Humber songwriting workshop July 2008

The Toronto-based Humber songwriting workshop sponsors two three day songwriting workshops July 20-22 and July 22-24. It seems like they have good support for different levels of ability and an chance for participants to bond and share their stuff.

2:42 the ideal song length?

Listening to Ryan Adams' latest album, Easy Tiger, I was wondering just why it was that my two favorite songs Two and Everybody Knows both use Verse-Refrain-Verse-Refrain format and clock in on either side of 2:30 by a few seconds. Another song I'm also performing lately— Getting Better—clocks in at just 2:47. Reading Joshua Allen's piece about 2:42 being the ideal song length, I wonder if he's on to something about songwriting economy.

Overused chord progressions

chrisjh rails against overused chord progressions on everything.com.

Free online rhyhming dictionary

I sometimes use a free online rhyming dictionary like Rhymer / WriteExpress. The desktop version I have (it came with Finale) allows one to constrain the syllables of the results as well.

Writing Songs is Easy?

Matthew Ryan posted a short essay called Writing Songs is Easy in which he talks about starting the process with a little self-examination about your niche and what you are hoping to get out of songwriting. Take a look around the KnowTheMusicBiz.com web site if you visit.

Brian Kelley's RoughMix Podcast and Blog

Brian Kelley has an interesting "behind the scenes" podcast about the songwriting process called RoughMix and also has a blog devoted to supporting and annotating the podcast.

Resources: Songwriting Sites on the Web

Here's a quick rundown on some of the songwriter resources sites that are out there on the web, in no particular order:

Tom Slatter's Songwriter.co.uk site

Songwriting Resources on the Web

Jeff Mallett's Songwriter Site

The Muse's Muse

Bill Pere's Songwriter Tools

SongStuff Songwriting Links

Morten Gjermundsen's Songwriting link collection

Writing Songs.com

Addicted to Songwriting

Lead Sheet Thursday

Thursday is the day I pick songs for my band (28 Strings) to play during our weekly rehearsal. If we can figure out how to put a gentle drum beat around it, I'd like to try the Jayhawks' song 'All the Right Reasons' from their Rainy Day Music album and maybe the song 'Blue' (from Tomorrow the Green Grass) but also well covered on the Thorns' eponymous CD. Speaking of the 'Hawks, frontman Gary Louris' new CD, Vagabonds is pretty nice — I definitely recommend checking it out if you're a fan. There's also a Terry Gross fresh air interview with Louris lurking around on iTunes.

I just remixed Suspended in Alarm for the gazillionth time, trying to give the opening some bunch - I added a very subtle harp flourish in the beginning. I'm quite happy with the drum sound on this track, I'll have to document that one and use it elsewhere.