Miscellaneous

Is it possible to be original in songwriting? There is that famous verse in the Bible: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9) All songwriters start their journey having already heard many songs, many times. The sounds and associations […]

How do you learn songwriting from scratch? What should be included in Lesson 1 of a songwriting course? The answers depend on where you are starting from, where you want to get to, what kind of journey you are interested in, and what experiences you are willing to have along the way. What should you

Jason Blume (who has some great tips on songwriting) makes the important point: “It’s been said that great songs are rarely written—they are rewritten.” This means that we need to have tools that will help us edit and rewrite. This post is about the value of blocking our ears to the lyricist in us, and

Songwriters can easily fall into a trance about their lyrics, and not realise that the lyrics don’t make sense to the listener (that’s assuming the singer is enunciating clearly enough for the listener to make out what the words are …). The lyricist may be making too many assumptions about what the listener knows or

Songwriters need to be able to critique, edit and rewrite their own lyrics. It is helpful to have criteria by which to test the effectiveness of a lyric. What is not working? Why? What could we do to fix it? As part of our criteria, we can borrow from the work of British philosopher of language Paul Grice

The following notes are extended quotations from the 1.5 hour YouTube video of the Jason Robert Brown Songwriting Masterclass, published on 22 Feb 2013 by the The Dramatists Guild of America. “Jason Robert Brown (born June 20, 1970) is an American musical theatre composer, lyricist, and playwright. Brown’s music sensibility fuses pop-rock stylings with theatrical lyrics.

On Sunday 19 October, 2014, BBC televised the John Peel Lecture by Iggy Pop. He had some very interesting things to say about being a creative artist and  how to navigate the music industry. He also spoke eloquently about how the corporate world cheated and exploited artists, and how this has been replaced in our

Study songs you like – study their lyrics (content, imagery, tone, rhyme schemes, word play), melodies, chord sequences, rhythms, architecture (the structure of the song), and how these relate to each other. Using the approach in (1), study three commercially successful songs from each decade up to the present, starting with the 1930s, preferably songs that have been

Sammy Cahn (1913-1993) was a lyricist (who, like Oscar Hammerstein, preferred to call himself a lyrist) who collaborated successfully with the composers Saul Chaplin, James van Heusen and Jule Styne. He was nominated for 26 Oscars, and won four, for ‘Three Coins in the Fountain’, ‘All the Way’, ‘High Hopes’ and ‘Call Me Irresponsible’; other

Lennard, John ‘Introduction (2005)’ in New Oxford Rhyming Dictionary, 2006 / 2012, OUP, ix-xxxii DEGREE Rime riche Full rhyme + preceding elements Right hand / fright and Full rhyme Last stressed vowel + following elements Hand / band Vowel rhyme (half-rhyme) Last stressed vowel only Hand / hang Para-rhyme (half-rhyme) Following elements only  Hand /