“Hooks and Riffs: How They Grab Attention, Make Songs Memorable, and Build Your Fan Base” shows you how a good hook can make the difference between songwriting success and failure. With great examples from pop music history. Trying to sound like your musical hero is a great way to blast through a bad case of writer’s […]
I was thinking a bit more about my post yesterday, and the importance of listening as a way of developing your songwriting skills. I started that post by mentioning that the classical composers may have had innate talents and skills that made them great composers of music, but mainly they worked hard at it — a […]
It’s okay to wish and hope that your songs might become viral successes that the whole world can’t get enough of. And if you really want that, it seems to be a no-brainer that all it takes is some analysis of the world’s top hits, and do whatever it is they’re doing. No matter how […]
When you’re writing a song, one of the best supplies of musical inspiration is your own work! As you come up with new ideas, you get excited and that excitement helps you create even more ideas. That’s normal, and the excitement you feel is what we’d otherwise call inspiration. It’s the worst-kept secret in the songwriting world […]
There’s nothing quite like the warm feeling you get when your audience loves your latest song. And naturally, you want to be able to copy your success; who wouldn’t? Replicating your own success is important in the sense that in songwriting, consistency is everything. The industry isn’t much interested in songwriters who write one good […]
I’ve frequently written about the value of writing music that sounds like your songwriting hero, but it begs an important question: Aren’t you just running the risk of plagiarizing something they’ve written? And it begs a second more important question: Why is that even good advice? Why would you write to purposely sound like someone […]
