There are some simple steps you can take to improve your songwriting instantly.  Try these steps to see a dramatic improvement overnight: Write with someone who is strong where you are weak. Years ago, my mentor told me to identify my strengths (honestly) and to let him know what I thought I was world class at as a songwriter, or had...

  Co-writing: The art of sharing your heart felt ideas with another person and trusting the two of you will create songwriting magic. This can be tremendously rewarding and often frustrating. But there are some guidelines to make this experience more often than not a great one. If Moses came down from the mountain with a tablet for his top co-writing commandments perhaps...

Pitching songs that are not ready or that are not in the ballpark for the artist you are pitching to is one of the fastest ways to burn bridges.  In fact, doing either of those things is effectively pouring gasoline on the bridge.  Way too many people pitch songs prematurely and significantly hurt their chances of being heard for...

One of the things I discovered when I started mentoring songwriters is that very few of us have a plan. That may be the curse of the creative mind – we get so lost in making stuff up that we lose sight of the business side of things that must be tended to as well. A songwriter's business plan is...

  I remember sitting in my small, cramped writing studio in Nashville 10 years ago chasing this crazy dream of songwriting... One day I was co-writing with my two best friends and co-writers, Sonny LeMaire and Shane Minor. We'd been writing together for two years, mostly because we loved hanging out with each other and creating music. No one...

  Most of us songwriters are happy-go-lucky types... We waltz into a co-write with lofty dreams and aspirations and then we boogie our way home with smiles on our faces because we just wrote another "hit" that could change our lives. That's a fun way to approach life for sure. But, we often forget some CRUCIAL pieces of co-information that we...