Talking about my attempt to write a song, the creek next to my home, using the royal road chord progression at my music lesson:

• I tend to make surreal, ethereal music.
• Sounds like the silent hill soundtrack, I should listen to it. Especially “clockwork little happiness”.
• I have a third in the bass, but that tends to make the sound muddy. Usually the solution, in this genre, is to either remove it or move it up an octave so it’s closer to the root note.
• One thing that makes this work is the diatonic chord progression, that is to say: the notes stay in the key that we’re in. For example, when I go from F to G, I shouldn’t add the major 7th (F#). Adding the F# makes it feel more spacey/jazzy. Instead, I could consider using a G6 chord.
• Could repeat the major 7 of our 4 chord (E) as it sounds emotional. This is because it sounds like a plagal cadence (IV to I), but we never resolve to I. Because we play chords around the IV, we establish the key we are in while maintaining the tension of the IV chord.
• Closed vs Open voicing: Closed voicing is when all of the notes in the harmony of a single instrument happen in an octave. Open voicing is when notes in the harmony of a single instrument are spread out more, usually over an octave and a half. For example, if you wanted to add9 but keep it closed, you would add2 instead. With closed voicing, you typically want one shared tone, and if you were playing on a keyboard you wouldn’t want to move your fingers much.
• Could consider intentionally playing the B and C together for the dissonance. This is something that RADWIMPS likes to do.
• Don’t play the root in the melody on the first chord, because that can make a clash that doesn’t sound very nice.
• I could use something called “sequence writing” to make the melody, which is repeating the same pattern but shifting them up or down.