You can spend a lot of time trying to get your next song working, but sometimes you have to stop and wonder: has the time you’ve put into it been worth it? On the one hand, you could argue that the answer will always be “yes.” I’ve felt that if a song takes you a year […]
The best editing in the creative arts makes things shorter, not longer. That’s not a rule, and it’s not exclusively true, but it’s almost always the case. Pop songs tend to be 3-4 minutes in length. That’s usually because of the subject matter. People think it’s because we don’t have attention spans that will allow […]
There’s an opinion amongst some songwriters that songs that don’t form themselves quickly, usually within minutes, are duds; that the more you have to work to get a song to sound right, the less likely it is that you’ve got a song worth keeping. It’s a surprisingly common view. Even Jay-Z, in his introductory paragraph to […]
Writing great songs doesn’t need to be a random occurrence. There are things you can and should be doing to improve your songwriting consistency. Get “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 10-eBook Bundle, and FREE copy of “Creative Chord Progressions” For some songwriters, starting the song is the easy part; continuing the process after that is […]
I believe that in songwriting, no one can improve what they do until they can hear their songs as others hear them. And that’s a big challenge; it’s not easy to develop that level of objectivity. A song represents your heart and soul in musical form. Most of the time, it’s a personal reflection of you […]
For songs in a verse-only format, the verse has to act as a complete musical journey. It doesn’t have a chorus to rely on to provide extra musical excitement. In addition to the challenge of making a verse feel complete, verse-only songs run the risk of being overly repetitive. To avoid excessive repetition, many verse-only […]
