Ray Charles

Is There Anything Special About Songs That Get Covered By Others?

I was looking recently at a list of some of the world’s most covered songs, and saw a few surprises on it. Some of them were what we’ve come to expect on such lists: Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday”, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, and Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line.” But I confess I didn’t know that Ray […]

Symphony Nova Scotia

Midweek Update

I’m in the middle of a very busy week, so I’m not going to get to write a songwriting post until next Monday. This week I’ve been conducting Symphony Nova Scotia as they do some school concerts in various schools in Halifax. I always love doing these concerts, because for many of the students we […]

Guitarist - songwriter

Writing Songs That Are Less Predictable

Every singer-songwriter has an identifiable style, but what does that word style actually refer to? For the most part, your own “style” refers to the performance and production that listeners hear when they listen to your songs. You can take practically any song and move it firmly into one genre or another just by adjusting the way […]

Songwriter in the studio

Coming Up With a Songwriting Troubleshooting List

Once you’ve written a song, do you have a list — even just a mental one — that you go through to assess your song? I have mentioned often that troubleshooting a song should really only be done if you’re noticing something about your song that isn’t really working, but you can’t identify what that […]

Dua Lipa

Thinking of Songs as Musical Journeys

Every once in a while on social media you’ll see debates on the topic “What is music?” These are usually frustrating interactions, because no one is going to be fully satisfied with the answers they read, and maybe that’s the point of the question in the first place. It’s a little like asking someone “What’s […]

Guitarist on Stage

Some Thoughts on Songwriting and Uniqueness

This morning I retweeted a great article by producer/engineer Bobby Owsinski, “It’s Getting Harder And Harder To Write A Song Without Committing Plagiarism.” The article makes the point that because the judicial system now considers similarity of the basic feel of a song to be considered in a plagiarism case, along with melody and lyrics, […]