Write About What You Know

As the story goes, a Halifax band called Sons of Maxwell had a week-long tour of Nebraska last year.  They flew United Airlines for a quick turn-around in Chicago and were sitting on the plane when another passenger (who didn’t know they were musicians) yelled out that they were “throwing guitars outside”.

With a sick feeling in the pit of their stomachs, the band members looked out the airplane windows to see United employees throwing a bass guitar, which they recognized as theirs.  At the end of the flight and once they had claimed their baggage, they noted that a $3500 Taylor guitar had been badly damaged.

Dave Carroll, the prime songwriter for the group, tried a number of times over a nine month period to get some kind of compensation for the damage, but his cries fell on deaf ears.  Finally, he asked himself what Michael Moore might do if he were a musician in the same situation.  What he came up with were three songs, one called “United Breaks Guitars”.  His plan was to produce videos for each one and post them on YouTube, one after the other.  The YouTube video for “United Breaks Guitars” received over 15,000 hits after only a couple of days, and finally caught the attention of United Airlines who are now ready to compensate.

Well, duh.

So, folks…the key to success is to write about what you know   Success may be fleeting, but these guys could turn all of that attention (I just saw their story show up on CNN!) into all kinds of positive things like new gigs and CD sales.  Way to go!

IJ

A PBS Show You Have To Watch!

Last night I caught a wonderful PBS documentary called “The Music Instinct:  Science and Song”.  If you want to see excerpts from it, check out the website.

This documentary explores the connection between music and the brain and asks the question ‘is music something we invented or is it an innate part of our selves?’  Some of the more fascinating aspects had to do with how learning music actually physically changes the brain and where it can also be found in nature.  For instance, we look for visual symmetry in nature, so why wouldn’t it also exist in an auditory way?

One fellow, a practicing neuro surgeon, was talking on the phone one day when lightening suddenly zapped him through the wires.  He had no obvious effects from the incident until about three weeks after, when he suddenly began hearing music, waking up after having dreamed entire classical compositions, and for the first time in his life he had the desire to learn to play an instrument.  He was in his 60’s when this occurred and had always only been interested in rock music, and now he has become an accomplished classical pianist, but even more fascinating, he has become an accomplished composer!

There are arguments back an forth as to how important music is in our daily lives, how it can actually help people deal with varying ailments like Parkinson’s or a stroke, and how important it can be to learning in early child development.  Even the cosmos is humming, only it’s at a frequency that we can’t possibly hear…some 64 octaves below the lowest note we are capable of hearing.  But it’s a hum!

There are occasions when PBS puts an entire show online to view…but if you can’t find it that way, they often replay their documentaries a number of times, so hopefully you’ll catch it one way or another.  I promise, it’s worth the watch!

IJ

Muses’ Clues Apr/09

M u s e ‘ s C l u e s : by Irene Jackson

From The April 2009 issue of Muse News at Muse’s Muse

—————————————————————–
Years ago I heard about a songwriting challenge called “50 Songs
in 90 Days”, which was basically a summer-long (for those of you
in the northern hemisphere!) challenge to complete 50 songs
within a limited amount of time, brilliant or not, just to do it.
A lot of songwriters enjoy the challenge of a deadline, and if
you’re one of those, then you might enjoy this challenge. It
started out as a Yahoo group but it grew and was eventually
sponsored by another group called FAWM, or February Album Writing
Month, which you can find here: http://fawm.org/.

February is over, of course, but check their website out anyway,
because even though you’ve missed the challenge this year, you
may find some inspiration in some of the forums and submissions
on the site. They have also spurred some online and live
regional events in a number of places, mostly in the US, where
songwriters gather to showcase and hobnob. As well, there are
some online events including podcasts and chats, mostly held in
February but certainly worth checking out as well.

One of the best parts, of course, is their Jukebox where you can
peruse some of the songs that have been uploaded to the site by
songwriters participating in the challenge. This year they had a
total of 7375 songs uploaded by 754 active members. You can also
look through the songs page and listen to the latest submissions.
Some of the songs are listenable but others are “locked” for
various reasons.

The website is kept alive by donations, and even though the
challenge is over for this year, songwriters are still able to
join up and for those who are participating, there is a little
meter beside each name to show their progress. There is also a
forum where songwriters discuss their progress among other
things.

To those of you who are constantly looking for inspiration,
Google “songwriting challenge” and you’ll find other songwriters
who have participated in the 50/90 challenge, or who have created
challenges for themselves and are blogging about it.

Inspiration is always out there if you look hard enough!

IJ

The End of “Performing Songwriter”

A magazine which I have subscribed to and enjoyed online is coming to an end.  Performing Songwriter has been around for 16 years, filled with well-written articles and interviews with well-known and little-knowing performing songwriters from everywhere.

It looks like difficult economic times are the main culprit of the end of this wonderful magazine.

If you have ever subscribed to it or enjoyed the online version, head over to the website while it is still there and email Lydia Hutchinson, the editor, and let her know.

“Why do all good things come to an end…” – Nelly Furtado

‘Tis The Season for Song Contests

 

I am always skeptical of song contests, especially smaller ones that promise all kinds of wonderful prizes if you pay the entry fee, and enter as often as you want!! Yeah, yeah, pull the other one 

However, I’ve come across a couple lately that have caught my attention, the first one being the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council competition for a new song. It looks like they’re interested in a video version of whatever song you do…but here’s a chance to win a whole bunch of free hot dogs!

National Hot Dog & Sausage Council Contest

Okay, let’s get more serious.  The USA Songwriting Competition is about 14 years old and seems to be one of the more legitimate of those that I have come across.  This high profile competition has a grand prize of $50,000 in cash and merchandise, so I suggest that if you’re going to try for one, it might as well be this one:

USA Songwriting Competition

And here’s another one that I found by the Eastside Folk & Blues Festival.  Thank goodness there are song contests in categories other than pop or rock!  The entry fee is very reasonable and if you’re a folk songwriter (or blues or bluegrass!), this might be the opportunity for you:

Eastside Folk & Blues Festival Song Contest

Write on!

IJ

Songs For The Flu

I’ve always had a bit of trouble with topical songs when they’re on the serious side, mostly because I find them cheesy and trite.  But that’s just me.  A lot of songwriters whom I’ve met over the years are inspired by world events (think 9/11, for instance) and immediately pull out the guitar and the writing pad and do their thing.

Now the recent Swine Flu outbreak is certainly a serious event, but I was amused to hear about the number of (mostly funny) songs that have popped up on YouTube as a result of it.  The above is just one example and I’m guessing as this outbreak continues, there will be more arriving.

Here’s another one that’s very cleverly written called “My Baby Gave Me The Pig Flu”:

I like that he used “pig” in his title…it’s just as funny, but it also sets his song apart. He’s a good writer and knows how to tickle the keys too 

And last, but not least, "I don't want to die, oh me, oh my...":

Of course, there are all kinds of liberties taken with the subject. Swine flu does not come from pigs and a lot of people don’t really have the facts right, but the idea of something called “Swine Flu” is just too tempting to avoid. We didn’t get the same response (if any, actually) in terms of songs written for the Avian Flu…the word Avian just doesn’t conjure up anything funny!

I’ve written a few funny songs and I appreciate people who can take a subject and find all kinds of great lyrical twists or word plays.

So, as an exercise, how about writing your own Swine Flu song? Sure, it’s already been done, but can you do better than the ones in these videos? Can you come up with something they haven’t? If you do, why not join the forum and post it there?

Go ahead, be a ham 

IJ 

Muse’s Clues from Mar.09

I remember a few years ago finishing up a new song and feeling

quite proud of myself for writing something very different than
my usual fare, only a day or two later to discover that I had
completely ripped off a melody and chord progression of a song I
had been listening to previously. It was disheartening and
frustrating, but of course I had to ditch the song! Plagiarism
seems to be a great fear in most of us…not just copying someone
else’s song, but having our own song plagiarized.

I wonder how many times this honestly happens, not just to those
of us who are relatively anonymous, but also to big name
songwriters? And when it happens and they realize it, do they do
the same thing and just ditch the song? You would hope so! Then
again, what if they don’t realize that a song they’ve written has
“been done” before but the song has already had a major release?

This is what happened when The Rolling Stones were about to
release the CD Bridges to Babylon in 1997 with a song called
“Anybody Seen My Baby” that had a very similar hook to KD Lang’s
song “Constant Craving”, released in 1992. Instead of waiting
for a lawsuit, however, clever Mick simply offered Lang writing
credits and shared profits from the song.

I am guessing that this is also what happened to Coldplay’s lead
singer and songwriter Chris Martin when he wrote Viva La Vida.
As it turns out, the melody and chord progression in parts of the
song are strikingly similar to another song released in 2005 by
Joe Satriani called “If I Could Fly”. But Satriani believes that
Martin knowingly stole his melody and progression and so he is
suing Coldplay as a result. There have been a lot of arguments
between fans of both artists as to who stole what, but on a
YouTube video you can watch a two-part video from an objective
viewpoint, examining each song from a theoretical perspective.
Now the theory might be over your head, but it also might teach
you a lot about what might be viewed as plagiarism:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJWLfpOecyE

If you are interested in other examples of similar-sounding
songs, on the Prolific Magazine blog, Joshua Kraus compares what
he calls “The 8 Most Blatantly Plagiarized Songs”:
http://theprolific.com/2008/09/the-8-most-blatantly-plagiarized-s
ongs/ .

Not all of these songs involved lawsuits, but there are some
interesting comparisons, and all are worth digging around in your
CD collection to have a listen to.

Interestingly enough, another obscure band called Creaky Boards
has also claimed that Coldplay’s Viva La Vida is a rip-off of
their song “The Songs I Didn’t Write” (isn’t that title a strange
coincidence!). Jared Morris of WGMD does a comparison of these
two songs on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOpZPdaw8Sw

Of course, the accusations are flying back and forth, but the
reality is that plagiarism is hard to prove, and I do think it’s
quite possible for two songwriters to inadvertently come up with
very similar melodies. Most songwriters have melodies floating
around in our heads all of the time and how are we to know if
they are original or not? There are only so many notes and so
many common chords.

But as to who stole what from whom, I’ll leave that up to the
courts, and you!

IJ