Posts Tagged ‘Articles’

Songwriting is grueling, brain-numbing work with little reward.  Then, there are the difficult aspects.  It’s easy to get discouraged and I’ve had many friends and co-writers lay down the pen.  So, in dedication to those who have given up writing, I want to offer 5 reasons that we should all keep writing, even when it’s…

I remember sitting in a Mexican restaurant a few years ago with the late songwriter Tim Johnson. We were preparing to play a benefit that evening for a local high school. “What’s stopping you?” Tim asked. You see, I’d just told him that I’d always dreamed of playing the stage at the legendary Ryman Auditorium.…

Over the course of my career, my biggest hits have been romantic ballads or mid-tempo songs. So, I’m not the stereotypical pro writer who writes up-tempo all of the time. I’m not afraid to write a ballad! And, I don’t think you should be either. Some of the biggest songs in music history have been…

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…

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…

A lot of folks email Marty and me asking if we can tell them whether a song idea is worth pursuing. Though I’d love to give an answer, I generally believe it’s better to teach a man to fish, than hand him a fish. This is what my mentors did for me and I’m lucky they didn’t…

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…

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…

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…