Gary Ewer

Skype Songwriting Sessions

Occasionally, I find that I have time to offer private video (Skype) songwriting sessions to interested songwriters. If you’ve been working on songs that you’re finding hard to finish, or songs that have problems you simply can’t identify, I’d like to help. My schedule will allow for me to work with 5 songwriters. Rather than […]

Open-air Concert

How a First Impression Can Be More Important Than Clever Writing

It’s an instinct that most songwriters have: to take a song beyond what you’d normally hear in the genre, creating something innovative and unique. You don’t want to give your listeners something so unique that it sounds strange and uninviting, and you don’t want something so much like everything else that it simply bores people. It’s all […]

Guitarist - songwriter

Introvert or Extrovert: Refreshing Your Creative Mind

For many, songwriting is a personal activity done in seclusion. For others, songwriting means getting together with bandmates to work out the next song. Your comfort level with regard to how much you like to write alone or with others probably relates in a direct way to whether you are an introvert or an extrovert. […]

Putting a magnifying glass on music

5 Tips to Make You a More Objective Songwriter

I believe that in songwriting, no one can improve what they do until they can hear their songs as others hear them. And that’s a big challenge; it’s not easy to develop that level of objectivity. A song represents your heart and soul in musical form. Most of the time, it’s a personal reflection of you […]

Eric Clapton

Consistency: The Most Important Songwriting Quality

The term one-hit wonder, in the realm of music, refers to a performer that manages to make the charts only once in their career. The actual definition is complex, but suffice it to say that it typically refers to a performer or band that makes one appearance on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and no other appearances. Less […]

Folk guitarist - Songwriter

The Bare Essentials of Good Music

I was remembering this morning a discussion I had with a drummer many years ago. This guy told me that he loved the band he was with because they were so rhythmically tight that he didn’t have to work very hard to “keep things together.” That meant, as far as he was concerned, that he could think of his […]