Once you’ve written a song, do you have a list — even just a mental one — that you go through to assess your song? I have mentioned often that troubleshooting a song should really only be done if you’re noticing something about your song that isn’t really working, but you can’t identify what that […]
To borrow an important observation from Barry Gibb, “Songs are about feelings.” To put it another way, if you haven’t caused your audience to feel something when they hear your songs, you’ve probably missed the point of songwriting. Emotions are funny things: you usually can’t tell someone what to feel. One event or circumstance can cause […]
It’s not hard to get completely bogged down in the songwriting process. How familiar is this to you: You come up with an idea or two for a melody, you put them together… sounds good. You improvise a new idea to stretch the original one a bit, but that doesn’t work. So you keep at […]
Like anyone who writes music, I could probably write a book regarding advice I’ve been given over the years — advice that’s helped shape the musician I’ve become. The best lessons I’ve learned have come from individuals, not necessarily from the pages of a book. That’s not because books aren’t good; it’s more because I […]
Part of being a songwriter is being able to objectively critique your own songs. That term, objectively critique, means all of the following: You can listen to your own songs as if someone else actually wrote them. You can focus in on exactly where problems may lie. You can make radical changes to your songs if necessary. […]
If you write a bad song, you’re in good company. Every songwriter writes a bad one. Writing a lousy song is not a reason to stop. It’s not even proof that you’ve done something wrong. Sometimes, songs just don’t work out. If you’re ready to take your songwriting to its highest level possible, you need […]
