of a lyric) first. Come
up with a title, and then say that title over and
over to yourself. Try to create phrases that partner
with that title as you put a chorus lyric together.
Once you’ve got a chorus working, think of
descriptions of people and circumstances that can
serve as a verse lyric. Before you get too far into
that process, you’ll find that the way you say the
words will start to imply melodic shapes.

On some days, songwriting seems to happen easily, with

ideas popping into your mind at will. On other days, it will
feel frustrating and stilted. If that’s the case for you,
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remember that frustration can be dealt with by simply

putting your guitar and pencil down, and taking a break. I
hope that if you’ve been finding chords-first writing to be
tricky that the steps in this manual might offer a way
through the frustrations.

Many frustrations come from technical problems: you’re

missing some vital piece of information about how
musical composition works, and how good songs are
constructed. I hope you’ll take time to read through the
entire songwriting eBook Bundle. It was written to help
you put a magnifying glass on your own songwriting
process, and to help you become better.

I wish you great success with all of your songwriting

projects!

-Gary Ewer