Field Notes.
Short, useful essays on songwriting craft from the people who make the suite. Theory, lyrics, process, inspiration. One a week, free, like the tools.
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Once a month we feature a real songwriter's work in Field Notes: a progression you wrote, a lyric snippet you're proud of, a verse you can't crack. Send yours and we'll consider it for the next Spotlight.
Demystifying Arpeggios: When to reach for an arpeggio instead of a chord
The practical question at last: when to outline a chord and when to keep it whole. Folk fingerpicking, pop solos, indie shimmer, and the lift into a chorus.
Demystifying Arpeggios: Five practice loops that lock arpeggios into your hands
Five short drills, three minutes each, that fit into a fifteen-minute session and quietly lock arpeggio shapes into your hands. Slow, patient, enough.
Demystifying Arpeggios: The 3-note arpeggio, the smaller shape that gets used most
The small three-note triad shape turns up in real songs far more than the full sweeping arpeggio. Why it sits so well on a held chord, and how to learn it.
Demystifying Arpeggios: The CAGED arpeggio map, by feel
The five CAGED arpeggio shapes, anchored to the open chords you already know. Treat them as hand positions, not theory to memorise. A walk round the neck.
Demystifying Arpeggios: What an arpeggio is, when nobody's mystifying it
An arpeggio is a chord played one note at a time. What that gives a songwriter, and the three-note triad that every arpeggio is only ever a variation on.
When a Rhyme Lies (and What to Reach For Instead)
The easy rhyme that drags an honest line into a false one. Why heart and start can ruin a verse, and what to reach for instead: a slant, an off-rhyme, none.
What to Do When the Bridge Won't Come
Verse, there. Chorus, there. Bridge, gone. Six things I actually do, in order, when the bridge refuses to show up. Nothing precious, all doable today.
Voice Leading: Why Some Chord Changes Feel Inevitable
Move each note by the smallest distance it can travel and a progression feels as if it had to go that way. A patient look at voice leading through I, vi, IV, V.
The Lyric Was Already There: Notes from the Developing Tray
A lyric is not summoned, it is found. The latent image waits on the negative before any eye sees it. How patience brings up the line that won't come.
How to Edit a Song the Day After You Wrote It
The unglamorous second-draft pass. Read the lyric cold, sing it once flat in the kitchen, mark every line that makes you flinch. Three steps for a Tuesday.
Modes Without the Mystery: Starting With Dorian
Dorian is a minor that does not sound sad. It sits one note from the minor you already know, and that raised sixth changes the weather. A patient first look.
The Forty-Five-Minute Song
A practical method for writing in the dead time between soundcheck and doors. Forty-five minutes is enough. The road is a writing room if you treat it like one.
What 'Diatonic' Actually Means (and Why the Word Scares People)
A patient walk through the seven diatonic chords in any key. The word looks technical; the idea is simple. Hand the family round and the chords stop being mysterious.
How to Mine Your Old Voice Memos
A monthly discipline for raiding the voice memos on your phone before you write anything new. Tag, rank, archive. Half your unfinished songs already exist.
The Two Cadences That Run Almost Every Pop Song
A patient walk through the perfect and the deceptive cadence: why one feels like home and one keeps the door open. The two endings most pop songs are built from.
Why the Boring Line Is Often the True One
The instinct to make every lyric line interesting kills more songs than dullness does. A short essay on the unadorned line, and why it earns the colour around it.
Writing About a Place You Can't Name
Lyrics that reach for a specific, unnameable place. Why concrete sensory detail outperforms naming, and how to find the detail that does the work.
Demos are the 80/20 of finishing songs
Most songs die between 'I had an idea' and 'I finished it.' A demo is the bridge — a working songwriter on the cheapest demo that still gets songs done.
Borrowed chords: a five-minute primer
Borrowed chords reach into a parallel key for a chord that 'shouldn't' fit — and lands beautifully. A music theorist's quick tour of the four most useful ones.
On the first line
The first line of a song is a door. You don't have to know what's behind it — you just have to crack it open enough to walk through. A short essay on starting.
Writing in hotel rooms (and other unfriendly places)
Twelve years of touring taught me what actually works when you have to write songs on the road. Practical tactics for hotel rooms, dressing rooms, and the back of a van.
10 versatile chord progressions every songwriter should know
A music theorist's tour of ten chord progressions every songwriter should know — from the four-chord pop loop to jazz turnarounds. Written in Roman numerals; transpose to any key.
Major or Minor: The One Note That Decides How a Chord Feels
Lower the middle note of a major chord by a semitone and its whole weather changes. A patient, ear-first look at the third, where major and minor really live.
How to Start a Song When You Can't Be Bothered
The hardest part of any song is the bit before there is a song. Five small, practical moves to start when you cannot be bothered, from a working musician.
Keep a Notebook That's a Net, Not a Diary
A songwriter's notebook is not a diary. It is a net, held open to catch the lines that drift past. How to keep one that actually catches things.
The Circle of Fifths, Drawn After the Journey
The circle of fifths looks like a lock and is really a map of which keys are near neighbours and which live across town. A patient, fear-free tour.
What I Actually Do in a Co-Write
Songwriting got sold as a lonely thing. Here is what actually happens in a good co-write, and how not to make it weird, from a player who learned it in a band.
Who Is Singing This? Point of View in a Lyric
A lyric is sung by someone, to someone. Move who that is and the song turns, like a photograph when you step two paces left. Point of view in a lyric.
What a Seventh Does to a Chord (and When to Leave It Alone)
Add one note to a triad and it stops sitting still; it leans. Where the lean lives in major, minor and dominant sevenths, and when a plain triad is the better choice.
The Van Test: How to Know Your Song Is Actually Finished
A song that only works in the silent room where you made it was never finished. Five checks, in order, that tell you whether the song stands up or the room was carrying it.
Thirty-Six Frames: Why a Constraint Sharpens a Lyric
A roll of film holds thirty-six frames, and the limit is why you look harder before the shutter. Three constraints that make a lyric sharper, borrowed from the darkroom.
Changing Key Mid-Song: Modulation Without the Gear Crunch
Most key changes announce themselves like a van missing a gear. The good ones feel inevitable in hindsight. The pivot chord, the shared note and the honest lift, explained.
Why Every Songwriter Needs a Demo Swap Partner
The point of a demo swap is not feedback, it is the deadline. Finishing is easier when someone is waiting for it. How to set one up, what to send, and what not to do.
The Last Line: How to End a Song Without a Moral
The weakest ending explains the song you just heard. The strongest puts a picture down and leaves. A two-question test for telling a true ending from a tidy one.
Sus2 and Sus4: The Chords That Won't Pick a Side
A suspended chord drops the third and refuses to tell you whether it is happy or sad. A patient look at sus2 and sus4: where the tension sits and why it resolves.
Travel Light: The Smallest Rig That Writes a Song
You do not need the pedalboard to write the song. The smallest setup that still finishes songs, why more gear means fewer songs, and the one thing June won't leave behind.
Why Some Lyrics Trip: Word Stress and the Beat
A lyric trips when a word's natural stress fights the beat under it, and the ear hears it before the mind does. How to find where a line leans, and what to do about it.
Slash Chords: Why the Bass Note Is a Choice
A slash chord is a chord with a chosen bass note under it, written C/E. Why a bass that walks down a step at a time turns three ordinary chords into something that pulls.
Road-Testing a New Song in Front of People
A song behaves differently when people are in the room. How to play an unfinished song live to find its weak spot, without dying of nerves, and what to watch for.
How to Cut a Lyric Without Losing the Song
Most first drafts say the thing three times and trust none of them. How to find the line the song is built on, lose the lines explaining it, and keep the frame that breathes.
Meet the writers
Three voices, three angles on the craft. Each piece is signed — and each byline is a pen name. Here's how Field Notes is written.
Played jazz for twenty years, then taught harmony at Leeds Conservatoire for another decade. I'm here for the part of teaching I loved, and to leave the marking behind. I write about why progressions move us, patiently, in plain words, never as rules. Theory is a map drawn after the journey. Worth carrying. Don't mistake it for the road.
Four hundred-plus shows as a touring and session guitarist. And nobody ever taught me the unglamorous part: actually finishing. I learned that slowly, in the van. I'd rather just hand it over. A finished song you don't love teaches you more than a perfect song you never finished. Doesn't even feel close.
I've kept a notebook since I was fourteen. Most of what people call talent, I think, is noticing. And noticing is teachable. I write about where words come from, and how to chase them. A lyric is a photograph in the developing tray. You don't make it. You wait for it to come up.