Recently the music world has been noting and celebrating the fifty-year anniversary of Joni Mitchell’s 1971 album “Blue.” If you know this album, you will know that many will tell you that the lyrics are its most powerful element. And I agree with that sentiment. There’s not a weak song on the album. When you […]
I always say that it’s not rules that we consider in good songwriting, but principles, which serve as guidelines for us. Perhaps a sport can provide us with a good analogy here. When you watch an excellent tennis player, we’re not at all amazed by their following of the rules of the game. Tennis has […]
It makes sense that if you want good feedback on your songs, you’ll want to run them by good, experienced songwriters. After all, they’ve been there; they know the struggles it takes to get a song working, and can (hopefully) pass their experience on to you. But have you considered musicians other than songwriters as […]
I don’t know of a single songwriter who doesn’t want to improve on what they’re doing. But how do you do that? And in the songwriting field, what does improvement actually mean? It doesn’t often take much; sometimes improving just one aspect of your songwriting — the lyrics, let’s say — will take an entire song […]
You might think that the answer to this question, “What talents do I need to be a songwriter?” would start with an examination of basic musical abilities: the ability to sing in tune, and of course to be creative. But I think the first step toward being a good songwriter is not a talent at […]
Talent is a hard-to-define quality that generally pertains to one’s instinct or innate ability to do something well. We admire talent, but we also find it easy to roll our eyes at it. For truly successful people, talent is only a starting point. I have to agree with author Stephen King when he says: Talent […]
