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 […]
As a student of music composition at university, I did a good amount of writing for music ensembles of every configuration. Orchestras, string quartets, choirs, guitar ensembles… I loved the challenges that writing for these groups presented. Some pieces I wrote were short, but in modern day “classical” music, it wasn’t unusual to write multi-movement pieces […]
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 […]
To all my blog readers, I’d like to wish you a very Merry Christmas, and I hope you are able to spend whichever seasonal holiday you embrace with family and friends. This is a perfect time of year to reflect on this wonderful gift you possess — the gift of writing music for others to listen to […]
I’ve mentioned frequently lately that it’s become a thing to create entire songs based on one chord progression. That may work for top-40 kinds of songs, but if you’re into creating interesting music with lyrics, chords and melodies all partnering well together, the one-chord-progression song may not work so well. But let’s say that you’ve […]
