The Beatles Songwriting Academy

I recently discovered a blog↗(opens in a new tab) devoted to the Beatles’ songwriting techniques written by Matt Blick. It looks like there’s a lot of great stuff on there.

If you’re looking for simple ideas to spice up your songwriting, Beatles-style, take a look at his Tickets to Write section↗(opens in a new tab), where he (concisely) describes 47 interesting moves found in the Beatles’ corpus.

Here are a few simple ones, which anyone following my Practical Chord Progression series might find immediately useful:

• Use the minor iv instead of the major IV. Try it out; it has a familiar sound that you’ll never hear the same way again.

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 Use the minor v instead of the major V. Again, very simple, but if used well this can generate just the right amount of surprise.


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 Try the Picardy third↗(opens in a new tab). That is, when writing in a minor key, move to the major counterpart of your root chord at the end of a section or the entire song. So, if you’re in C minor, end the section on the C major chord. This is another instantly recognizable move, but one that can still be effective if used cleverly.