Intention – The Bolder Dimension of Songwriting

Paul McCartney via last.fm

My buddy Wayne asked me to share this with my friends. It is a well written article about Songwriting that all songwriter's might enjoy.

Wayne Cohen, veteran multi-platinum selling ASCAP hit songwriter, producer and educator, owner of publishing/production company Stand Up Songs.

Wayne teaches individual and group songwriting tutoring sessions at his NYC Stand Up Studio and via Skype.

One of my song tutoring students recently sang me a song she was working on called ‘Listen You’, which I thought was a cool idea about missing that special someone. She had strong lyrics for her chorus, but the chorus chords she had were in a minor key just like the verse had been. The minor chords worked great in the verse, but the melody fell flat at the chorus. I call this kind of chorus melody problem flat lining, as in, the melody didn’t lift enough for a chorus. I suggested that she go to the relative major key for the chorus, and that the melody needed to be ‘happier’ to pay off the manic lyric idea she had set up. This eventually made for a killer chorus for that song.

This started me thinking, if the question is, ‘how do you write a breakthrough song?’

This experience with my student reinforced my conviction that having an intention when writing is the answer. In other words, if you can imagine the result you want before you get there, you have a much better chance of achieving that result.

I think lack of intention is one of the things that is crippling the music industry. I see creators in many fields (not just songwriters) influenced by the culture of immediacy that we are living in. I believe some songwriters are influenced away from writing a breakthrough song, expressing a riveting clear universal emotion with catchy melodies, and instead are focused on making trendy tracks that sell immediately. I think the craft of songwriting is suffering as a result, and this shortsightedness is contributing to a lack of certain songs’ longevity on the charts.

But keeping this idea of intention can be a tricky business when writing a song, because sometimes you don’t want to question that magical part of writing from pure inspiration. Great songs can seem to fall out of the sky and flow through the writer.

However there are so many facets of songwriting that can be improved by conscious thought. There are many examples of this, not the least of which is McCartney’s now clichéd story about ‘Yesterday’ starting out as a song he dreamed called ‘Scrambled Eggs’. After further consideration, the title and subsequent lyric story of ‘Yesterday’ had just the right feeling for the melody he dreamed. The title and lyric fit like hand in glove. But he worked at it ‘til he had something great. And that was all because of his intention to write a great song. Luckily he didn’t settle for ‘Scrambled Eggs’.

So, you ask, how can we take an OK song and make it better, with the right intention?

As a starting point, here is a quick intention checklist to run your songs by.
Intention Check List:

1. How do you want the song to feel?
2. Does every aspect of the song feel the way you want it to feel?
3. Does the lyric develop within a section, and from section to section, to express an urgent coherent story, the way you want it to?
4. Does the melody have the right flow, i.e., does it climax and subside where it needs to? (from the verse into the chorus, etc..)
5. Is there rhyme scheme consistency and development in the right places?
6. Have you mapped your melodic rhythm by using slash marks to count the number of syllables (for ex., map the V1 melody so that V2 will have the same melodic rhythm)?

Feel free to drop me a line and let me know how you did with the checklist…I’m curious! You can hook up with my buddy Wayne here: wayne@standupsongs.com

COPYRIGHTS & WRONGS-A Guide to protecting your music....2

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IN THE WORKS....

Musicians, songwriters, and recording artists typically encounter two types of copyrightable work: the first is the particular arrangement of notes and lyrics; the second is, the song itself. This is usually referred to as a musical composition, an underlying work (when referenced in relation to a sound recording), or just a song.

A song may have multiple writers, lyricists and arrangers, and the copyright can be split among them on a percentage basis. If you are writing with a partner or you involve others in your creative process, be sure to discuss early on how or if you will divvy up the copyright. Some songwriters assign all or a portion of their copyright to a music publisher who has agreed to market the song for them.

The second type of work you need to protect is the sound recording itself. A song may be recorded by any number of people so each recorded rendition is copyrightable. Even if you write as well as record the song, you need to protect your composition and your recording with separate copyrights. And, as with a musical composition, there may be others involved in the recording process, such as producers, who are entitled to a portion of the copyright. When an artist is signed to a record label, the label often retains the copyright of the master recording.

More tomorrow....

GETTING TO KNOW YOU

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After you have a few song demos ready to pitch, its time to develop a list of contacts who will be willing to listen to them. This is the most difficult aspect of music publishing, as literally tens of thousands of people vie for the attention of the industry's decision makers, who can't possibly communicate with them.

There's no one way to make industry contacts, but here are some strategies in brief. Enter your best songs in prominent songwriting competitions (see the online bonus material "They're Playing My Song" at emusician.com); a contest win will often give A & R managers and producers incentive to listen to an otherwise unknown writer. Try to perform at one of the songwriter showcases sponsored by your PRO; industry contacts often attend these and may approach you if they are impressed by your performance and writing skills.. Attend songwriting conferences at which A & R reps and producers are scheduled to participate. And ask any well--connected friends you might have to introduce you to their contacts. Networking is a must.

Several excellent industry directories are available that list contacts' names, job titles, addresses, and sometimes direct phone numbers (see the sidebar "The Direct Approach"). Make a separate list of the personal contacts you've already made, and update it often. Present this list by any polite means possible to those new contacts you want to make. Everyone wants to hear a writer who is already being listened to by other top dogs in the industry. Your list will grow in rolling-snowball fashion.

Unless you're already extremely connected, you'll need to subscribe to tip sheets (also known as pitch sheets) that list which artists are currently looking for songs to record for upcoming projects.

A song typically has to be a hit before it has a shot at being used in a national advertising campaign. The exception is a song that is a "work made for hire," or one written by an employee or subcontractor for a production company handling the ad campaign.

To get an unknown song placed in a TV or film project, you need to know what projects are in development or production. A list of domestic and foreign projects can be found at variety.com. Successful placement is also likely predicated on your living in or near Hollywood, where you can form the necessary relationships with TV and film studios, music supervisors and the like.

Alternatively, seek out a music publisher who already has film and TV industry connections and negotiate a revenue sharing agreement in return for them placing your songs. Just be sure to limit their entitlement to only those revenues generated from the TV and film placements they negotiate (and possibly any album). A good directory for finding film and Tv oriented publishers to collaborate with is the Music Industry's Film & Television Music Guide.

More tomorrow....

Publishing "ALL BY MYSELF"

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There are many reasons to self-publish your songs. Keeping 100% of the royalties and one-time fees a song earns is just one reason. You also retain greater control over how your songs may be used and what those uses will pay. And assuming that you're highly motivated, nobody will promote your songs more than you. If, on the other hand, you were signed to a large music-publishing company with dozens of writers on staff, your songs might get lost in the crowd and never get the promotion they need to get cut. Furthermore, most song-publishing contracts specify that the music publisher keeps all copyrights to songs covered in the contract--even after the term of the contract expires and regardless of whether or not the company ever secures a cut for your songs.

Still, many songwriters sign with a music publisher for good reasons. It is extremely difficult and very time-consuming to make the required industry contacts with record-label A & R (artist ans repertoire) staffers, music producers, recording artists, music supervisors, and film and TV studios--contacts that major publishers already have. Being your own publisher also means taking on the financial onus, which includes demo production and replication, potential attorneys' fees, inventory, postage, phone bills, printing and more. And while all that money is going out, you've got to find a way to have some coming in to pay foir all that overhead. A songwriter signed to staff-writer deal with a publisher typically receives a monthly stipend to keep the credit hounds at bay. Even before (or despite never) getting their first cut, the staff writer earns a loving doing what they love the most--writing songs.

An experienced music publisher might also secure revenue-generating uses of your songs that you might not have thought of on your own, includingh sheet music, karaoke, video jukeboxes and musical greeting cards. They probably already have the contacts you lack with print publishers and subpublishers. The latter collect mechanical royalties for record sales and synchronization fees for the use of songs in TV shows and films abroad. (I'll discuss licensing for various uses of songs in more detail as we move along in this series.) Many successful publishers hire influencial song-pluggers to pitch the songs in their catalog, greatly increasing the chance of getting a cut. And many a fruitful collaboration between songwriters has been facilitated by major publishers having strong networks throughout the creative community.

You might be thinking at this point, "Screw the do-it-yourself approach. Give me publishing contract." Unfortunately, it's not that easy. As a highly successful producer and friend recently explained to me, the big publishing companies are interested in signing only songwriters who already have a track record of writing hits. Yet it's "lmost impossible" (in his words to get your first song cut--even if you have high-level industry contacts listening--without an influencial publisher or song plugger pitching you song. It's a catch-22.

Despite the sobering realities of independent song plugging, I love the business side of music publishing. I find managing my own music-publishing company to be exciting and self-empowering. But as you'll learn, it's also a lot of work...and it WILL distract you from your creative process. Find what you do the best and do it. Find what you do the worse and get with someone that is good at what you are not good at, team up with them and just get it done. It takes a lifetime to gain a ton of knowledge, and even then you may not get the results. As in a band, team work is EVERYTHING. Name one thing in your life, you do, can do or have done by yourself.

More tomorrow...Baby Steps to take.

Setting Up Your Own Music Publishing Company

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Perhaps the most commom career oriented question unsigned songwriters ask me is, "How can I get my songs published?" Many of those same writers have only a vague notion of what it means to be published. If you've already sold recordings of your songs to the public, you are a published songwriter. The federal 1976 Copyright Act defines publication (the act of publishing as "the distribution of copies of phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease or lending." Phonorecords are defined as "material objects in which sounds...are fixed."

There are a lot of ways to make money from the use of one of your songs than just selling your recording of it. Other ay cut, or record, the song. It might be used in a movie, a movie trailer, a TV series, a TV special, a music video, a videogame, for consumer advertising, for a ringtone, or for a myriad of other uses. Promoting, licensing, and getting paid for such song uses is the job of a music publisher.

Many unsigned songwriters would love to hand off business oriented tasks to a music publisher so they can focus on the creative task of writing songs. Unfortunately, the moment you sign on the dotted line with a music publisher, you give away your copyrights and half the revenues the songs covered in the contract will earn. For these and other reasons, many songwriters choose to keep all the profits and self-publish their songs.

This article will explain the basics of how to set up and operate your own music-publishing company. To keep this article to a manageable length, my focus will be on publishing your own songs. Before I get to the nuts and bolts of becoming a music publisher, let's examine the benefits and drwbacks of doing so.

Over the next week, we wil discuss this topic at great length. If you have songwriter friends, this will be the place to get the information the way that it will best apply to you.

Tip sheets are an essential, subscriber based service for music publishers. Here are a few for country music, which include the label, artist, producer(s), contact person(s) and recording schedule for each project.

Pitch This Country Music Tip Sheet (www.pitchthismusic.com) is the most comprehensive listing of current projects for major-label and second-tier (prominent indie and joint venture) companies. Published monthly, this tip sheet is generated by successful, Nashville based song pluggers, and often includes difficult-to-obtain details on what specific types of material are being sought for each project listed (for example, "Soulful, real-life lyrics with range and attitude"). Check this site out, determine if it has value to your objectives and bookmark this page.

More tomorrow.

Mourning The Loss Of A Friend, A Songwriting Soulmate

Today we lay down to rest one of my dearest friends Tommi Jordan, as we call her TJ in Los Angeles, California. This is a special Child of God that I wrote over 200 songs with who took her life just last week. I dedicate this day to you my special friend.

FREINDS
By Pat Melfi

It makes my heart glad to know that we were friends
And I want to tell you how much I cared about you,
how often I thought about you
It is comforting to know, how you helped me grow
The song and voice in your heart, made my music such an art
It’s comforting to know that we were friends
That we shared our thoughts in confidence with each other
That we listened to one another, that we cared for one another
With love…although just really good friends
That we wrote music together, through stormy weather
Oh TJ, one of my music soulmates…I love you girl

It makes my heart sad, your life went so bad
That you chose to leave, surely makes my heart grieve
Go with joy, meet your God
We will see one another again when I am through here on earth
TJ, I love you so…I am sad you chose to go
TJ, I wish you would have called to let me know
That today would be my day to let you go…


Dedicated to my special songwriting friend Tommi Jordan (TJ) who chose to go with an over abundance of sleeping pills today, September 24, 2009 in Los Angeles California. May you be at peace. I love you TJ and will finish our unfinished work in remembrance of you, my special co-writer and incredibly gifted vocalist. You were truly amazing. May God receive you home today with peace in his arms, tears in his eyes, love in his heart and all the blessings that are available to those of us who love God, despite his ways. You TJ did love God. I am blessed because of that strength you provided me. TJ, this really hurts but this too shall pass. Go with God TJ. See you sometime down the road.

This is a special song just for you. Playing it at your funeral was enough to make the world cry for the loss of such a talented singer/songwriter. Be at rest child.

TOO MUCH TO BELIEVE

It’s three o’clock in the morning
That ole north star is barely showing
I talk as if you hear me
Cause my heart believes you’re near me
There’s evidence you’re here
Just out of sight

(CHORUS)
I’ve never seen the wind blow
But I see it in the leaves
Can’t feel the force that holds me down
But I believe in gravity
Can’t touch the sunlight through my window
But I feel it on my skin
So is it TOO MUCH TO BELIEVE
You’re right here again

Bobby says I’m going crazy
Preacher’s telling me that maybe
I need a little more time
But I’ve got reasons why I swear
I feel you touching me again

(CHORUS)
(BRIDGE)
Is it what you see or what you feel
That tells you what is real

(CHORUS)

This is dedicated to my songwriting soul mate. We will all miss your tender Spirit. You were truly loved, especially by me.