If you live in one of the major music cities – Nashville, New York or Los Angeles – you’ll be surrounded by a large group of your songwriting peers. This can be a huge help as it’s always easier not to go it alone as you develop your songwriting skills. One of the many benefits
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As with any product or service, the old expression “you get what you pay for” rings particularly true in the song demo world. Whether you know it or not, there are additional benefits to having a professional studio demo your songs and things you will miss in a cut-rate demo studio that could come back
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For those of you who are relatively new to co-writing or haven’t yet co-written, it can be difficult to know what to expect when you get together with another songwriter to collaborate. As a veteran of over a thousand songwriting collaborations, I thought I’d put down a few of the indicators you should be noticing
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Not to put too fine a point on it but the recording studio, when people behave badly, can be a very stressful place. As a producer, I work VERY hard to make sure this doesn’t happen and it very rarely does but, on occasion, a client’s behavior – generally inadvertently – can sour an otherwise
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I’d like to start this article by saying that I think it takes real courage to submit your songs for a professional critique. As a songwriter myself, I understand on a gut level that this is like offering up your children to be judged by a stranger. That being said, if you’ve gone as far
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Don’t get me wrong, compared to most work in the world, writing songs is pretty great even from the first song you write. That being said, once you’ve made the decision to take your songwriting seriously, there’s so much more to think about than just whatever inspiration happens to provide on a given day. I’m
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I’ve heard baseball described as a “game of failure,” which means that even the greatest batters in the game miss close to seven out of every ten tries. Well, using that same math, songwriting, too, is a game of failure where the greatest songwriters who have ever lived have had success with only a tiny,
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When it comes to mastering, Yes Master Studios in Nashville, TN has been my go to place for well over a decade. So, given that I get a lot of questions about the mastering process from my studio clients, I’ve asked Yes Master owner and founder, Jim DeMain, and mastering engineer, Amy Marie explain what
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A few years back, I had a career moment when I was invited to perform a song I’d co-written on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. While, of course, I want to believe the song, “The Snow and Three Thousand Miles,” that I co-wrote with the evening’s performer, Mindy Smith, was well-written, it occurred
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Having written hundreds of songs over fifteen years before one of my songs was recorded by an artist on a major label, I had a lot of time to think about what “making it” in the music business meant to me. Looking back now, it’s easier to appreciate that even though the outside world couldn’t
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Looking back on twenty-five years as a songwriter, I’ve come to realize that a big part of the reason I’ve been able to do it for so long has as much to do with my ability to diversify my musical pursuits as it does with my songwriting ability. Another way to put this is that
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One of the more daunting things I’ve come to realize in my years of writing songs is that when it comes to getting cuts, you’re not only competing against all the songs being written currently but also against every song that’s ever been written. Fortunately, to balance that out, we also have the opportunity to
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