Lorenzo Policelli's Songwriting Blog
…a place where I go…
Chris Rutledge of American Songwriter magazine recently interviewed Jeff Tweedy of Wilco fame upon the release of his new book: How To Write One Song: Loving the Things We Create and How They Love Us Back. You can find portions of the interview here which highlights 5 songwriting tips, culminating the ever-popular “Don’t be afraid to fail/suck”! I’ll be getting the book and taking Jeff’s advice to heart.
May the Muse be with Jeff and you…
The Songwriters Hall of Fame (SongHall) has announced a partnership with Hal Leonard Publishing, a world leader in the music print industry. The partnership with the legendary music publisher includes the creation of a series of branded songbooks for the Hall of Fame, and and innovative link between the Hall of Fame’s digital Virtual Museum and Hal Leonard’s vast library of song sheets and folios.
“We are excited about this new partnership,” said Hal David, “because it permits us to extend our mission of honoring the world’s great songwriters, by offering sheet music, both in print and online, to the public. The partnership also will result in direct financial support for the Hall of Fame by Hal Leonard, permitting us to continue our many educational activities.”
Hal Leonard has created the first in a forthcoming series of Songwriters Hall of Fame songbooks highlighting the songwriting gems of 38 inductees from 2003 – 2009, including Jon Bon Jovi & Richie Sambora (“You Give Love A Bad Name”); Desmond Child (“Livin’ On A Prayer”); Loretta Lynn (“Coal Miner’s Daughter”); David Bowie (“Fame”); Queen (“We Are The Champions”); Van Morrison (“Brown Eyed Girl”) and many more. This premier Songwriters Hall of Fame Songbook features bios and photos of each artist, along with an introduction by SongHall Chairman/CEO Hal David, and is being sold at music and bookstores nationwide.
Hal Leonard’s SheetMusicDirect.com has now been made available as a SongHall online affiliate. Options to download sheet music from Hal Leonard’s SMD are available on hundreds of inductee web pages within the Virtual Museum. This new feature enables links to hundreds of thousands of pages of digital sheet music and song folios by everyone from Johnny Mercer, Sammy Cahn, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein to Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Hal David and Burt Bacharach. The Hal Leonard SMD program is easily accessible and user-friendly, loads quickly, and takes customer service to a new level, customize viewing experiences with a variety of options on every page.
About Hal Leonard Corporation
Founded in 1947, Hal Leonard Corporation is the world’s largest music print publisher, producing songbooks, sheet music, educational publications, reference books, DVDs, CD-ROMs, children’s music products and more. In its more than 120,000 available publications, the company represents in print some of the world’s best known and most respected publishers, artists, songwriters and arrangers. The Hal Leonard Corporation has been a formidable presence on the Web since 1997, the year it launched SheetMusicDirect.com (SMD), a worldwide website for downloading legal and accurate sheet music. For more than a decade, SMD has been and remains a leading online destination for musicians seeking printed music.
About The Songwriters Hall of Fame:
The Songwriters Hall of Fame celebrates songwriters, educates the public with regard to their achievements, and produces a spectrum of professional programs devoted to the development of new songwriting talent through workshops, showcases and scholarships. Over the course of the past 40 years, some key Songwriters Hall of Fame inductees have included Desmond Child, Dolly Parton, John Fogerty, Isaac Hayes and David Porter, Steve Cropper, Richard and Robert Sherman, Bill Withers, Carole King, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Billy Joel, Sir Elton John, Bernie Taupin, Brian Wilson, James Taylor, James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, Hal David and Burt Bacharach, Jim Croce, Phil Collins, Alan and Marilyn Bergman, Jimmy Webb, Van Morrison and Cy Coleman among many, many others. The Songwriters Hall of Fame was founded in 1969 by songwriter Johnny Mercer and publishers Abe Olman and Howie Richmond.
Full biographies and a complete list of inductees are available at the Songwriters Hall of Fame’s Virtual Museum at //www.songhall.org/.
I recommend this book for songwriters looking for commercial success because it stresses:
Pat and Pete Luboff, the authors of 101 Songwriting Wrongs & How To Right Them, are platinum-selling hit songwriters, who also teach workshops for NSAI (Nashville Songwrites Association International). They have lots of insgight into what they’re writing about and write in an accessible manner to cover the 101 areas they do…
I read an article in our local weekly about producer Vanessa Dylyn (pictured left with Sting at McGill University) and her latest project, “which mixes neuroscience and music [and] examines what music can tell us about the human brain and the what the brain can tell us about music.”
Dylyn came across the book This is Your Brain on Music by Dr. Daniel Levitin (see my previous posts). She knew it would make the basis for a wonderful documentary straight away and I have to agree (and can’t wait to watch it).
CTV will be airing the documentary, The Musical Brain, this weekend (January 31, 2009 at 7 p.m.). Here is CTV’s description:
Using the research findings of leading medical experts, including Dr. Daniel Levitin (This is Your Brain on Music), the documentary examines the physical, psychological and emotional responses to music through a variety of tests on children and adults. ‘The Musical Brain’ also features candid interviews with Michael Bublé, Feist, Wyclef Jean and Sting who share what they have learned about the power of music in their lives.
In addition to discussing his passion for music, Sting puts his own musical mind to the test when he enters an fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine to have his brain scanned. Inspired by Dr. Daniel Levitin’s book, Sting undergoes tests to find out how music affects him on a physical and emotional level. Using state-of-the-art technology, ‘The Musical Brain’ demonstrates how Sting responds to various types of music – complex and simple – and what his musical brain reveals about him.
“Music is a gateway to emotion and memory, pleasure and intellectual stimulation throughout our lives,” says writer and director Christina Pochmursky. “‘The Musical Brain’follows Sting on his journey of discovery into his own musical brain, and also explores how music can define each stage of our lives.”
“This riveting documentary sheds light on the human musical experience and how science is teaching us more about it,” says Bob Culbert, Vice-President of CTV Documentaries. “The stories shared by the participating artists will resonate with viewers who understand the power of music in their own lives.”
May the Muse (and your brain) be with you…
![by Daniel J. Levitin The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature(text only)[Hardcover]2008: by Daniel J. Levitin: Amazon.com: Books](http://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51fDAKL48rL._SX328_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
Okay, now this book is hot off the press and I haven’t had a chance to review it other than the sample that’s availabel on Dr. Levitin’s website. This book – The World In Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature – “shows how six specific forms of music played a pivotal role in creating human culture and society as we know it. Levitin masterfully weaves together the story of human evolution, music, anthropology, psychology and biology from the dawn of homo sapiens to the present.”
“Music seems to have an almost willful, evasive quality, defying simple explanation, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know, leaving its power and mystery intact, however much we may dig and delve. Daniel’s book is an eloquent and poetic exploration of this paradox..”
– Sting
The “Six” are Friendship, Joy, Comfort, Knowledge, Religion and Love. You can watch/listen to Dr. Levitin on TedX discuss the Six Songs which can be summed up as follows: Music makes us human…
Happy listening and may the Muse (and Science and the Six Songs) be with you…
Well, I was going to wait till I actually finished the book to right about it, but since the author, Prof. Daniel Levitin, appeared on CBC Radio’s The Current this morning (to discuss a new book of his), I thought I’d make my first thoughts on this “old” book known.
The book is – This Is Your Brain On Music – and it’s a wonderful, thought-provoking achievement regarding the “science” of music. Don’t get scared by that thought (re “science”) as the book is lucidly entertaining, drawn from the real-life experience of the author as a musician/producer/scientist (don’t see that combination every day).
Yes, the “raw” science of sound is analyzed – that path of sound vibrating air molecules and triggering nerve impulses in the listener. But “music”, as opposed to just “sound”, can bring simple yet complex analysis within the brain that delves into the timbre, pitch, tempo and other musical elements. And it’s fascinating, without destroying the soulfulness or mystery of music.
As Levitin himself simplifies the book in his introduction to be: “what music can teach us about the brain, what the brain can teach us about music – and what both can teach us about ourselves”. I’m finding that I out as I complete the book…
As discussed, his new book The World In Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature has just come out… see next post.
May the Muse (and science) be with you…
I enjoyed recently reading The Everything Songwriting Book by C.J. Watson. American Songwriter Magazine called it the most complete songwriting book ever and said “No songwriter should be without it”.
Of particular interest to this reader was the section on musical theory and the Nashville charting system (nicely explained) and tips to record the music, and most importantly how to get the music heard. Mr. Watson has a very laid back, natural writing style which lends itself to picking apart certain chapters that may be of some benefit to a songwriter at any point in time…
Use with authority and may the Muse be with you…
Daria Salamon’s debut novel, The Prairie Bridesmaid, comes with its own soundtrack! What a wonderful idea…
Nathalie Atkinson of the National Post wrote yesterday an article entitled Songs of Salamon (cheeky title that) about the groundbreaking development put forth by the first-time author and her mid-size Canadian independent publishing company Key Porter.
It also helps that she has great music connections through her husband, Rob Krause, founder of Smallman Records. Anyway, great kudos for the idea and a little snippet from Ms. Atkinson’s most interesting article (after her remark that “Somewhere, Nick Hornby is kicking himself” for not having thought of this himself!):
It’s the kind of marketing campaign you’d expect from a big publisher like Random House, perhaps conveniently featuring artists chosen from Sony BMG, its sister company in the Bertelsmann media conglomerate. Except that it comes from Key Porter, one of Canada’s mid-size independent publishers. The soundtrack won’t make the artists rich: Wach received only a “very nominal” mechanical royalty, and Salamon is making a donation to Osborne House, the nonfictional Winnipeg women’s shelter mentioned in the book, as well. But in light of rampant downloading, shifting industry business models and the recently announced cuts by the federal government to arts funding, Canadian writers and musicians — two groups on the endangered list –have to think fast about ways to expand their audience.
And if there’s film option interest, Salamon’s already done the soundtrack work.
May the Muse stay with Salamon… and long live Canadian ingenuity…
This is the folk musician’s two-part look inside songwriting. He gives us a glimpse of the songwriter’s inner workings, creative process, techniques and some of the hiding places of good ideas.
In a loosely organized, highly engaging style, Snider shimmies through matters of song structure, rhyme, diction, revision, repetition, audience response, titles and more. Taking readers from the first germination of an idea, through to test-driving a song on stage or sidewalk, he provides valuable tips for writing words to be sung. Combining his favourite tricks of the trade, nods to influential songwriters, and joking around common pitfalls in rhyme and rhythm, Snider shows how intuitive and how challenging songwriting can be. Along the way, readers get a glimpse of the life and work of one of Canada’s folk music legends.
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The second half of the book provides the lyrics for, and the stories behind, ten songs, including audience favourites like Tonight, Darn Folksinger and Sittin in the Kitchen. The beginnings come in the form of witticisms, unlikely pairings, propositions and slow ruminations. Some of these songs take their cue from overheard conversations, others from chance encounters and wrong numbers. Snider recounts verses that seemed to write themselves, others that were honed over weeks and months, and one he remembers having to coax out a syllable at a time.
Delighting in his own foibles and the odd streak of luck, Snider reveals the draft stages of some of his finest lyrics, and the patience and trickery involved in teasing memorable songs out of those first couple of chords. With each song we are introduced to the friends and strangers who have sparked his creativity, and a personal philosophy built on a love of entertaining and an avid pursuit of happy accidents.
It’s well worth the read for someone interested in reviewing another’s creative process… May the Muse stay with you…