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A new discovery – Songwritingscene.com

I’ve just stumbled across a new (to me) songwriting blog called Songwritingscene.com and a fun little post with a great songwriting idea:

‘The Random Song Generator’

Our assignment was based on a “Random Song Generator” — basically three columns of words…the first is the person, the second is the place and the third is the action. Choose one [...]

Tension in Songwriting – A few thoughts on Rhythm

How can you create tension using the rhythmic ideas in your song?

Recently I wrote about Gary Ewer’s great post on tension in songwriting.

His post is a list of tension and release related elements in songwriting – you can find more detail on each of them elsewhere on his site (and on this one!) – but [...]

Gary Ewer on Tension and Release

Gary Ewer has a great post on tension and release in songwriting:

What keeps a listener listening? If you can’t answer that you’ll be relegated to the dust-heap of music history, along with all the other songs that listeners got bored with. The answer to the question? It’s tension, then release, that keep listeners listening.

It’s a [...]

Chad Sharp – The Coffee Cup Method

Chad Sharp has a blog. I just discovered it. I approve.

A songwriting interview – Shannon Hurley

This week I exchanged a few emails with a singer-songwriter named Shannon Hurley. She recently moved from LA to Nashville, and as a consequence her songwriting became less country.

I know, that sounds counterintuitive. I’ll let her explain:

Shannon: My songwriting changed in the most unexpected way. Instead of wanting to fit into the country [...]

Songwriting isn’t lyric writing, even for Bowie

This morning on the today program I heard an interview with Nick Troop, a songwriter who claimed to be doing a psychological study of songwriting to investigate psychological health or… something.

A brief investigation took me to Nick’s websites, and the first thing to point out, as Nick does, is that his analysis is not [...]

Songwriting Pet Hates

Great post over at Martin Austwick’s blog:

Song pet hates #1

Martin says his first pet hate in songwriting is rhyming. Specifically:

1. Rhyme is not a substitute for meaning
2. A good, clever or complex rhyming scheme is not a sufficient or necessary condition for a song being good

My own pet hates are Beatles rip-offs and old [...]

Why aren’t you reading Gary Ewer’s blog?

Disclaimer – this isn’t an advert, Gary Ewer doesn’t know I’m writing this. I just like his blog.

Seriously, Gary Ewer’s ‘Essential Secrets of Songwriting’ is a great blog, with some fantastic posts on the technical side of songwriting. Recent posts that I think are particularly useful include:

‘The Tonic Note – Be careful How You [...]

Ultraviolet Eye – A Songwriting Interview

In my last newsletter (which you can recieve by entering your email into the ‘join the mailing list’ box on the right of the screen) I asked if anyone else on my mailing list was taking part in the 50/90 songwriting challenge.

One of the people who emailed in reply was Jeff Charreaux of the [...]

Ultimate Songwriting Lessons – Songwriting Hooks and Songwriting Meat

I just stumbled across this video, via this post.

It’s from this website.

First off, let me make clear that I have a very low opinion of sales pages like this one. I know they’ve been shown to work, that they’re ‘good marketing,’ but I really don’t like them.

However, don’t take that us an opinion of the [...]