August 21, 2012 We’ve all been there. Struggling to come up with a melody or working out that perfect ending for your song. This is one of the most frustrating aspects of composing music, especially when you are working towards a deadline. This article contains a few suggestions on how to compose more effectively.
Songwriting tagged songwriting, writing July 18, 2012 Allow me to start at the end: And in the end, I feel conflicted about the project. As I continue to build my songwriting career, I feel encouraged by the numbers. 500,000 people downloaded my music (and not the easy way - they had to create a profile on a single clunky website to get the songs). 400,000 people have watched my YouTube videos. I don’t care what anybody says - you don’t get those numbers with crappy music. Someday, maybe, people will say, “Man, did you know that Dave Hahn had a million YouTube views before he ever had a hit?” On the other hand, in the two years I’ve been working on the project, I’ve made $673.02.
July 5, 2012 You know what I would have loved? I would have loved to have been part of the Brill Building history between the 1940s and the 1960s – where some of America’s most popular songs were written. If you don’t know the history, check it out on Wikipedia. Just a taste:
By 1962 the Brill Building contained 165 music businesses: A musician could find a publisher and printer, cut a demo, promote the record and cut a deal with radio promoters, all within this one building.Or you know what also would be have great? Jingle writing between the 1940s and 1980s. What a sweet time to be a songwriter or a studio musician. Writing songs, recording them, hearing yourself on the radio, collecting big royalty checks – man, that would have been cool. But, alas, that era was very short-lived and we were not lucky enough to be a part of it. So what do we do? I’m not satisfied to just throw my hat in and say that it’s too hard to work as a songwriter. There are people out there doing it, and if they can do it so can I. I’m going for it.
June 1, 2012 Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, has summarized the science: “Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas.”
Songwriting tagged Creative Process, Creativity May 3, 2012 If you’re heading into the studio to record an album, you should go in with plenty of songs to spare. Sometimes, things don’t work as well in recorded format, sometimes your tastes/ideas change. At any rate, going in with more ideas allows you to choose the very best songs for your album. Besides, it’s always better to have too many songs to choose from than not enough. But how do you decide which songs should stay and which should go?
This is what I recommend that you do: Treat it like a songwriting contest.
Songwriting tagged Album Release, songwriting January 4, 2012 I was asked to tutor a musician in my area who never faced composing from scratch.
Of course, there are several approaches to composition, but here’s what you will refer to as a composer:
- Harmony
- Melody
- Rhythm( and time )
These are the fundamentals of music. You can order these three milestones as you like, merge some together or even ignore some of them. A lot of composer experimented pieces with no harmony and/or no melody or no time and to me that is where music is going, to some degree.
August 10, 2011 I am a songwriter. I typically work from home using a small studio set up and have been fortunate enough to have written, co-written or produced many songs that have been commercially released.
Songwriting tagged A&R, music career, songwriting, writing 