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Aaron is a professional songwriter, composer, music educator, and staff writer at Higher Hz, where he covers songwriting, arrangement, and music theory.
Though a rabid music fan since birth, it wasn't until age 16 that he began his own musical pursuits when he was gifted a beat up old classical guitar and started plunking away in his bedroom.
Five years and a handful of unsatisfying band situations later, Aaron found his creative voice in multitrack recording when he purchased a Boss BR-900CD and began writing his own music. A diehard metalhead, Aaron's obsession with all things fast and loud led to a 15-song demo followed by two full-length independent releases under the moniker Davola.
Aaron's passion for music creation eventually led him to Arizona, where he studied audio engineering at the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences. Upon graduating, Aaron interned at Soundwar Studios where he scored an assistant engineer credit for his work on the album Dead New World from Latin Metal band Ill Nino.
It was during this time Aaron began teaching music at School of Rock in Chatham NJ where he would remain for the next eight years. Drawing upon his music production education, Aaron began a side career as a freelance vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter recording for numerous artists and companies including Redwirez, Korora Audio, and the late Sir Christopher Lee.
Currently, when Aaron is not composing music for himself or his clients, he spends time coaching aspiring songwriters through his website fastermusiccreation.com. For Aaron, it's all about the song so he spends a lot of time writing about songwriting, arrangement, and music theory.
Let’s say you’ve got a melody you’re proud of, but you don’t know what to do with it. Understanding chords and chord relationships can help you go from a rough idea to a finished song faster than you think.
In this article, I’m going to break down what chord progressions are, how to find and put them together quickly, as well as show you some quick ways of spicing things up.
There’s no doubt that there’s never been an easier time in our history to write, record, and release music than right now.
While this is beautiful in more ways than I can say, the problem that comes with this new territory is that the music world has become oversaturated.
An overabundance of new songs are being uploaded every single day making it difficult for an emerging artist to be heard above the noise.
Writing songs is its own form of storytelling that can take as many unique forms as there are emotions associated with the messages conveyed in the music. When I say storytelling by the way, I’m not necessarily referring to lyrics.
Though lyrical content is without a doubt crucial in most genres, history has shown that you don’t need lyrics to write incredible and memorable songs (Thanks Bela Fleck and The Flecktones!)
When thinking of iconic basslines, it’s subjective, as with everything in music. What one person considers essential may differ from another’s perspective.
If you’re anything like me, you may have found yourself coming face to face with another form of writer’s block that can be quite potent in nature. Finishing the song!
Agh! It’s bringing back painful memories as I write this! It can be hard enough getting started on something let alone knowing how to wrap things up, right?
How do you start a song anyway? It can be overwhelming right? Instantly, the mind locks up as you feel the weight of your own herculean expectations you’ve set upon yourself to come up with something absolutely amazing out of thin air in record time bearing down upon you. You feel the self-imposed pressure and before you know it, you’re paralyzed.