Songwriting

Here are some ways you can work smarter. If you work harder AND smarter than most people, you can be a force to be reckoned with!! 1)Write great ideas. The better your foundation, the better your song. A great idea puts you way ahead from the very beginning. When I started writing, I worked on…

The final mental hurdle for most writers that are chasing that first cut is a tall one. Moving from the idea of trying to write a great song to the idea that they are writing words to put in someone else’s mouth. Writing songs for other artists to sing. In essence, commercial songwriters are speechwriters…

There is a lot of comparison that goes on in the songwriting world. Artists pick this song over the other song. Someone decides that song is better than this song. We all tend to compare our songs to songs on the radio. Or we go to a writer’s night and compare our work to the work of others.…

There have been many days in my writing career when I thought about quitting. The voices in my head have frequently tossed out “I’m not sure you’re good enough” or “The odds are stacked against you”.  Most of those days have followed some sort of big disappointment.  A hold lost.  A cut that was a…

If you are trying to get a song recorded on a major artist, you are competing with pro writers who write a song almost every day.  Those pros are pumping out more than 200 songs a year in many cases.  The sheer volume of material they produce increases their chances of getting a cut exponentially.…

On January 16th, 2013, I met with Mark Nesler and Josh Osborne at my publishing company at 10:30AM. The three of us had never written together before. We threw around ideas and finally found one we were all excited about. We decided on the title “Don’t Hold It Against Me”. My idea was “If you…

On Any Given Day You Can Create A Magical Song… One of the things I love about songwriting is that I can go into work on any given day and come out with a hit song that makes hundreds of thousands of dollars. You never know when those days are going to happen. It was…

The line between pro songwriters and aspiring pro songwriters is primarily a line of thought.  Pro songwriters learn to think differently as they write.  That different line of thinking usually involves a series of questions that they keep asking as they write.  Those questions cause the song to be more commercial than it would have…

Most songwriters I know have a lot of people who have helped them get to whatever level of success they are enjoying – even if it is simply being able to write regularly.  Here’s my list.  I’m guessing many of you have similar lists. My mom. When I was a kid, I would sit on…

I posted on Facebook one day that I had “worked really hard” to get on a particular album and had failed to make it. Someone asked me to explain what I had done to “work really hard”.  So, I thought I’d lay it out for you here so everyone could read it. I had heard…