Songwriting tips, techniques, and ideas
For reasons outlined in Good Aural: Part 1, most people don't listen very closely, or don't understand the musicianship at work behind what they're hearing. As a musician, it's useful to develop an …
Continue Reading about Good Aural, Part 2: How to be a Hot Listener →
I've busked on sidewalks, in public parks, in bars, and at farmer's markets, always with an inverted top hat nearby. I live and operate in Maine--therefore I sometimes barter. At other times, people …
photo by Shandi-lee A fellow songwriter (my dad!) mentioned this afternoon that it's a challenge to write upbeat, energetic songs. They're more difficult for me, too—my tastes run generally toward …
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In songwriting, the bridge is a passage that contrasts all that has come before. It leads listeners on a brief detour, then transitions back into more familiar material--such as the chorus or …
When a lyricist writes a lyric inspired by a specific melody, then discards that melody and keeps the lyric, we say that the lyric was written to a ghost melody. Lyricists do this sometimes when …
This article is part of a series called Good Aural: an Introduction to Listening For Pleasure , which is intended to help you get more out of the music you listen to. True confession: I've been …
Continue Reading about Good Aural, Part 1: Twelve Common Causes of Poor Listening →
Whether you’re listening to vinyl on a $10,000 home stereo or to old cassette tapes on a Walkman with $3 headphones, you can upgrade the most crucial part of your listening equipment for free. That …
Continue Reading about Good Aural: An Introduction to Listening for Pleasure →
warm, snuggly robot photo by à voir etc... A few years ago, a fellow who went by "Z." moved into an upstairs apartment a few doors down from me. Z played keyboards, which are products of western …
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Destination Writing is a type of object writing used by Andrea Stolpe and explored in her book, Popular Lyric Writing: 10 Steps to Effective Storytelling. In Andrea's own words: "Destination writing …
Object writing is a form of timed freewriting introduced by Pat Pattison in his classic songwriting text, Writing Better Lyrics. A key feature of object writing is that it requires the writer to …
An idea file is anything used to store song ideas and fragments. It could be a notebook, a folder, a digital recorder, a computer file, a Google Docs account, or a shelf of cassettes. Whatever the …
In songwriting, the verse is the section most responsible for advancing the song's central story or theme. Every song contains multiple verses. Each of those individual verses has its own set of …