I’ve often said that if you’re not doing something unique in your songwriting/performing, you’re missing the opportunity to add something remarkable to the music world. Being unique does not need to mean being strange, or at least certainly not overly strange. Most of the time, what you feel comfortable doing as a songwriter will be constrained […]
Good songwriting almost always comes about by following some basic principles. Those principles are not cast in stone, of course. If they were, we’d call them rules. For some songs, the principles seem obvious and clear, and you don’t have to do a lot of thinking to know why those songs work so well. For […]
When I was a student at McGill University back in the mid 80s, I heard a performance of a remarkable piece of music called Opus Clavicembalisticum, written by the composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, born in London, England. When it was written (1930), Opus Clavicembalisticum was the longest piece of piano music ever written: 4-and-a-half hours in length. The […]
Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-book bundle, and FINE-TUNE your songwriting skills! ________________________ Most of the songs that become hits in any generation display a mixture of innovative elements with a dose of predictability. But in fact, the balance is very much toward the predictable. Most hit songs sound, in their day, like most […]
