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.

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.