It’s easy to think that the great classical composers — Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, etc. — were born with an innate ability to compose — that they were born with what some might call a “God-given talent.” There’s probably something genetic about musical ability, to be sure, but I truly believe that the great composers were […]
I don’t know of a single songwriter who doesn’t want to improve on what they’re doing. But how do you do that? And in the songwriting field, what does improvement actually mean? It doesn’t often take much; sometimes improving just one aspect of your songwriting — the lyrics, let’s say — will take an entire song […]
In a creative art like songwriting, inspiration always leads to hard work, but the effect is often fleeting. Inspiration is like the wind: it comes and goes. On the other hand, hard work leads to inspiration, and the effects are much longer lasting. If you’re the kind of songwriter who needs a good dose of […]
Every time you create something, whether writing a song, painting a landscape, or writing a novel, you are pulling two vital aspects of artistic creation together: your technical abilities and knowledge, and your creative imagination. In songwriting, we refer to technical abilities by using the word technique, and we summarize the phrase creative imagination by simply referring […]
You might think that the answer to this question, “What talents do I need to be a songwriter?” would start with an examination of basic musical abilities: the ability to sing in tune, and of course to be creative. But I think the first step toward being a good songwriter is not a talent at […]
If you’re an instrumentalist, you know that practice is an important part of getting better. Practice requires you to put a magnifying glass on your technique — and sometimes your musicianship — and focus in on what you find difficult. Some instrumentalists maintain that they make their best improvements by simply playing, rather than by working out […]
