The Beatles

The Older Generation Has Much To Teach Us

There’s a fascinating story about the Baroque composer J.S. Bach (1685-1750), who reportedly walked 450 kilometers (900 kilometers round trip!) to visit a composer that he considered to be one of his strongest influences: Dieterich Buxtehude. Buxtehude lived in the city of Lübeck. In those days, of course, you couldn’t just put a recording on […]

Sock Hop, 1950s

The Value of an Excellent Old Song

Chapter 5 of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” shows how melody and lyric need to work together. Learn how to do it right! Get the entire 10-eBook Bundle along with a free copy of “Use Your Words! Developing a Lyrics-First Songwriting Process.” We can learn something valuable about how the classical era composers like Mozart, […]

Rolling Stones

Using Songs That Have Passed the Test of Time as Models

On the face of it, it can seem a bit odd that hit songs from a previous generation can serve as good models for how we could or should be writing new songs. You’d think that if you do that, you’d wind up writing something that sounds dated or passé. But that doesn’t usually seem […]