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STEPS FOR ELIMINATING ROADBLOCKS TO YOUR SONGWRITING SUCCESS

5/23/2023

Songwriters, does this sound familiar? You start out with good intentions to write a new song today and then the phone rings, or you remember an errand you forgot to do, and there’s that email you need to reply to. Before you know it you have spent the whole day doing anything and everything else but writing? Here’s some tips on how to stay focused and start that new song!

Make an appointment to write with a co-writer. This is the #1 thing that helps me show up to write. By making a commitment to write with someone at a specific time and place, it is twice as likely to happen. If you are home by yourself there are projects around the house that need to be done, emails to answer, etc; all easily becoming distractions that keep you from writing today.

SUPPORTING YOUR SONG’S BIG IDEA

3/21/2023

There is a famous quote by Michelangelo that says “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” That is a beautiful description of what songwriters must learn to do. We get a song’s big idea and we see the “angel” inside it. So we carve and carve until the whole world can see, or hear, what we saw from the beginning. This line of thought can be particularly helpful to aspiring songwriters who are just learning how to craft a masterpiece song.

The most common problem with young songwriters is that they include lots of information in their songs that don’t really support the big idea of the song. They are leaving lots of “non-angel” pieces of granite attached to the angel. The result is songs that aren’t clear and that obscure the view of the angel that the songwriter saw originally. Usually, when I see one of these lines, I ask the songwriter “How did you see this line supporting your big idea in this song?” Generally, the response is something along the lines of “I don’t know, but it rhymed.” Or “We thought it was a cool line.”

WHAT IF THESE ARTIST HAD SAID “I ONLY CREATE WHEN I’M INSPIRED”

2/28/2023

Do you find yourself choosing to only write songs when your inspired by heartache or some other major life event? Here’s a quick list of some truly great art the world would never know if the artist had said, “I only create when I’m inspired, otherwise I will just be forcing it”:

Michael Angelo spent four years painting the Sistine Chapel. He painted daily for years, embracing his work (labour). He didn’t want to take the job at first because he considered himself a sculptor not a painter. But once he committed to the job, he didn't wait for inspiration to strike. He began and inspiration found him daily.

Monet painted the Japanese Bridge in his gardens at Giverny 71 times. He didn’t wait until he felt inspired to paint the perfect version of this bridge. He painted it from different angles in different light all day long and let the work inspire him. I doubt he even thought to himself, “this one looks like the last 70!”

REASONS YOU SHOULD NEVER STOP WRITING SONGS

2/21/2023

Songwriting is grueling, brain-numbing work with little reward. Then, there are the difficult aspects. It’s easy to get discouraged and I’ve had many friends and co-writers lay down the pen. So, in dedication to those who have given up writing, I want to offer a few reasons that we should all keep writing, even when it’s hard:

You have something to say that no one else can say. Your life experience gives you a perspective that no one else on earth has. If you don’t write your story, no one ever will. That little piece of humanity is lost without you telling YOUR truth.

Your voice deserves to be heard. In a world where many don’t feel like they have a voice at all, writers do. People will listen to what you write. They want to hear what you have to say. It may be tens of people or millions of people. Either way, let your voice be heard.

HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE SONGWRITERS

11/8/2022

Here are some habits that I’ve noticed are common to highly effective and successful songwriters. The first step toward becoming a professional songwriter, or for this matter for becoming a successful person in any industry, is to learn to think and behave like one. Here are the common habits I see in my friends who are successful songwriters.

They are always on the lookout for great ideas. Their antennae are always up when they watch movies, read books, or just in everyday conversations. They are constantly looking for anything that is said in a unique and interesting way. The ideas they have for a song might not necessarily be their own real-life experience, but it is a unique idea for sure because they had already paid enough attention to what is going on around them and they had selected the best ones. Being sharp and trying to always be notified of what is going on is an important key here.

SONGS CAN SOUND GOOD AND MAKE SENSE

10/25/2022

A couple of years ago, I was scheduled to write songs with a pretty well-known rock band. They wanted to write at 9 PM at a remote house they had rented for a month so they could write their record. When I arrived, I first noticed the kitchen table COVERED with mostly empty Jack Daniels and Jim Beam bottles. Several of the guys were on the back-deck smoking something a little funny. It was nearly 10 PM when we finally started writing. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that they started throwing out CRAZY lines that didn’t have anything to do with anything.

I tried to be diplomatic and gently lead them toward lines that were better than the ones they were contributing. Finally, one of them turned to me in frustration and said “Dude, it doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to SOUND good.” I knew we were at a turning point in the evening. I was either going to get myself invited to leave or we were going to write a good song.

THE BIGGEST OBSTACLE TO SONGWRITING SUCCESS

10/18/2022

6,000 demos to get 100 artist cuts. By now, you have heard me countless time saying that I have demoed over 6,000 songs and have just over 100 cuts. That’s not a great cut to demo ratio. I don’t even want to know what percentage that would be. But I have discovered that one of the keys to being successful is failing a lot while keeping your enthusiasm up. My first song catalogue contained over 2,000 songs. From that catalogue, I had 1 top ten hit, one major album cut, one single that died at 37 on the chart and a few independent cuts.

Quantity songwriting is your education. Those 2,000 songs were my “education”. I was learning to write while I wrote them, and I was getting better all the time. Almost all of those cuts came in the last year of a 3-year deal.
In catalogue #2, I had two multi-week #1 songs and quite a few cuts. Things started to pick up significantly. I had learned a lot from the first catalogue, and I was writing much better songs.

THE SONGWRITER’S ACHILLES HEEL

10/11/2022

When I first started trying to write as a profession, I gave myself 2 years to chase my dream of becoming a songwriter. At the same time, I was producing for artists as a freelancer and I was working in a music recording studio in Tehran as the sound engineer. The one-year mark came and went quickly, and I was almost nowhere near the first-year checkmark of my two-years plan. I had made a tiny bit of progress, but not much. The thought crossed my mind that I was halfway through with my “plan” but I told myself that I still had another year to get things going. When I got to the 18-month mark, I began to freak out a little. I really wanted it to work. I had bet everything on this career change. And I had 6 months to do what I had not been able to do in 18 months. The pressure was on. The pressure was not only on. It was debilitating. Smothering. I froze up. I could hardly write at all or when I was writing it was just keep getting rejected and I was very frustrated by all the rejections. And I didn’t succeed by my deadline. I did have one glimmer of hope on the horizon that convinced myself to change the plan a bit and give myself some more time.

DON’T LOSE YOUR SONGWRITING INNOCENCE

10/4/2022

Your innocence is your major asset. One of the things I love about working with young writers and artists is just the innocence they bring to the writing process. They aren’t bitter or jaded. They aren’t worried about what radio will think – this can be good or bad. They just want to write a great song – a great song that they love. While I am writing this, my current example of this kind of writers is Sam Veil. He used to be a busker for years until we met in 2017 and he joined Flipside and I started mentoring him and producing for him. In his busking years, he wrote a lot of songs and when we met, he was singing his songs on his guitar and I was stunned. Not only by his creativity, but mainly for the feeling these songs had. It was a very long time I hadn’t had the chance to sit with such a fresh writer who is writing songs so simple yet so pure. His songs had the innocent of a child and the experience of a grown man! Perfect combination. That was the reason when we met, on the same day I offered him to work together, and two years past today and we are still working together and in fact Sam is an established singer / songwriter in Singapore now.

THINGS CREATIVELY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE DON’T DO

9/27/2022

Creatively successful people have healthy mental habits. They not only have mastered their art, but they have learned to master their habits, attitudes, and emotions. They understand this mastery allows them more creative space in their mind and spirit. Check out these things creatively successfully people don’t do so you too also become a master of your creativity and destiny.

Give their power away. Creatively successful people don’t blame circumstances or other people if they are not having the success, they feel they should be having. They rest all the responsibility for their success squarely on their own shoulders. They empower themselves and it drives their creativity to improve their art.

They don’t shy away from change. Creatively successful people don’t try to avoid change. They understand that change is inevitable and welcome it. They believe in their abilities to adapt.

THINGS SKILLED SONGWRITERS DO DIFFERENTLY

9/13/2022

Throughout my 15 years as a professional songwriter, I’ve noticed there isn’t always a large difference in talent level among creative people. Why, then do some songwriters seem to have an over abundance of fans buying their music while others struggle to sell the first song? The answer is there is not a huge difference in skill most writers process, but there is a little. And that extra 5% makes a big difference. I absorbed that the skilled songwriters share some common mental habits. The good news is that these habits can be adopted through practice. Here are some traits that can help us over the hurdles to accomplishing our songwriting goals.

Skilled songwriters write whether they feel inspired or not. I think this would the one single thing I am keep telling all writers. To keep writing. Don’t wait for inspiration, and don’t even wait for a reason, excuse or a topic to write. Start writing and the inspiration comes.

SIMPLE WAYS TO UNLEASH YOUR OWN CREATIVE SONGWRITING POWER

9/6/2022

As a professional songwriter, I am asked often how I walk into a co-write with superstars create songs “on-demand?” Well, I didn’t start out doing this, but I’ve learned a few tricks over the years that’ve allow me to train my creativity and tap into it anytime, anyplace. The good news is, you can do the same too! These simple strategies go a long way in the songwriting business.

Make it clear that you mean business. Developing a writing routine shows yourself and others that you are in your creative zone. By sticking to a fixed scheduled you remind yourself and others around you that you are doing it professionally and not for fun. Not only do you need to show others when it’s okay to interrupt your writing and when it’s not, but also, your own creativity needs trained as well. Studies show that writing at a regular time each day allows the subconscious to be prepared to create more easily “on demand” than when you have no set routine.

THE SINGLE BIGGEST DISTINCTION BETWEEN PROFESSIONAL AND AMATEUR SONGWRITERS

8/30/2022

In my mind, the single biggest distinction between a professional and an amateur writer is their way of thinking. Here are some of the most significant differences I’ve observed over the years in my day to day life as a full-time songwriter.

Amateurs think “Somebody is going to steal my song.”
Professionals think, “I’m going to write my idea better than anyone else. If they write it better than I did, more power to them.”

Amateurs write when inspiration hits and only when it happens, and they brag about it.
Professionals write anyway.

Amateurs think about what they want to write and what they personally feel close to and write about that whenever the inspiration hits them.
Professionals also think about what audiences want to hear.

FEED ME – GREAT SONGWRITING NEEDS CONSTANT INSPIRATION

7/26/2022

Do you feel like your melodies sound dated when you’re writing a new song? Are you in a songwriting rut? It happens to us all. We start rolling and write a bunch of songs we really love, and then one day we wake up and everything starts sounding the same. Every new idea we create seems familiar. And worse, those ideas may sound like melodies we heard years before! That’s the most horrible part. There had been times I wrote a brand new song and played it for my artists and they showed me the “original” version of that song. I was very sure I hadn’t copy, and when I was so frustrated of what is happening, a psychologist friend of mine told me that human brain tend to keep the audio in the memory for an unbelievable amount of time and no matter if we remember it or not, when we want to write, subconsciously we might write the melody that we don’t remember and we are not even aware of the fact that song ever existed or we ever had heard it. But it already is registered in our subconsciousness.

THINGS THAT KEEP ME KEEPING ON AS A SONGWRITER

7/5/2022

Failure is not failure. Most great people fail many times before they succeed. Just imagine the world if all those people whom we now know as successful had gave up in any of the first of hundreds of times that they failed. Imagine if Steve Jobs just gave up any of the times that his marketing ideas reached to a dead-end road. Can you imagine the world without Apple products? Imagine, if Dr Dre had given up on Eminem when the whole hip-hip industry at the moment had told Dre to leave alone the white boy because he is not good enough. Even when Eminem’s first album failed so bad, but instead Dre and Eminem just worked on their craft and they gave birth to the Rap God we know today. Can you imagine our current world without Eminem? Can you imagine the world without Bill Gates and Microsoft? Even let’s go one step further, can you imagine the world without the Thomas Edison and electricity? All these people had failed countless times but at the end of the day, they made an impact that changed the world, in some cases forever.

Just think about it, each of us – songwriters – might become one of those kind of big people in one point in our life but that definitely will not happen if we give up when we fail. It happens, learn the lesson and move on.

THE OVERCONFIDENT SONGWRITER

6/28/2022

I was talking to a songwriter and he was telling about his story of when he walked into a certain PRO office like he owned the place, because he knew that his songs were better than anything they had in their catalogue. When he demanded a meeting on the spot, they escorted him out of the building. He was shocked. Then, he went across the street and tried that same plan out at another place with the same result. At the end of the story he claimed that someone else actually escorted him out of the whole city. While that part stretched believability, I’ve seen the first two routines in action several times.
Songwriter Dude, I’m sorry if you wind up hearing your story and seeing yourself here, but I have to say that your plan is a bad one. You don’t own this town. You don’t own your PRO. And, nobody here owes you anything. You didn’t build the town, or the PRO, or any of the artists involved, or in general you still hadn’t generated even a cent from your music for yourself or for anybody else.

I love your confidence though, but it is not going to get you anywhere in this industry. You may be a very talented songwriter. I am not here to judge that at this moment, but you have to understand where you fit into the big picture before you will ever be welcomed into the fold.

CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGHLY CREATIVE PEOPLE

6/7/2022

A different breed. Over the past 15 years of writing and working with artists, producers, and co-writers; I’ve noticed certain traits in myself and others in the creative community. We are wired differently than the other 95% of the population. We are the creative types. I’m not trying to say I am different but what I’m saying is that there are certain things I absorbed while working with these people and maybe these behaviours grown in me too, because I started being in this create environment from tender age of 12.

When inspiration strikes, they forget everything else but their creative work. They tend to lose all track of time and even forget to eat. This is something very common that we are in studio and out of nowhere we realise it’s 3am and we still hadn’t eaten dinner and not planning to leave the studio any time soon until the project is wrapped. And interesting part is that everyone is perfectly happy with such arrangement!

QUICK WAYS TO LOSE A CO-WRITER, AND A FRIEND, AND A DATE!

5/31/2022

As I mentioned a couple of times by now, co-writing is like dating in some levels. It also can be a bit similar to a friendship. There are unwritten rules and manners for both friendship and dating. It is not much different than co-writing. There are several quick ways to lose a co-writer, or a friend, or a date.

Show up with nothing. No ideas, no grooves. Zero. You’d be amazed how many times this happens. Who shows up for work unprepared to do anything? Would you show up on a date and tell your date that you don’t give a single damn about being there? Well, showing up unprepared on a co-write session basically is telling your co-writers that you don’t care about being in the room with them. No one who wants to be around for a while. Come in prepared with lots of ammo and give your best every day.

THINGS I WISH MY AMATEUR SONGWRITING SELF HAD KNOWN

5/3/2022

I started writing songs when I was 11 years old. They were predictably bad, but heartfelt. Many were dedicated to girls in the neighborhood that I wished would notice me. If I could go back and talk to that little old guy, I would tell him, “Hey buddy, being a real songwriter is hard and stressful. It will take way longer than you think it will to succeed. But it will be the best job you can ever imagine”.

If I could go back and mentor my teenager songwriting self, I could help him avoid a lot of the unpleasant moments and tons of disappointments he experienced and help him succeed much faster. That exactly is what I am doing with the writers I am mentoring now, and it is one of the main reasons I am writing this blog.

I had done mistakes, you read these, and don’t repeat my mistakes!

WHAT KEEPS YOU GOING?

4/19/2022

For some reason, people often ask me what keeps me going? How do I stay motivated to write when I get so few songs cut in relation to the number of songs I write? I have come to believe that motivation is an internal force, not an external one. I don’t believe in “motivation”, at its core. Or some kind I can say that I don’t believe the motivation comes from any outside factors. I’m not more motivated to write if I get more cuts. I’m motivated to write by some internal force that will not be denied. There is a part of me that IS going to succeed no matter what. The part of me that write at least one new song every day, regardless of how many cuts I get. I just keep writing for matter of writing and when I write, every time I just try to write the best song I’ve ever written, and I don’t think of what to do with it next. When I think this way, I have nothing to be worried about and I can write with no stress nor any pressure.

LEARNING TO THINK LIKE BLAKE SHELTON

4/5/2022

Songwriters, do you think like an artist? One of the tricks to getting cuts with major artists like Blake Shelton is learning to think like they do. It’s not really all that hard, but it does take some time and effort which if you ask me, it totally worth it to spend that time, energy and effort to learn to think like some of the greatest writers and build your career’s foundation. In essence, songwriters are mini speech writers. We are trying to put words in the mouths of celebrities, and they will sing them out loud for the world. If you were trying to write a speech for a major political candidate, you would try to get to know that candidate as well as you possibly could. You want your words to sound very natural coming out of their mouths because literally the whole world is listening to it – essentially, these words must sound so natural, pure and relevant that sound like they wrote it themselves. To pull that off, I try to read a lot of interviews with artists I want to aim to pitch songs to.

WHO CAN STOP YOU FROM WRITING SONGS?

2/1/2022

I think that’s a valid question for every songwriter to ask themselves from time to time. We all had been there, thinking about it and we all will come back to thinking about it. On occasion, I hear songwriters say things like “It’s not really worth writing a song if I can’t get a publisher to listen.” Or “Why bother writing another song no one will ever hear?” Or even “It’s so hard to get on the Billboard Charts or make money with music these days”. When I hear those comments, I challenge the writers to examine their motivation for writing. So, I’ll ask you the same questions I ask them. Maybe they will cause you to think about your own motivation. Would you keep writing if you knew you’d never make a dollar with your music? Is your motivation solely based on money, or would you keep writing for other reasons even if it never paid off? Could lack of publisher interest make you give up? Do you really want to give them that much power? Does the size of the potential audience for your music factor into your decision to write?

QUESTIONS ABOUT CO-WRITING ETIQUETTE

1/25/2022

Once in one of our sessions a songwriter asked me, “If I don’t like the way a song turns out with a co-writer, am I free to take the idea and write it with someone else?”. It was very easy to answer her question as it’s pretty obvious and I was kind of surprised seeing that she didn’t know the answer, but on the other had the answer to such question is not written anywhere as a rule or anything. Maybe because it’s just simply too obvious, and no one ever cared to actually make it clear for anyone who might not know. The answer to her is; No. Not really. Generally, once you write an idea with someone, you are in it for good with them. It’s considered as a very bad form to take your idea and write it one your own or with someone else. And it would probably destroy your relationship with writer #1. If you are in such situation and you really don’t like the result of what came out with that writer but you really like the topic, I would suggest that the better approach is to see if you can get your co-writer to agree to bring in someone else to help you fix it or make better, while the writer #1 is also involved in the process. If he / she agrees, then the three of you could sit down and hopefully get it where it needs to be.

THE SCARIEST MOMENT IN SONGWRITING

1/18/2022

I believe that the scariest moment for any profession is the moment before you start. And the exact same goes for songwriting too. Most of us have voices that play in our heads. Those voices often tell us that the task at hand “can’t be done”. “You aren’t good enough”. “You can’t handle this”. “Songwriting is not something you can just do if you aren’t born with it”. You know the drill. It is the rare person who has never heard those voices. The negative self-talk keeps us from starting. If you don’t start, or don’t try, then you can’t fail. Or so “they” tell us. So, we drift through life taking the easy road because these nameless voices don’t believe in us. When you think about it, it seems silly, doesn’t it? Letting nameless, internal voices change the course of our lives? And giving up on something we are dying to do because we can’t summon the courage to just give it a try. And this is not just about songwriting. In fact for anything in life, whenever we want to start something new, we hear voices telling us that it is impossible and it scary and this and that. And they only shut up when we get into it, start doing what we wanted to do and start getting results. Show the voices “who the boss is”.

SONGWRITERS AND EXCUSES

1/11/2022

If there is one thing that I have learned in my journey through the music business, it’s that I’ve never made one dollar from excuses. Yet I lose count of people around me, usually newbies or unsuccessful seniors in the business who keep making excuses to justify everything rather than just taking responsibility and accepting that they could change the situation simply by working harder – or in some cases simply just by “working” instead of waiting for someone else to do their job for them. “It’s harder than ever to get a cut” “You have to write with the artist to get a cut” “I write songs that are too deep for the market” “People don’t understand my music”. These are the excuses I’m hearing on a daily basis and yes, they may all be true. But the fact remains there is that, if I write an amazing song, someone will notice. Will they notice my average songs? Not unless I have some special connection. Will I be able to sneak a “decent” song through and get it recorded? Not likely, unless I wrote it with the artist and, even then, that is a longshot.

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