If you’re a guitarist and you’re looking for some free material, you may want to head over to the Open Heart Teaching website. Site founder Tim Woosley has recently written a new ebook entitled “Guitar Hacks & Input Jacks: Stuff Every Guitarist Should Know.” I’m pleased to have been asked to contribute an article to […]
For many songwriters, writing a chorus is a logical first step. It’s the part with the hook, and you can make great use of repetition to come up with something that’s catchy and memorable. If you’ve started your song with the chorus, the next section you’ll work on is verse 1. That’s because whatever emotions […]
As a student of music composition a number of years ago, I never wrote a piece of music for which somebody didn’t express an intense dislike. Those were pre-internet days, so I didn’t have to deal with online trolls, who can demolish your confidence if you let them. The key phrase there is “if you let them.” It […]
I want to wish all of you, my loyal readers and followers, a heartfelt Happy New Year! I hope 2016 is the best year yet, and I hope you double your fan base! 🙂 And if you’re serious about pulling out the stops and making 2016 your best year yet as a songwriter, here are 3 points […]
Over on the Quote Investigator website you can read interesting research of the adage, “Easy reading is damn hard writing.” It’s commonly ascribed to the 19th century American novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, but it probably existed long before he said it. I love that quote, because it sums up, in my opinion, the problems we face when trying to write […]
Do you ever feel that your songs aren’t making an emotional connection to your listeners? Making audiences feel something when they hear your music is a crucial part of success. With every song that you write, most of the following four statements need to be true: You’ve written about personal experiences. You’ve written about people, places […]
