There’s a song on your hard drive right now that’s been “almost finished” for months. Maybe longer. You know the one. The melody is solid, the chorus does what it’s supposed to do, but there’s that one line in the…
In songwriting, there’s a piece of writing advice that gets repeated so often it’s practically become canon. You’ve probably heard it a hundred times, maybe even had it handed to you early in your songwriting life as though it were…
Years ago, author John Berendt who wrote Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, gave a piece of advice to would-be authors that’s really stuck with me. Here it is in full: “Keep a diary, but don’t just list…
Just imagine, you’ve been at this longer than you want to admit. You’ve tried the fixes. Morning pages for writer’s block. A heavier production layer for the flat chorus. Three rewrites on a stiff lyric. A week off when a…
Artificial intelligence has crept into almost every corner of music making. You can generate a lyric, a melody, a full arrangement, and a mastered track before your coffee goes cold. Which makes it a strange time to write a post…
Somewhere along the way, co-writing stopped being one option among many and started being treated as a rite of passage. If you’re a serious songwriter, the thinking goes, you’ll be in writing rooms with other people. If you’re not, you’d…
“Write. Start writing today. Start writing right now. Don’t write it right, just write it – and then make it right later. Give yourself the mental freedom to enjoy the process, because the process of writing is a long one.…
The novelist Hilary Mantel (twice winner of the Booker Prize and one of the most disciplined writers of her generation) once offered this advice to writers who hit a wall: “If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take…
Writer’s block looks different once you’ve been writing songs for a while. When you’re starting out, you don’t know enough to be blocked. Later on, you know too much. You can hear the cliche before you write it, spot the…