Songwriting Tips – 10 Of The Best From David Foster
When accepting his BMI Icon award in 2010, songwriter David Foster gave a speech which was more like a ten commandments for all songwriters to live by. Here are those ten songwriting tips in a nutshell: Save your moneyDon’t get marriedLearn an instrumentDon’t be too precious about your songsBe genuinely happy for someone else’s successPhone people backGive your career everything…
Songwriting Ideas Are Infinite And Sacred
My first piece of advice that I would give to any beginning songwriter is… “Never throw anything away, EVER!” Just think, that piece of paper that you’ve thrown in the bin with some half finished lyrics penned the night before might have contained the ideas for THE song that defines you as a performer, artist…
Songwriting Process – Getting Out Of Your Own Way
At the end of the day, writing songs can be as easy or as hard as you want to make it. One of the main reasons why songwriters find the songwriting process so difficult to implement, is that they get in their own way by placing a pre-determined outcome to their process. There are a fair…
Songwriting – The More You Know, The More You Need To Learn
In order to master the craft of songwriting you must first fully embrace the fact that there’s always something to learn about it. The more you know, the more you need to learn. I know of some songwriters that are either bored or restless with their craft. They complain that everything that they do all…
Songwriting Process: Oblique Strategies With Brian Eno
Here is a very interesting video I found recently of one of my favourite musicians and sound artists of all time, Brian Eno being interviewed by Jools Holland in 2001. In the video, Eno talks about the concept of his Oblique Strategies cards and how they can be of immense help to songwriters, performers, studio musicians and even brain surgeons. Speaking…
Some Things To Think About When Writing Songs
Sometimes writing songs is a linear experience. You come across a possible song title that jumps out at you and after writing the first line of the first verse, a first draft is suddenly completed from start to finish. Sometimes writing songs is a puzzle solving exercise. You take a piece here, a song title…
Songwriting – The Blank Page Is Your Friend
Just think, as songwriters, every time we write a song we start off with a blank page. It sits there and it waits patiently for us to pick up our pen and pour out our songwriting ideas from our hearts and minds onto its surface however, a blank page can mean one of two things to…
The Five Pillars Of The Songwriting Process
A process is defined as “… a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular goal.” As for a songwriting process, that goal is of course the completion of a song. Songs are what makes this music industry go round and the more that songwriters are encouraged, educated and (most importantly)…
Fear And Doubt – The Joint Enemies Of Songwriting And What To Do About Them
He who has conquered doubt and fear has conquered failureJames Lane Allen When it comes to writing songs, nothing blocks the flow of songwriting ideas more than two small but very powerful words… FEAR and DOUBT. The fear comes first. I’m talking about the fear of… Not being good enoughBeing ridiculed by online trollsBeing found…
The Importance Of Finishing My Music And Sharing It.
I, like many, many songwriters have a problem with my songwriting process… It’s called “perfectionism” and along with an extremely over-zealous inner critic, this problem has plagued me my whole songwriting/music career. I have tried many times to snap out of it and to some extent have been temporarily successful numerous times over the years…