Musical Notation

Copying Music By Hand as a Way of “Listening”

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 […]

Home studio

What You Listen to Informs How You Write

It’s easy to think that the great classical composers — Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, etc. — were born with an innate ability to compose — that they were born with what some might call a “God-given talent.” There’s probably something genetic about musical ability, to be sure, but I truly believe that the great composers were […]

Songwriting Inspiration

Ideas to Make the Bridge the Most Powerful Section of Your Song

“Use Your Words! Developing a Lyrics-First Songwriting Process” is FREE with your purchase of “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting 10-eBook Bundle. $37 USD. Immediate Download. In songs that are in one of the verse-chorus formats, the optional section we call a bridge will typically happen after the second chorus. For verse-bridge songs, the bridge will […]

Songwriter writing lyrics

Does Good Grammar Matter in a Song Lyric?

It’s not hard to find songs that use slang or grammatical and spelling “errors” in the title or lyric. Lots of “ain’t”, “gonna”, and also a lot of dropped g’s as in Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’”. I occasionally get messages or emails from songwriters asking what I think of grammatical correctness in a […]

Imposter Syndrome - Songwriting

Facing Imposter Syndrome in the World of Songwriting

If you’re ready to take your songwriting to its highest level possible, you need “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting 10-eBook Bundle.” Get the manuals that thousands of songwriters are using. Comes with an all-important Study Guide. Imposter syndrome is the psychological condition of feeling that you aren’t worthy of your achievements, as though you’ve stumbled […]

Guitarist - Songwriter

The Three Steps to Creating an Emotional Response in Listeners

Sometimes the idea for a song will hit you on the spur of the moment, and you’ll sit down with your guitar and try to flesh out that idea, and see if anything comes of it. But at other times, you know that you need to write something, but you don’t have a particular idea […]