Songwriting
Feed Me – Great Songwriting Needs Constant Inspiration
Do you feel like your melodies sound dated when you’re writing a new song? Are you in a songwriting rut? It happens to us all. We start rolling and write a bunch of songs we really love, and then one day we wake up and everything starts sounding the same. Every new idea we create seems familiar. And…
Read MoreSongwriters: Relax and Create Better Songs
Last month was a busy month of mentoring. I believe I mentored 6 people in just one week. One theme that kept coming up is that people are really stressed out over getting their songs to “the right people“. So my message today is to relax and create. To begin with, I’m still not sure…
Read MoreSongwriters: Why You’re Not Getting Songs Cut
The biggest question most aspiring songwriters have is “Why am I not getting songs recorded by artists?” In my experience, there are several primary reasons people don’t experience the success they want with their songs. Here they are: Your songs aren’t good enough yet. In more than 90% of the cases I’ve encountered, this is…
Read MoreTop Ways To Complicate Your Songs and Confuse Your Audience
There’s a number of common songwriting errors that complicate the lyric and confuse the listener. If you want to leave your audience scratching their heads (not recommended), try these techniques for songwriting confusion. Switch your pronouns around. Include several female characters in your song and then use the pronouns “she” or “her”. This gets them…
Read MoreSongwriting: The Starting Is The Hardest Part
That first awkward creative step… I’ve always heard that the first step is the hardest. That is particularly true in creative endeavors such as songwriting. Getting over the hurdle of “I can’t do this!” or “What if I fail?” is sometimes so daunting that we give up before we have tried. The paralysis brought on by our fears…
Read MoreThe “Instant Melancholy” Chord Substitution
The Melancholy Chord Substitution. I’ve been blessed to get away with some interesting chord changes over the course of my songwriting career. Those songs found their way onto pop and country mainstream radio—two formats that, right or wrong, have a rap for simple chords. Whether it was sneaking in a 2 Major Sus chord…
Read MoreSongwriters: Say What You Want To Say
As a songwriting mentor, I find myself critiquing 1000’s of songs for other writers. In most of those sessions, I find myself asking “What were you trying to say?” and then, upon hearing the answer, responding “Why don’t you say that?” I’m firmly convinced that many of us make songwriting harder than it has to…
Read More6 Keys To Writing Better Songs
Writing Better Songs Let’s face it, there’s nothing sweeter than playing a song for an audience, a publisher, or a friend and having it move them. Excite them. Make them dance. Or leave them tearing up. As writers, we want to reach out and touch people with our songs. As a professional songwriter, I have…
Read MoreWrite A Song That Excites You – Always Write Inspired
Learning to write inspired… One ordinary Tuesday, I drove to a co-write with really low expectations. My co-writer, Jason Matthews, and I were going to try to finish a song that I wasn’t really in love with. We weren’t writing inspired, but we had decided we would finish it, so I drove to his house.…
Read MoreBetween The Rhymes & Songwriting
Songwriters & Rhymes Last week I wrote with a talented young songwriter who was obsessed with finding a fresh, new rhyme at every turn of the songwriting process. “Surely we can use a rhyme here that no one’s thought of”, he said, several times. That got me thinking after the session about rhymes and my…
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