Back to Songwriting: Writing the Music
Berklee

Songwriting: Writing the Music

If your notebook is full of unused lyrics and you’re struggling to find inspiration for the music, this course is for you. Whether you are an experienced songwriter looking for new ideas or a beginning songwriter learning to read music, this course will lead you to a rich source of songwriting possibilities. Led by award winning songwriter and Berklee College of Music professor Scarlet Keys, you’ll learn to construct strong, expressive melodies that your audience will remember as well as experiment with new chords to break out of any harmonic rut. Whether you are new to writing music or are looking for new ideas to change up your songs, this class will teach you how to make deliberate choices with your harmonies and melodies to best emulate the emotions you want your audience to feel. You will start by discovering common chord progression and tying specific emotions to each chords in a scale. Then you will practice changing the harmonic and melodic rhythm of a song to better highlight important lyrics. Finally, you will learn to create melodic hooks and simple techniques to help you generate new melodic ideas.

Status: Writing
Status: Storytelling
IntermediateCourse12 hours

Featured reviews

ER

4.0Reviewed Mar 31, 2026

This course will be frustrating for anyone who does not read music. I had to check several references to answer some of the questions in the quizzes. But the professor shared many useful tips!

RM

5.0Reviewed Feb 11, 2025

Truly exceptional class, I am grateful Berklee makes this content available on Coursera

FR

5.0Reviewed Jun 21, 2022

A very helpful course. It helped me a lot when it comes to harmonic rythm

HV

5.0Reviewed Mar 18, 2022

Super helpful primer on the key things to think about when selecting chords and rhythms for a song!

BM

5.0Reviewed Jul 11, 2022

 That was a great course and I loved the chords lessons in songwriting.Thanks.

HN

5.0Reviewed Dec 7, 2023

incredibly helpful! great starting point for aspiring musicians! I learned a lot from this course, it was a rewarding journey!

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