Posts by Marty Dodson

Legendary songwriter Kim Williams signed me to my first writing deal and for that, I’m forever grateful. I absolutely wouldn’t have the life I now have if Kim had not believed in me and given me a chance. There is no way I will ever be able to repay the time he spent mentoring me…

Clay and I often run into people who are doing all the wrong things in their pursuit of success with their music. Most of the time, the thing they need to be doing is improving their songs. That’s often the one thing they aren’t doing. They are meeting with publishers and people at PRO’s (ASCAP, BMI and…

There is a famous quote by Michelangelo that says “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” That is a beautiful description of what songwriters must learn to do. We get a song’s big idea and we see the “angel” inside it. So we carve and carve until the…

The more I write, the more I see parallels between raising kids and writing songs… When my first child, Matthew was born, I knew that I knew NOTHING about parenting. I had read a lot of books about it, but I had never really done it. In fact, I had never changed a diaper until he came along.…

A Songwriting Degree… Several years ago, I attended my son’s freshman orientation at Belmont University. He was headed into the Music Business program. During the parent’s session, one mother raised her hand and asked (In all seriousness) “So, if my daughter gets a songwriting degree from Belmont, she is pretty much guaranteed a slot on…

Today, I met with a songwriter friend who is very talented and very frustrated with her lack of music business success. She was describing to me how she had thought she would be so much farther along by the time she reached the birthday that had just passed. I told her my story. It took…

Here are 5 simple tips that I use to make my songs better every day. Get in the habit of doing these things and your songs will be better than they have been before. 1) Map your song out before you write. Write a simple, one sentence summary of what you want to say in…

Almost all of the people I write with are trying to get their songs recorded and make a living by doing so. It is easy to get so caught up in the pursuit of something commercial that I lose sight of the reasons one started writing songs in the first place. Those reasons, if lost…