songwriting collaboration

When Are Songwriting Collaborations a Good Idea?

The FREE DEAL continues… Get “Use Your Words!” free with your purchase of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting 10-eBook Bundle”, and learn how to develop a lyrics-first songwriting process. First, the easy answer: a songwriting collaboration is never a good idea if it means making compromises that you aren’t happy to make. So if you’re […]

Guitar and paper for songwriting

Songwriting Processes: the More the Merrier

When you start your songs the same way, you make it very likely that there will be an unpleasant sameness about them. Your aim as a songwriter should be to feel at ease with as many different processes as possible for starting songs. Comfort with many different processes makes it more likely that your songs […]

Musical inspiration

A New (Old?) Way of Writing Lyrics

I’m fond of pointing out the similarities between all the different genres of music, because it reminds me that no matter what style of music we call our own, we’re all trying to do the same thing: touch the emotional soul of the audience. For most musical genres, the main differences with songs lie in […]

The songwriting journey

Making Each Song You Write a Unique Musical Journey

Not all artforms are processed the same way in our brains. You might, for example, choose a particular painting to hang in your living room, one that you really like looking at. And you’re fine with seeing it “all the time.” Every time you go into your living room, there it is. It’s a nice […]

Songwriter in Home Studio

Writing Better – Writing More

You should not necessarily worry if it takes you weeks or months to write a complete song while all your songwriting colleagues are getting the job done in days, sometimes hours. How long it takes to finish a song rarely has anything to do with how good it is. Having said that, it’s going to […]

Songwriting - creativity

Increasing Your Creative Abilities

When you have difficulties writing good music, there can be any number of causes. Often we blame our level of creativity when there are other more likely suspects: fatigue, disorganization, fear of failure, and so on. It’s tricky to blame our level of creativity because we’re inclined to believe that creativity is similar to a pool […]