When you begin making songs do you usually use the piano or guitar to help you with putting chords together?

I find that I come up with more random unique stuff on guitar, because of the limitations of the intervals between strings. It makes me use voicings that I wouldn’t normally think of.

Piano is a lot more methodical to me, and usually more useful in terms of low end. You can put any note you want in the bass, which can make it so that an inverted chord can act as a new chord. When you go from a C to a C/G on piano, it feels like two different chords. On a guitar, not quite as much. Obviously, there are times when inversions on guitar CAN feel like new chords, but piano gives you a much better idea what progressions will sound like when there’s a bass playing along.

For example, on the song “Forever and Ever” which I wrote with and produced for He Is We, the chord progression in the verse (once the bass comes in) is D G Bm A D/F# G Bm A. If you play this on guitar, the D/F# doesn’t really feel like a totally different chord than the first D. But in terms of voice leadings, it gives a completely different feeling. When we got this idea to make the second D have an F# in the bass, I had to go over to the piano to demonstrate the idea.

Bass notes are compositionally one of the most important things to me.

Ask me anything

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