I’m excited to announce that my book “Beating Songwriter’s Block: Jump-Start Your Words and Music”, published by Backbeat Books (Hal Leonard Corporation) has been translated into French and Italian, both of which are now available on Amazon. The French translation was done by Laure Valentin, and R. Ponte was the translator for the Italian version. Both versions […]
I’ve just published a new songwriting video today, “5 Reasons to Include a Bridge in a Song’s Design“. It’s based on posts I’ve done in the past on this blog about the bridge section, and looks at five situations that arise in a song that can be dealt with by including a bridge. In truth, […]
One of the worst things you might do as a songwriter is to use clichés in your lyrics, but I’d like to make a small defence of this faux-pas, at least in certain situations. You’d think that a cliché is going to get your song sent immediately to the naughty chair called “Worst Songs Ever”, […]
Every once in a while I take a quick glance through a portion of the Rolling Stone Magazine’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time,” and I’m looking for similarities. I’m willing to accept, of course, that the list is highly subjective, but that doesn’t bother me much. There’s no denying that the songs on the list […]
“The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 10-eBook Bundle will take you quickly to a higher level of excellence. Polish your songwriting technique, starting right now! In the mid-60s to early-70s, there was a notable attempt by some pop musicians to make rock music more respectable by borrowing compositional techniques from the classical and jazz genres. Called progressive rock, […]
For those of you who find setting lyrics to be the easy part, you can more or less ignore this post and go on with your regularly scheduled life. But if you find the whole issue of setting lyrics to music — especially with regard to rhythm and timing — to be one of the trickiest parts […]
