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Occasional songwriting tip or blog musing.

Nut job soup for the soul

Ever get on a creative rant in a conversation, and get the “tilted puppy head” look from someone?

Eyes glaze over… mouth slightly agape… skull slightly off axis.

They’re thinkin’, “What is this NUT JOB even talking about right now?”

Oops. The songwriter in you just slipped into George W. Bush meets Robin Williams mode.

Inside thoughts slipping out, in a verbal torrent.

You know what I call it?

Verbal object writing with an audience.

A cartoonist buddy of mine get into these, in broad daylight, in public… A stream of unfiltered conscious improvs.

A couple nut jobs feeding off each other, spewing one unrelated blurb to another and yet they chain up somehow.

Okay. sometimes it becomes a frenzy and we go a bit too far.

We might embarrass others, certainly not ourselves.

And… BOY IS IT FUN to just cut the mind loose with banter!

You too should be a nut job, because it’s good soup for the songwriting soul.

Get even wackier, freer, and cram those inhibitions in the trash.

For at least ten-minutes a day at the computer anyway.

Here’s what to do.

Think of an object, anything.

Grab a paper or open a text editor.

Set a timer for ten-minutes.

And pretend you are Robin Williams on one of his improv rants. Example below.

We songwriters have a mind a bit different than your average.

And it needs feeding.

Object writing is a great mind meal.

In a few days, June’s issue of Tune Booster is out… included are 30-days’ worth of object writing topics, and a quick audio bit on it. More on how to sign up soon.

Check out this Robin Williams video, do what he does, on paper. It doesn’t have to be funny, just free.

Until next time… keep writing from the heart.

Hope your song ain’t like Columbus

I was reading about our old pal Christopher Columbus.

Bet you didn’t know a songwriting lesson could come from an Italian born Spaniard riding the high seas.

Like I’ve said before, they’re EVERYWHERE. Songwriting lessons that is.

Probably could snatch quite a few lessons off CC actually.

Like, if you’re under the impression your song speaks freedom and liberty, about then it’ll be making slaves of your listeners.

And just about the time you think your song is wholesome and gentleman-like? It’ll be forcibly taking its pleasures with the opposite sex.

I’m not sure how to work in his whacking off hands of people who couldn’t successfully bring him the riches he wanted.

He was a nasty dude. And we have a national holiday commemorating him for finding America.

Strange uh?

Especially since he never even set foot here for crying out loud.

What’s wrong with that picture?

Turns out though, he went to his deathbed convinced he landed in Asia.

Hellofa way to discover the Bahamas if you ask me.

Know what I call that?

Wrong place at the right time.

Same problem your lyric can have.

To some writers, they don’t care so much about their lyrics being in the wrong place at the right time, but you might.

I do.

Your listeners do

Just like the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María… there’s three basic vessels of lyrical, “wrong place-right time.”

And there’s six little deck hands to fix those Columbus-like lyrical boo-boos.

They’re coming up in a little more than a week for Tune Booster subscribers.

Plus, since I whipped up your 30-day object writing prompts, I’ve got a short audio bit on object writing for those less familiar with it.

Subscription gates opening soon.

Until then… keep writing from the heart.

Musical playground bully

I made this dude cry.

Like I was some schoolyard bully.

A big ol’ burly recording studio owner with “hair down to here” used to let fifteen or so of us guitar slingers in his place.

Once a month or so, we’d invade the upper room of his studio, crack open our acoustics, and have a jam-o-rama until…

Oh, whenever we decided to fizzle out.

Man that was fun. I really miss going there.

So I’m up there fiddlin’ out a tune I co-wrote with a state legislator from Missouri…

Imagine that, Me. Writing a tune with a politician, hmm.

Anyway, so I’m yodeling out this tune and that burly studio dude starts snifflin’ and reaching for the Kleenex, swiping his eyes.

What the….?

I’ve made women run out of a room with tears streaming the cheeks, but this dude, canyon-wide shoulders and all?

I even accused him of faking it afterwards.

He said, “No, that song really got to me, it’s a great song.”

It’s a tune involving a dude too busy for his kid, but the kid hasn’t given up hope.

The kid’s leaning a bat over his shoulder at the plate. Looks over and sees his old man sitting in the bleachers for once.

Stands the hair on his neck and knocks one out of the park.

The little guy is all smiles. Not because he popped one over the fence, But, because his old man is there.

And now he’s running one home for daddy.

Writing tunes that effect people like that, that’s what it’s all about. Not the ‘hokey-pokey’ fluff about winning contests or getting a cut.

Nothing wrong with that stuff, but it means squat until you stir up something in a listener.

Commanding emotion in our songs like puzzle pieces helps.

That’s Tune Booster’s goal, helping to put the pieces together for you.

Maiden issue is on the edge of its seat.

Subscriptions opening up soon.

Until then… keep writing from the heart.

Sirius chick grabs me through the shower curtain

I’m in the shower gettin’ my suds on…

Suddenly, that Sirius XM chick grabbed my attention with something she said….

She flirted with me right through the shower curtain.

Smokey voice and all.

Yeah well… she wasn’t actually standing there.

She was in my iPhone’s Sirius XM app up on the window sill.

Still, she flirted with me.

Said she’d reveal which band, surprisingly, started out as a blues band then switched to pop and had tremendous success.

Got my attention.

Fact is she said it was coming up right after Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive.

Scrubbed my … hair…

No bon Jovi.

Did a shave…

No Bon Jovi.

Stayed in overtime for the deluxe wash.

There never was no Bon Jovi. And no satisfying the teaser she put out.

I grumbled, “Screw that.”

Jumped in my clothes and got the “h” out of there to go do some writing.

That kind’a teasing might work for some people, not this gringo.

Point is, in our songwriting we want to tease a listener along, to keep them in the story, but it’s not the infinity song.

Eventually we have to come to a pay-off or a point.

We don’t want to flirt like Marlboro Mary did, or whoever the DJ was that day.

If at a gig for instance, you’re risking people getting up and walking out.

Or worse…

Start chattin’ at the tables.

Once one table does, they all follow suit.

Then you got to work to get them back.

Thing is, there’s a few common mistakes I’ve seen writers make, both lyrically and musically, that makes a listener feel like I did with the Bon Jovi thing.

You don’t want that in your tunes, and you won’t if you pick up on how to keep listener’s from checking out mentally with your tunes in one of the upcoming issues of Tune Booster.

Until then…

Keep writing from the heart.