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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Modes Without the Mystery: Mixolydian and Its Flat Seventh
Mixolydian is the major scale with one note lowered: the seventh. What that single change does to a cadence, and why so much folk and rock leans on it.
The Second Verse Problem (and How I Get Out of It)
The second verse that repeats the first one in a worse jumper: why it happens, and three cheap fixes. Move the camera, move the clock, give it the news.
Wrong and Better: What a Child Knows About Words
A three-year-old calls the moon the broken plate, and she is not wrong, she is better. How to borrow back the sideways naming you had before it was corrected.
Reharmonising a Song You Already Know
Reharmonising is asking what else could sit under a melody you already know. Swap one chord at a time, and hold each change to the cryptic clue standard.
Give a Song a Deadline (Even a Made-Up One)
A song with no date drifts; a song promised for Friday gets finished by Thursday. How to pick a real deadline and let it make the calls you have been avoiding.
When a Word Holds Two Things at Once
One small word can carry two meanings and mean both. What a bilingual kitchen teaches about metaphor, and how to find the ordinary words with two lives.
Intervals: The Distance Between Two Notes, Named Plainly
An interval is the distance between two notes, and every distance has its own temperament. Which ones rest, which ones lean, and how to learn the hearing.
How to Pick Which Unfinished Song to Finish
Thirty songs at eighty percent and none done: more ideas will not help. Three questions that pick the one to finish, and what to do with the twenty-nine left.
What Cold Water Does to a Line You're Stuck On
The stuck feeling is usually too much looking. What cold water, or any wordless work, does to a line that will not come, and how to catch it when you get back.
The Pentatonic Scale: Five Notes That Rarely Sound Wrong
Remove the two leaning notes from the major scale and five remain that rarely sound wrong. Where the pentatonics come from, why they forgive, how to use one.
Where the Tune Comes From When You've Got the Chords
Melodies do not arrive; you go and get them. Loop the chords, record ten minutes of nonsense singing, keep the phrase that snags, then give it the kitchen test.
How a Repeated Line Says Something New Each Time
The same words do not say the same thing twice. Why a refrain gains weight as the song moves underneath it, and how to spend the final return of the line.
Harmonic Rhythm: How Long to Hold a Chord
Two songwriters play the same four chords and get two different songs, because one changes every bar and one sits still. Harmonic rhythm, named and put to work.
What Key Should Your Song Be In? Pick One You Can Sing
We pick keys with our hands and the voice pays the invoice. The tired test, moving in two-fret steps, and why the key that impresses nobody survives the tour.
What to Do With a Cliche (Besides Delete It)
A cliche is a coin rubbed smooth: it was an image once. Two gentler options: keep the rhythm and swap the worn word, or set one small true detail beside it.
Minor Keys: Why the Five Chord Often Borrows a Note
In a minor key the five chord comes out minor, which is fine until you want an ending to land. Raise one note by a semitone and it lands. Here is why it works.
Bringing a Song to a Band Without Losing It
You wrote it alone and it worked. Now four people are playing it and something has gone. Bring it in stripped, and say the one thing that must not move.
How to Find a Song Title Without Forcing It
The title is usually already in the song, but it rarely announces itself. Mark the phrases that survive on their own, then look at what is standing in the room.
Why a Chorus Lifts: Harmony and the Shape of a Song
A chorus rarely lifts because it is louder. The verse circles home, the chorus starts somewhere it has not yet been, and the lift is arranged into the harmony.
Learning to Play the Song You Just Wrote
You finished it and then found you cannot play it, because you wrote it in pieces. Play it through badly three times, mark the joins, fix them.
Placeholder Lyrics: What the Nonsense Already Knows
You sang a sound before you had words, then swapped in a real line and the song went flat. The nonsense was carrying information. Write the line to the sound.
The Relative Minor: Same Notes, Different Home
Two keys built from one set of notes, and a completely different mood. What the relative minor is, how to find it in seconds, and why a song can slip into it.
Writing on an Instrument You Can't Really Play
Six chords on a borrowed keyboard will take you somewhere your guitar hands never would. Why limited technique on a second instrument is an advantage.
What a Chorus Lyric Does That a Verse Cannot
A verse can wander. A chorus has to hold. Why a detail that shines in verse two will sink a chorus, and how to test a line that must be sung four times.
What a Diminished Chord Is Actually For
What a diminished chord is built from, why it sounds unsettled, and the one job it does better than anything else: walking you from one chord to the next.
What to Do With Feedback You Don't Agree With
People are almost always right that something is off and almost always wrong about the fix. How to split the symptom from the prescription, and when to say no.
Writing About Someone Who Will Hear the Song
The song is about a real person and that person owns a phone. Honest ways round it: change the room, move a detail sideways, give the line to another speaker.
Ninths and Thirteenths: Adding Notes Without Losing the Chord
Ninths, elevenths and thirteenths are not jazz decoration. They are the same chord with more weather in it: how to build them, and what to leave out.
Try It Slower: Change the Feel Before You Change the Song
Before you rewrite the verse, play it at half tempo, then at double, then in single notes. Four ten-minute changes of feel that fix songs a rewrite cannot.
Where to Break a Line: Breath Before Grammar
A lyric line ends where you run out of air, not where the grammar does. Break one word early and the hanging word takes all the weight. Read it aloud.
Which Notes of the Chord Your Melody Can Sit On
When a tune fights the chord in one bar, it has usually landed on a note the chord will not hold. Chord tones, passing notes, and how long you can sit on each.
Who Wrote What: Splits and Credit After a Co-Write
Somebody has to say the word percentage out loud. What I actually say in a co-write, when I say it, and why the awkward two minutes belong at the start.
Past or Present: What Tense Does to a Lyric
The same line in past tense is a memory; in present tense it is happening to you now, in the room. How to test both, and when to let the tense switch.
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.