In this series of blogs I hope to explore a little of the musical devices and techniques employed by song writers in very well known songs. In order for the non-musician reader to understand what is going on, he needs to be familiar with some basic concepts - some rudiments of music. I will attempt to keep this as simple as possible and narrow the focus so that all that is discussed is pertinent to song writing. There’s a fine line between being simple and not being patronising. I hope that a person with no understanding of music will be able to follow this thread. Those with some or a lot of comprehension probably don’t need to read this at all.