Posts by Marty Dodson
Songwriting Perspective: A Powerful Tool For Songwriters.
I believe that “perspective” may be one of the most powerful concepts in our lives. Your perspective can totally change your experience of an event. Siblings can have dramatically different takes on a traumatic home situation because they take different perspectives on what occurred. When I was in high school, Nelson Eddy was my…
Read MoreSongwriting Is Not An Overnight Success Business
“I worked 17 years for overnight songwriting success.” – Tim Hicks There’s often a misconception when someone in the music business succeeds. It’s easy to think that an artist became and instant sensation or overnight songwriting success. So, I thought I’d share a story of how it most often happens here in the real world……
Read MoreHow Do Songwriters Get Paid? 4 Ways You Could Be Missing Out
Songwriters are wonderfully creative people with the ability to dream big with their hearts and minds. But often, we don’t understand the answer to the important question, “how do songwriters get paid.” So, here’s an overview of how songwriters get paid. Publishing Draws for songwriters. This is a monthly amount a publisher pays to a…
Read MoreWriting WITH Recording Artists
Writing WITH an artist can be a totally different experience than writing for/pitching songs to an artist. Hit songwriters Clay Mills and Marty Dodson share co-writing tips from their combined 25+ years of experience of writing with recording artists. If you want to have a better chance of your song getting cut by an artist…
Read More10 Do’s And Don’ts For Pitching Your Songs To Music Publishers
Pitching songs (playing songs for publishers, artists or record label people in hopes of getting them to record or help you get a song recorded), is one of the areas where songwriters make the most mistakes. And, those mistakes can be costly. You don’t get too many chances to make a good impression before you…
Read MoreStarting Off With A Bang – Why Opening Lines In Songs Matter
I believe that one of the most overlooked, yet most important line in a song are the first opening lines. Yes, your title is super important and a great setup line before your title lands is crucial. But, the opening line of your song often determines whether or not anyone ever gets to hear that…
Read MoreMizer and Moore – Songs From The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Emmy-nominated songwriters Thomas Mizer and Curtis Moore join Marty in the SongTown Zoom room to talk about their most recent project, creating the music for the hit Amazon Prime Video series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Mizer and Moore share more about writing for theater, television and movies as well as give advice on what you…
Read MoreThe Nail in the Wall
I’m a very goal oriented person. I need to see the end goal so that I can figure out how to get there. I like to break down my big goals into bite sized pieces and check things off my list. There are so many elements of getting a song recorded that are out of…
Read MoreLet SongTown Protect You Against Songwriting Scams
One of the reasons Clay and I started SongTown was to help people learn how the songwriting business works and immunize themselves from being ripped off by songwriting scams. So, I want to give you some advice that can help save you hundreds and maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you heed this…
Read MoreSongwriter Kim Williams Was So Much More Than A Frequent Garth Brooks Co-writer…
When I first started as a staff writer for Kim Williams, Garth Brooks had already taken off. And, he had recorded several of Kim’s songs. They were flying high and selling MILLIONS of records, as in 10-20 million per album. Crazy numbers. But I was soon to find out that Kim was so much more…
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