May 2026
Stuck Again? 20 Honest Tips From a Home Studio Veteran
There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes with being a songwriter who isn’t finishing songs. It’s not that you don’t care. It’s not that you’re lazy. It’s that somewhere between the idea and the finished track, something stalls. You get stuck, and then you stay stuck. Joe Gilder has been making music and teaching […]
The Real Work: Why Revision Is Where Songs Actually Get Made
There’s a story most songwriters tell themselves, and it goes something like this: the best songs arrive fully formed. A melody appears in the shower. A lyric drops into your head on the drive home. The song writes itself in twenty minutes and you just happened to be holding the pen. And sometimes that does […]
What Your Verse Is Actually For (And How to Write One That Works)
Ok, let’s set the scene here… You’ve got the chorus. Or at least the feeling of one, turning over in your head. You know what the song wants to say at its peak. You can hear it. Then you sit down to write the verse and nothing comes. If that sounds familiar, here’s something worth […]
Why You Shouldn’t Quit Songwriting Just Because the Music Business Looks Broken
There’s a version of this conversation that happens in every generation of musicians. The details change, but the shape of it is always remains the same: the industry is in chaos, the money is drying up, the old rules don’t apply anymore, and nobody knows what comes next. So the question rises to the surface… […]