Microphone - Song melody

What Kind of Backing Vocals Are Right For Your Song?

How to write (or even if you should write) backing vocals is usually a step beyond songwriting. In other words, it’s usually something that comes under the heading of production more so than songwriting. These days, though, where technology has blurred the line between songwriting and production, you may find yourself thinking a lot about what to do about […]

Folk Singer-songwriter

How Do You Develop a Songwriting Legacy?

In songwriting, as with all the arts, creating a legacy is a two-part formula. Part one is the writing of songs that are of consistently excellent quality, and part two is developing fame. Part one is arguably easier in the sense that that step need not require the involvement of others. But part two means […]

The Police

Some Thoughts on Targeting Your Audience

If you’re a songwriter, you’re targeting an audience, whether you do it intentionally or inadvertently. You may favour country music, for example, and so if you put your songs out there for others to stream, it’s country music lovers that will be listening to them, whether you purposely target that demographic or not. “Use Your […]

Music Festival

Keeping Your Eye On the Future

As humans, we work best when we have a target to aim for. Imagine a basketball season, for example, that might end with no playoffs, no awards, and no official recognition for anything you’ve done. It would be hard for the players to get excited at all. Songwriting is not much different; we’re supposed to […]

The songwriting journey

Organizing Your Songwriting Sessions: Breaks are Important

Most songwriters have their own kind of writing schedule that works for them. Some work best when they have a project in mind — an album, let’s say, or perhaps a show — and so they work hard, day after day, being guided by the project. And then between projects, their writing slows down, and […]

Songwriting - Producer

Technology and the Songwriting Playing Field: Avoiding the Pitfalls

Not that long ago, most of the music you were likely going to hear was good music. I’m talking about before the internet made streaming easy and everywhere. If you were a child of any time before the later 90s, the music you heard was probably the music on the radio, and then the albums […]