Copyright Issues

Copyright Infringement and Online Music Instruction

I think Rick Beato’s YouTube channel is one of the most important resources for up and coming songwriters and performers you’ll find online. I don’t always agree with his analyses, but that’s music for you. There are many ways to analyze what’s going on in a song, and you’ll always learn if you keep an […]

Guitar, paper & pencil, smartphone

Music Theory That’s Perfect For Today’s New Learning Situations

School’s back in for most students in North America, and some have been back for a couple of weeks now. For many, schooling looks very different: masks, social distancing, and all the other health protocols that have become standard in most areas of the U.S. and Canada. Some schools have switched to an online format, […]

Folk Singer-songwriter

How Do You Develop a Songwriting Legacy?

In songwriting, as with all the arts, creating a legacy is a two-part formula. Part one is the writing of songs that are of consistently excellent quality, and part two is developing fame. Part one is arguably easier in the sense that that step need not require the involvement of others. But part two means […]

Singer-Songwriter

Pop Songwriting: Perfecting the Miniature Musical Form

Songs are short. Most of them, anyway. And by short, I mean usually less than four minutes. That may seem like an insignificant detail that’s hardly worth mentioning, but the shortness of songs is a kind of musical challenge: in a very short period of time, you need to offer the audience a complete musical […]

Home recording Studio - Darren Perkins

Getting a Fine Polish on Your Songs Before Uploading

As you know, I don’t deal much, if at all, with the technical side of the music industry on this blog. I’m a composer, and I leave any of the technical bits to other people who really know what they’re doing. But I know this much: if you’re going to put your songs online, it’s […]

Guitarist - Songwriter

Problem Solving in a Songwriter’s World

What a world we live in. At the touch of a smartphone button, we can get the answer to anything we want to know. Tomorrow’s weather? Stock prices? What’s the migration path of the red-shouldered hawk? It’s our 21st-century world, and, leaving social media aside for the moment, there’s practically nothing bad to be said […]