Inspiration is whatever excites you enough to start writing. The stereotypical image is something like a waterfall — something that takes your breath away, invades your creative mind, and prompts you to pick up your guitar and a pad of paper to try to set feelings to music. The problem with that kind of inspiration […]
I want to take this opportunity to wish you a very Merry Christmas. I very much hope that you’re able to spend time with family and friends, and perhaps forget about life’s woes for at least a few days. I’m very grateful for each and every one of the readers of my blog. It continues […]
Music, apart from the lyrics that might be going on, tends to convey meaning to us. In other words, you can listen to an instrumental and usually find yourself feeling something, even if you’re not sure what that something is, or what the song is supposed to be about. Obviously, we use lyrics to know what […]
There’s a fascinating story about the Baroque composer J.S. Bach (1685-1750), who reportedly walked 450 kilometers (900 kilometers round trip!) to visit a composer that he considered to be one of his strongest influences: Dieterich Buxtehude. Buxtehude lived in the city of Lübeck. In those days, of course, you couldn’t just put a recording on […]
In my last blog post I wrote about the natural ebb and flow of creativity in all of us, and how we shouldn’t be overly surprised or worried if we find that our musical imagination comes and goes, sometimes within the same songwriting session. But even though there’s something natural about that, you can still […]
Similarity is a dangerous quality in the world of the creative arts. And it is a particular problem in pop songwriting, because — weirdly — it’s also an important quality. And it all comes down to how you define similarity and how excessive that similarity might be. If you’re ready to take your songwriting to its […]
