(Song Watch is a series of posts that track the development of songs we’re working on.)
We’ve been working on a song called “You Came To Me”.
Often, a song starts in a form I call Basic Chord mode. It’s chord progression played on piano that dutifully changes on the 1st beat of each measure, unless I’ve figured out something more clever to do.
Here is the Basic Chord version of the 1st verse:
We like the melody Anna is singing and the chords support her well. But for the first verse, we’d like to thin out the harmony a bit, give it some air. Also, in the 3rd stanza, her melody goes up, but the underlying harmony is unchanged.
So in the next version, we’ll stick with the same basic instrumentation, but be a bit more coy with the harmony.
Here’s the next version:
In this version, we start with a nice ascending scale that gives the song momentum, but also lets the vocals lead. We also changed some of the harmonic elements to give it an airy quality, especially in the 3rd stanza we mentioned earlier. Lastly, there’s nice momentum rolls on the 4th bar of each stanza to give it some gallop.
Next, we’ll work on the chorus and add some other instrumentation.