A good song is the sum of its parts, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a song’s quality comes down to how much instrumentation is packed into it. These four famous songs in country and rock prove that ...

This post is in partnership with NME. Perhaps nothing epitomized the accessible DIY nature of punk more than what iconic fanzine Sideburns quipped in its first issue back in 1977: ‘This is a chord.

Guitar skills: Getting to grips with new chords is a sure-fire way to take your songwriting in new directions and, hopefully, to the next level. So our charts are here to help you find your own voice ...

In music, an interval is the distance between two notes. In the example below, count up from and including the lowest note up to the highest pitched note to identify the interval. This interval is ...

It inevitable that, pretty soon into your music production journey, you’ll be using chords. That’s to say that you’ll be playing multiple notes simultaneously - either on a MIDI keyboard or by ...

If there’s one thing you can do to take your songwriting to the next level, it’s getting to grips with new chords. Use our acoustic guitar chord charts - from basic open chords to the daddy of altered ...

When we learn about creating a chord from a scale, we list the notes in order of appearance: Root, 3rd, 5th. However, swapping this order around can sometimes be really effective. Shifting the 3rd (or ...

Blues, 50s, pop-punk, jazz and the cycle of 5ths are great for songwriting inspiration or looping your own backing tracks When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate ...

Open tunings are very popular with slide players as they offer the facility of playing triads with one finger (or slide), giving convenient groups of notes with which to build licks and patterns. In ...

What is important when composing is the `` chord progression '' that determines the atmosphere of the song along with the melody (melody), but many people think that it is difficult to learn from 1 ...