Canadian Music Week ended last weekend with Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart talking about songwriting. Stewart, appeared on Saturday, March 13 with Toronto singer Cindy Gomez to talk about songwriting. Stewart told the audience that the split in his romantic relationship with singer Annie Lennox led to a majority of the band’s best-known songs. Broken hearts [...]
Posts under ‘Seminars’
101 Songwriting Wrongs and How to Right Them
I recommend this book for songwriters looking for commercial success because it stresses: building solid, marketable song structures creating lyrics/melodies forming productive and profitable collaboration ventures producing effective demos, and tracking your royalty collection (I’d like that problem!) Pat and Pete Luboff, the authors of 101 Songwriting Wrongs & How To Right Them, are platinum-selling [...]
Songwriting through celibacy?
From Celebuzz… Lily Allen is truly willing to suffer for the sake of her art. She’s taking a vow of celibacy in hopes of improving her songwriting skills. “It’s good to get out of your comfort zone and test yourself,” Allen says. “I’m just going to see how it goes for a bit. I haven’t [...]
Songwriting – Pay It Forward
I enjoyed reading this article from a Nova Scotia local newspaper about songwriting as an art that can be passed along. Kudos to songwriter Steven Bowers (pictured) who is working with youth and passing along the craft/art of songwriting: Equipped with good information and persistence, young musicians can forge a path as a songwriter – [...]
SongStudio ’09
Kudos to Blair Packham et al (which “al” includes Rik Emmett, Ember Swift, Steven Page, Zack Werner and more!) for setting up SongStudio ’09, described as a “week-long adventure in songwriting at Toronto’s Ryerson University” and scheduled to take place this summer: July 18 – 24, 2009. Just a bit from the website (which you [...]
The Musical Brain
I read an article in our local weekly about producer Vanessa Dylyn (pictured left with Sting at McGill University) and her latest project, “which mixes neuroscience and music [and] examines what music can tell us about the human brain and the what the brain can tell us about music.” Dylyn came across the book This [...]
HitLab Dynamic Hit Scoring
A Canadian company, out of Montreal, was featured in an article by Roberto Rocha of the National Post yesterday discussing the DHS (Dynamic Hit Scoring) software featured on its website: HitLab.com. From the article: “We see this as the future of music,” said Eddie Wenrick, chief executive of Hitlab.com,a Montreal startup that aims to be [...]
Professor George Michael?
Okay, this article speaks for itself, so I’ll only preface it with – Huh, what are they thinking? The concept is good (breaking street violence through encouragement of artistic endeavours) but I don’t know if the practice works if George Michael is to be relied upon for seeing this through. No offence to Mr. Michael, [...]
Ovation Arts – Songwriting Program for Teens in York Region
Ovation Performing Arts Academy in the Richmond Hill Centre for Performing Arts is offering a Songwriting Program for teens in the New Year. Click the link for more information. The program is NEW and appears to go through Songwriting 101 as well as taking the teens to the process of effectively linking music and lyrics [...]
More from Daniel Levitin
I really enjoy Daniel Levitin’s musings on music/song, and in particular “songcraft” and the “science” of listening to music. See my previous posts here and here… Today, he appeared in an article in the Arts section of the National Post entitled “Hear My Song“. As always, the remarks are insightful, illuminating and entertaining. On the [...]
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