Q&A: I Write From Inspiration But Need Discipline
Waiting for inspiration to hit doesn’t always lead to a high volume, or even steady flow, of songs. We recently got a question in...
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What’s Furniture In Lyrics?
You’ve probably gotten song critiques that suggest you need more furniture in lyrics to give the song a stronger sense of showing...
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Know Your Strengths To Create Goals
We’ve all heard it: “Set goals to achieve success.” But, for many of use, songwriting is one of many things in our...
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Use Song Maps To Create Variety
Song maps are a way to find patterns and tendencies that you often repeat. Just changing a few of these items can create new songs in your...
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Change Perspective But Keep Your Point Of View
Perspective isn’t a common songwriting topic. Most songwriting conversations revolve around Point of View (POV), but there’s...
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5 Steps To Organize Your Song Files
It happens to every songwriter. The business of music. Your focus is on writing songs, not organizing your song files! Why bother? But,...
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Allusion: What Is It?
You probably see or hear an allusion in use a couple of times a day, but do you use it in your songwriting? Have you had a moment when...
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Music Business Made Easy!
If you’re trying to make it in the new world order of independent music, this is the music business book for you. I’ve used...
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Creating Effective Similes In Songs
Similes in songs can take a ho-hum lyric and turn it into a “wow!” lyric. The magic of a simile is that it allows you to use a...
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Amy Speace Song Critiques
Amy Speace takes a look at several songs submitted for the American Songwriter Magazine songwriting contest. Songwriters were given the...
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5 Ways Lyrics Are Not Like Poems
Have you been told your lyrics sound like poems? Or that your lyrics should sound more like poems? Poetic language is something that...
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5 Steps To Song Creation Success
How can we make songwriting easier? Change your perspective before you start writing! Songs are really just scenes strung together –...
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4 Steps To Connect Your Song Scenes
Here are four easy steps to help you connect the verses in your song – or song scenes! Following them will help make your song more...
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5 Personification Songs You Need To Know
What is personification? Personification is a form of figurative language. It’s the act of giving inanimate objects or abstract...
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Pop Songs: Music & Melody
The below is taken from a chat board that is long since gone, and was part of a much larger post string. I’ve aggregated the...
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Tip To Match Line Length In Verses
Line length is a key element of any song. Without knowing how long your lines are, you risk making your verse melody lines different....
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The Parts Of A Song
Updated 2/20/16 The parts of a song are important to understand because they are the skeleton you’ll drape words and music on it to...
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Song Key Conversion Site
There are a few sites on the web that allow you to either copy and paste the chords, or find the song in their library, then select the...
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Nashville Number System Made Easy
If you’ve recorded in Nashville, you’ve run into the Nashville Number System. While I could explain it here, there are quite a...
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Setting A Scene With A Moment
In addition to co-writing Trace Adkins hits “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk,” Jamey Johnson won a CMA Award for co-writing George...
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Song Idea: Making The Same Different (III)
Song Idea Finale Now that we’ve looked at several aspects of both the song and the poem, we’ll put together the final pieces...
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Direct Address: Sting “Be Still My Beating Heart”
I’m currently helping a friend with a set of lyrics, and something very interesting came up. The song is direct address, but not to...
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Song Idea: Making The Same Different (II)
Song Analysis Of The Song Idea! I used the Song Analysis exercise to get a better handle on what is going on in the song and the poem....
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Song Idea: Making The Same Different (I)
Song Idea – Is It An Idea? One of your biggest challenges as a songwriter is finding an original angle on a song idea. In his book...
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Adele “Chasing Pavements”
A recent comment on the blog got me thinking. The comment was downplaying the songwriter’s lyrics, mentioning they sounded as if...
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