Posts Tagged ‘Articles’

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…

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…

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.…

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…

Often, I see songwriters who are caught up in the trees that they can’t see the forest. They spend their time looking at the minutiae (I’ve always wanted to say that word) that they lose sight of the big picture. For instance, in my SongTown Lyric MasterClass, I spend six weeks teaching students a framework…

At least twice a week I get an email seeking advice on how to overcome writer’s block. For many songwriters the worst part of the whole writing experience is just getting started. Those times when we sit down to write and nothing comes out. We feel like we have nothing to say. Well here are…

  One of the biggest “ailments” I see when I mentor songwriters is that they are writing WAY too many ballads. It seems like many of us default to slow songs. While a well written ballad can be very successful and meaningful, there are also many reasons it is NOT a great idea to write…