Songwright

So if you’re wondering what happened to the song I started improvising a couple of posts ago, it’s track number 2 on my new solo album.

Download for free:

Mechanism by Tom Slatter

Last week, after asking you to email me if you fancied being interviewed for www.songwright.co.uk, I recieved an email. Nolan Smock, from the fantastic band the Charming Youngsters, asked if he had to be ‘established’ before I would consider him for an interview.

Of course I answered that I was interested in [...]

I wouldn’t be much of a songwriter if I didn’t share my own songs. My own current project, is a serialised album called Songs for the End of the World with my duo We’ll Write.

Below are the recordings so far. In the next two or three months I’ll go back over these, fix the parts of [...]

I was standing in the sixth form studying centre the other day, brow beating my students into doing some other work, when I became distracted by the beat from the background music. This being a student study room, it was full of students not studying. Some of them were playing some modern Indian Pop, a [...]

To round off the recent posts on guitar chord shapes, let’s have a look at the G shape.

I like this shape, and having it your repertoire can be very useful. It’s probably the least common of the movable shapes because the two bass notes are only a third apart. This can make the chord sound [...]

In my last post urged you to take part in this year’s February album writing month. This one will too!

Rose Deschamp, who I have interviewed in the past, sent along a few tips for a successful February of songwriting:

writing regularly,
keeping a notebook,
collaborating with others

To have a successful FAWM, I think the key is the community. Firstly, [...]

For the modern musician, getting your song placed in an advert or TV show can make a career. Today I read two articles about how this might affect the type of song that is composed.

David Kusek asks:

How soon will it be before musicians, perhaps unconsciously, start conceiving songs as potential television spots, or energy jolts during [...]

Jeremy Yew has written an interesting post about hearing your song before it’s written.

He writes about artists visualising their works before they’re created, and how songwriting shouldn’t be any different. I agree with him, songwriting is much easier if you have a clear goal or vision of the finished work. Most of the process happens [...]

You know I’ve been doing this songwright thing for over a year now.

It’s flown by.

I thought I’d gather together all the stuff you can find on this blog:

The Podcast

Songwright began life as a podcast, before I figured out that blogging is less time consuming. I still make the occasional podcast, there’ll be a new one [...]