Wednesday, October 29, 2008

MusoWiki: A Wiki for musicians


Here's another well-intentioned entry with the idea of creating a Wiki space geared for music community, resources and sharing. I think the measure of success for ventures like this is if they achieve a critical mass of ongoing participation, and certainly, understanding the psychology of what motivates people to contribute to such enterprises is an art not a science that many of us would like to have the answer to. As musicians in this era, I think we all are working on how best to redefine and redirect our efforts at community building, so case studies like this are always interesting to watch and learn from.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Songwriting Competitions and Song Contests

It must be Fall again because all those announcements of song contests just keep coming. Personally, I think it's the same as buying a lottery ticket and there really are better ways to develop an audience. But having said that, I thought I'd go ahead and summarize some of the ones floating around at this time anyway:

Deadline: Ongoing
Mountain Stage NewSong Contest
Sponsored by Folk Alliance. Seems a worthwhile cause.

Deadline: 10/10/08
Great American Song Contest
They promise written evaluations and no competing against professionals.

Deadline: 11/15/08
21st Annual International Folk Alliance Conference
In Memphis, TN and via SonicBids.

Deadline: 11/15/08
SongDoor International Songwriting Contest
Claims to judge only the song not the performance or production.

Deadline: 12/15/08
Session II - John Lennon Songwriting Contest
They sure have a nicely painted bus.

Deadline: ?
International Acoustic Music Awards
Factors in performance and production. Somewhat folk oriented.

Deadline: ?
The Nashville International Song and Lyric Competition
This seems dubious.

Deadline: Annual
USA Songwriting Competition
Lots o' Sponsors.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Song starters: Straw Man

I worked out a basic musical idea for a tune this weekend and started floating around for words and a narrative idea. I don't think I'll be going in the 'story song' direction necessarily, but that's what came up first:

The straw man boarded a bus in the winter of '85
With a pint of jack, a pack of smokes, and a little girl by his side

A do kind of like opening a bunch of narrative possibilities like this, despite some of the obvious clichés involved. I was looking into how to connect the idea of a Straw Man logical fallacy with this possible title for the song. Perhaps studying some Dylan lyrics would help.

Normally, I would probably reveal the singer as the little girl some time later, and try to find a perspective where some positivity can resolve the initial tension of a deadbeat kind of Dad going off on a journey with his young daughter. Overall, though, I would find it very hard to write a song like this because of the immense number of narrative pitfalls to be avoided. Perhaps the 'Clark Rockefeller' story is a bit too fresh at the moment.

On the other hand, who knows? Maybe they would up world famous playing in a band together...

This week's handy web links:

Tips for Songwriting - How to Write a Song
Andrea Stolpe: Where Did Our Craft Go?