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Tag Archives: songwriting
Too Much Introspection?
Lurking around online guitar communities one’s bound to come across a variety of opinions on this, that, and the other to do with the best example of this and the best way to do that. It’s all excellent fodder for … Continue reading
Songwriting – wherefrom the songs?
Sometimes I’m asked at gigs and catches me off guard. It’s always a difficult question to answer succinctly to a stranger, and causes me to stutter and stammer incoherently. “I’ve always done it”, is as lame a reason as it … Continue reading
Noodling with form
One of the effects of my listening to so much classical music – particularly symphonies – is that I appear to have developed an ear for forms such as rondo, sonata, minuets, etc. Out of curiosity, I’ve also read a … Continue reading
Noodling with words
As I wander from internet forum to bulletin board and back again, I come across certain topics that come up repeatedly like the sunrise. One of these is a question about the relative priority of music or lyrics when it … Continue reading
Songwriting: On the use of early fragments
I’ve writ elsewhere (all over the world wide web) that I picked up the guitar at an age too early to learn anything proper like an extant piece of music. I was simply interested in making twanging and snapping sounds. … Continue reading
Tourism and songwriting
Last week I was in Italy with my family on holiday and we spent some considerable time strolling around the streets of Rome and Florence taking in the sights. I had decided before the trip that while there I would … Continue reading
Songwriting – Stirring the muse
Sometimes I’m asked… Most of the time I stumble across something when I’m working on some experimentation with harmony and finding different ways to change key, or trying to get some weird scale under my fingers. An idea will pop … Continue reading
Songwriting – a fact of imbalance
Proportionality is a lost cause. I have the curious knack of making my major key output sound more minor than most peoples’ minor key output! It might tell of a deeply troubled nature. I would, there is no doubt at … Continue reading
Songwriting – a question of balance…
… between the melancholy and joyful. What the heck? What is it about melancholy songs that they just seem to drip from the fingerboard seemingly without call or effort. Whereas, in contrast, happy songs require the skills of a musical … Continue reading
My atheism and a song concerning it
I have a song which is quite new called The Outfidel which I played at a session at folk club on Friday night. It displays my atheism and may be offensive to some religious individuals who are sensitive that way. … Continue reading
