I finished an initial worktape of it last night and will get it posted pretty soon.
It's November today. October 28 was my birthday -- 59, thank you. It's been a busy couple of weeks. I finally put "I'm Happy With Me" to bed and had a rash of ideas last weekend, one of which I'm currently developing. It is called "The Brown Pages" and the idea for it came while I was looking at a very well used part of my Bible. As you might have guessed, the pages in several places are brown from frequent contact with my fingers and an occasional coffee spill -- since I usually have a cup when I'm spending any length of time in the Book.
I finished an initial worktape of it last night and will get it posted pretty soon.
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Starting at 9:00, the first three class sessions were all at Warner Records with Pat Pattison. Pat is on the faculty at Berklee College of Music and is very, very entertaining and instructive. We had a look at the power of lyrics (when properly done) as well has how to build a storyline from a title and how to marry lyrics to a melody (prosody). He is a master lyricist with tons of experience.
I skipped the 3:30 session and began the trip home. It was about midnight when I finally arrived and I didn't waste much time hitting the sack. In all, I enjoyed my time in Nashville and learned a lot. Looking forward to the next time. I had a very busy day with late start (since I had nothing in my 9:00 am slot). After breakfast, I went on over to NSAI to print some lyrics for a 1-on-1 with Brent Baxter. While there, I met John Braheny who was preparing to teach a session on songwriting for the film industry.
Next up at 11:00 was a class with Rick Beresf0rd on Powerful Melody and Chords, after which I hustled back to NSAI for my 1:00 1-on-1 with Brent Braxter. This was a very enjoyable opportunity with a talented young writer and he had some great advice for some of my current projects. Sandwiched between the 1-on-1 and my 3:30 class was a vocal coaching session with Shelby over at Brett Manning Studios. Again, a very productive time helping me get my head around things to work on for improving my singing. The last class at 3:30 was with Susan Anders, which again focused on singing. Her classtime dealt largely with techniques common to country music vocals and it was great to help me start to get some help in this area. Back at the hotel, I went down again for a Songwriter Night at the Commodore and heard some very outstanding singer/songwriters. Lance Carpenter shared one round and the most entertaining time of the evening was a round with Harley Lameraux and friends. All very enjoyable. I will get to the title of my post in a minute. First...
- Follow-up to my fishing adventure. After the first evening and next morning in Poudre, I didn't have a single bite (!) until the last morning when we fished our way out of the canyon. There was a man fishing at one of our holes along the way who was just leaving and had caught a number of very nice browns. This kind stranger gave Sid and I each a lure that he was having success with and we proceeded to land about a half-dozen each of very, very nice browns. That was a pleasant ending to this year's fishing excursion. - I have to make another comment about the LefsetzLetter. I have really appreciated his observations about changes in the music industry. If you are interested, Google it and sign up. Very interesting reads. - I will be working Monday and Tuesday this week then driving to Nashville for the annual Songposium event. I signed up for 5 classes that fall on Thursday and Friday -- three of them with songwriter Pat Pattison from Berklee College of Music. Looking forward to that. I will be staying upstairs from the Commodore, so Wednesday and Thursday evenings I will get to listen in on a number of songwriter performances. I will also get an hour at Brett Manning Studios to get some vocal coaching. An action packed three days. - On that note, the post title, like I promised. I am standing up a new site called SongsAboutUs (thank you, Trace Adkins) that will deal with how a believer in Jesus can interface with the arts world -- with a specific focus on music. It is barely in its infancy but I hope to be providing some good content and things to think about. Oh, yes, the post title. A few years ago I wrote a ballad called "Stranger on Mars Hill" which was a retelling of the apostle Paul's visit to Athens found in Acts 17. You could say that SongsAboutUs is a re-visit to the same idea. Even though God is a staple in country music, sometimes I wonder if it is not like Athens, where the "Unknown God" is where Paul had to start with telling God's story anew. Hi. Writing from Colorado tonight. Trout fishing has been a little unproductive so far. My brother, Sid, and myself fished for a couple of hours after arriving here yesterday afternoon. We each caught one. Today Sid caught two and I caught one. Hopefully the rest of the week will be a little better.
Songwriters are understandably concerned about getting paid for their craft when their work is used by artists in various forms of media. Digital media -- the legitimate kinds like Amazon and iTunes or illegitimate kinds like the former Napster and other file-sharing sites -- have caused a sea change in the music industry that has resulted in a tremendous loss of staff songwriting jobs, closing of publisher offices, etc. A recent posting on the LefsitzLetter focuses on the changing nature of the music business. I found this quite interesting: "The major labels and in most cases the big promoters are built for a business that doesn't exist anymore. It's falling of its own weight. A new business is being born, of small acts that may never achieve world domination, but satiate hard core fans and then die. Or live. Depending on the perseverance and tenacity of the players. They're performing for the love of it. They see their fans as equals. And the fans don't look like reality TV stars, but regular people. In other words, music is leading the way once again. In an era when movies are unwatchable bloated behemoths made for worldwide consumption by people who in many cases don't even speak English, when big time TV is all about the lowest common denominator, reality shows featuring nitwits who will do anything for money, music is about emotion, expression, unfiltered, from the performer directly to the fan. Anybody who says the Internet revolution killed music is invested in the old ways. There's a vibrant scene. Being built by people who those in power won't give a chance. There's a burgeoning audience. It may be incomprehensible to oldsters, but the youngsters understand." This really explains the Taylor Swift phenomenon. Her career is built on going directly to her audience. She has done this masterfully. She is far ahead of the curve. Other artists have picked up on it, like Lady Antebellum. They understand the mindset of social networking and are going with the wave rather than resisting it. It's been a few days since I posted. August has been a rewarding month and also a month of re-tooling.
I was notified that "Tonight and Forever" would be considered for the NSAI Christmas In July pitch CD and also that "It's In The Cards" would be considered for the next Publisher's Luncheon. Of course, being considered is one thing but actually being selected is another. I am waiting to see on both of those songs. I submitted a new tune for evaluation and received back a suggestion that I spend the month of August listening to as much country music as possible, playing it on my guitar and getting to "feel it" in my bones. The reason was so that I can improve my lyrical and melodic phrasing style. So, I have taken that suggestion. It has been good for me to get my guitar chops back in shape after a long, long time off and enjoyable to play along with some of my favorite songs. I have enjoyed meeting with the NSAI regional workshop in Little Rock and was disappointed this week that, after the initial meeting of the Monroe chapter in July, the workshop leader had to cancel for health reasons. So, for the time being, Little Rock will be my regional. Charlie Crow and others are a fine bunch of foks, so that will be no problem! I have booked classes at the annual SongPosium in Nashville toward the end of next month and will writer more about that as the time approaches. A lot of writers find that their lyrics or melodies or both tend to fall into familiar ruts. I have found myself reaching for the cell phone and singing a line into it that after a little reflection sounds musically like something I've done several times.
To be fair, I realized that the choruses of several Rascal Flatts songs co-written by Jeffrey Steele have the same starting point -- a fifth to octave tonic. So, even the pros do it and probably don't lose any sleep over it. Besides, I really like the songs and the repetition doesn't bother me. I had a song idea this weekend that is truly a mold-breaker for me. It is kinda sorta a modern folk song with an odd form C/V/C/V/C and instrumentation that is out of the ordinary for me. Odie Blackmon suggested these mold-breakers to get going in a different vein that the patterns we normally fall into. Song title is "Where the Pines Meet the Southern Wind" and I should be posting a worktape of it pretty soon. I have been listening to Hall & Oates some lately. Recently there was some discussion about Jeffery Steele's excellent songwriting skills and I started listening to some of his work.
Late yesterday, I was struck with an epiphany that Steele's writing, especially his phrasing, very much resembles the R&B genre: Motown sound, Earth Wind and Fire, some Phil Collins-Genesis-Peter Gabriel and such. Hall & Oates and the Genesis guys were a white suburban visitation of that style and it seems that it may have rubbed off on Jeffrey Steele's country songwriting. Maybe I'm wrong. Your take would be interesting. Comments? I ran across an interview with Gator Hole owner Galen Breen which was published in two parts at the SongGarage blog by Aaron Cheney. I found Galen's methodology for demo production helpful. More than that, he commented on how the Nashville "method" of writing-publishing-producing, while truly a cash cow, has a tendency to dilute the individuality of writers, who sacrifice their own "voice" for the standard methodology of co-writes. Interesting reading.
Talking about his new country CD, Guy Penrod puts music in a proper perspective: "I wanted with the new album to kick it out there in a little bigger pond. I believe that country is one the best genres of music from which to tell the American story. To me, music is a way of telling the story of every day America and a country song has the ability to tell a story with the potential for the positive. Songs can literally become modern day parables on how to live life. In fact, there's a lot of 'gospel' on the thirteen songs we just recorded—not my answers, but God's way wrapped in every day language with a country feel." - Source: NewReleaseTuesday.com |
AuthorI'm John Rowland, a country songwriter, working man and father from East Texas. Archives
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