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HOW TO FIND GREAT SONG IDEAS

10/23/2020

Ever wonder where your favorite artists or songwriters consistently get those great song ideas from? I like to think of ideas as a creative river, constantly flowing by. It’s simply a matter of learning to catch them. I always have my antenna up. Basically, everything around us can give us hundreds of very interesting ideas to be used in the songs or to have the songs being written around them. Here are some simple techniques that you can use to find hit ideas right away.

Watching movies for song ideas. Many classic songs have used lines from your favorite movies as titles. Kenny Chesney wrote the hit song “You Had Me From Hello” after watching the movie Jerry Mcguire. Kenny called songwriter Skip Ewing after hearing the line spoken in the movie and the duo turned it into a blockbuster hit. In a lot of great movies, specially the classic ones there are tons of quotes and sentences that each of them can be translated in at least one great song.

Just think of how many love ballads you can write with the famous quote of “Offer them something they can’t refuse” from the Mafia movie, The Godfather! Totally unrelated yet can easily turn it into at least 5 or 6 great songs. And this is even much easier to do with the romantic movies. Just keep watching and keep your ears sharp for catching some awesome lines from the classic movies.

ARE YOU THINKING LIKE AN ARTIST?

10/16/2020

If you are trying to write songs to pitch to artists, then you must learn to think like an artist. You must understand their concerns and – in most cases – their weird mindset. Here are some example questions that artists ask when they choose songs. They are also the questions I ask myself as I’m writing to make sure I’m writing something an artist would want to say.

How does this song make me look? Image. You must know the image is the first marketing too for an artist. One wants to have a badass image in public while another wants to be known as the cool one. Before you write the song, you should study your targeted artist and find out what image they have, and write your song based on that. As an almost general rule, if a song makes an artist look bad, they will almost never record it. – except for Miley Cyrus!

LEARNING TO THINK LIKE A PROFESSIONAL SONGWRITER

10/6/2020

The difference between a professional songwriter and a person who just writes for their own joy is a difference in their goals and they way they look at songwriting as a whole. Basically, can say their difference is in their way of thinking. Those two types of writers are coming at writing from vastly different perspectives and at the end of the day they want to achieve very different things. Here are the primary differences in thinking that enables the professionals to get their songs recorded.

Professionals realize that they are writing for someone else. Just like how a political speechwriter is trying to craft words that sound natural and believable coming from their candidate, a professional songwriter is trying to craft a song that is going to cause the listeners to think that the artist wrote it by themselves and they truly experienced every single word of what they are singing. Professionals make choices when they write based on what their target audience will or will not say.

5 THE SECOND VERSE'S LYRICS CAN DESTROY YOUR SONG

9/29/2020

There are many ways that a song can start great. Have a perfect starting and a stunning hook that drives the listener crazy, but everything can go wrong in the second verse. Don’t let these “song-killers” crop up in your second verses! Here are some of the prime “killers” to watch out and stay away from them and keep your songs away from them. They can be pretty harmful for your songs, therefore for your reputation in the industry.

Say the same thing as the first verse in different words. You have to give the listener something more in the second verse. Saying the same thing again bores them and they’ll turn your song off. When you are telling them a story in your first verse and you’ve sat an environment, introduced your characters and prepared them for the hook, and you’ve already made them listen to the hook and wait for the second verse to see where this story is going, it can be the worst answer for them to just give them the same thing as your first verse just in different words. Even worse than that is when I see in some songs, they just repeat the exact first verse again even with the same melody and lyrics, as if they couldn’t come up with anything anymore!

KEY ELEMENTS OF A GREAT SONG

9/18/2020

We have readers here that are all over the spectrum. Some of you just want to write songs for your own pleasure. Others are hoping for staff writing deals and to make a living getting songs recorded. This post is for all of you. Whether you are writing for yourself or for the masses, you want to write a great song. Here are my views on what makes a song great.
People often ask me what makes a song a “hit” song. The answer to that question is long and complicated. But, based on my experience, here’s what you have to have in order to have a hit song:

Great songs cause a strong reaction. It makes me laugh, cry, dance – something! I FEEL something when I hear it.

I can relate. Usually I feel something because it touches on some emotional memory of mine.

A SONGWRITER’S CHALLENGE

9/15/2020

One of the first things I did when I decided to seriously pursue writing as a career was to attend a Songwriting Camp. I submitted my application and nervously awaited a response to let me know if I was accepted or not. Finally, the day came. There in the stack of mail was a letter from the management. I opened it excitedly, hoping and praying that I got in. I did not. The letter very politely told me that I didn’t make it in, but I was on the waiting list in case someone dropped out.
Several weeks went by and the camp was rapidly approaching. I had given up when I got a call letting me know that someone dropped out and I could come if I still wanted to. It kind of had the feel of a girl telling you that she would love to go to the prom with you, but you were not really her first choice. It hurt a little, but I swallowed my pride and accepted. Looking back, I’m glad I did. It gave me a great beginning place. Most importantly, it showed me where the bar is. Once I realized how high the bar is, I was motivated to work even harder to get over it. During the camp of the instructors said something that has stuck with me to this day.

REASONS TO CO-WRITE

9/11/2020

People often ask me, sometimes skeptically, why I co-write so often instead of writing alone. “The songs you write on your own are great, why you need to write with others?” I heard these many times. I have some reasons that I find pretty compelling.

Not many people I know are world-class at melody and lyrics. There are plenty of people who do both but doing both and excelling at both are different things altogether. To succeed at the highest level in the music business, you have to have a world-class melody and lyrics (unless you are writing with an artist, but that’s a whole separate topic). In order to get a song at that level, 99.9% of us have to co-write. I always recommend that writers define what they are strongest at and really work hard to become world class at that. You can find someone to work with that is already world-class at whatever you are weaker at.

WRITING BETTER SONGS CHECKLIST

9/4/2020

Does you intro make the listener want to hear the song? Let me start with a concept you might know, called the elevator pitch, which basically says to make a sell, you must be prepared enough to convince your potential buyer to buy whatever you are selling, in a elevator trip which takes one minute. In music, it is taken to whole another level, specially with the current technology and the fact that people just keep bouncing their mind from one place to another, you have 30 seconds to get your song to its interesting part – which we call “the hook” of the song. But to get there, the intro of your song must catch their attention to make them sit down and listen until you get to your hook. To do so, you would have less than 10 seconds. The intro seems to be just a simple start of the song, but it is extremely important and you should pay a lot of attention to it, no matter how good the rest of your song would be, if it is not a great intro, your listener will skip the song and they don’t get to enjoy your super catchy hook!

HOW TO INTERPRET FEEDBACK ON YOUR SONGS

8/28/2020

Often, it seems like song feedbacks leave people confused. In one of my attempts at getting feedback early in my career, I send a song to a very prominent songwriting organization that I belonged to. The was called “It Don’t Get Better Than This” and it was about the way the “this” changed throughout a boy’s life. In the first verse, the boy held his first puppy and as it licked his face, he was thinking “It don’t get better than this.” The second verse has him kissing his first girlfriend and thinking the same thing. Finally, the bridge has him standing in his wedding ceremony and while his bride walks the aisle toward him, thinking the chorus again. The feedback I got was “Pretty well written, but it’s not possible to have three things that it doesn’t get better than.” I couldn’t imagine how the person giving feedback didn’t understand that what we imagine to be “the greatest thing ever” can – and does – change over time. The feedback left me confused and frustrated. Years later, as I gained more confidence in

my writing, I took another look at that song and realized that the feedback I got was not good at all. I’ve since discovered the reason for the weak feedback. The organization that I had gotten feedback from hired people to do feedback who had never had cuts. They were aspiring writers who were struggling and needed a paycheck, not professionals or hit songwriters who knew what they were talking about. Over the years, I have found these thoughts to be helpful in interpreting feedback on my songs:

WHERE IS THE BAR?

7/3/2020

How high is the bar for songwriters? When you mention the word “bar” to songwriters, most of them start craving a beer. But that’s not the bar I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the “How good does my song have to be to get it recorded by an artist?” kind of bar. Not every songwriter wants massive commercial success. But if that’s your goal, learning where that bar is may be the most important thing an aspiring commercial songwriter has to do.

The biggest hurdle. The problem with many songwriters, when confronted with the height of the real bar, is that instead of taking steps to learn how to get over the bar, they start trying to find a lower bar that helps them feel better about their music. It’s the equivalent of an aspiring NBA basketball player trying out for the Celtics and not making the team on his first try. So, instead of getting more coaching and improving his game, he goes to the Y and signs up for a pick-up basketball league. He feels better. He finally “made the team”.

CO-WRITING ERRORS TO AVOID WHILE SONGWRITING – OR DATING!

6/5/2020

Co-Writing songs is a lot like dating. It takes work to find and develop good co-writing relationships. And, not every date is going to work out. So, you keep kissing frogs until you find a prince, metaphorically speaking. If you treat songwriting relationships like real relationships, you can avoid some of these mistakes that I’ve seen lots of people make. Here are some real life relationship rules that you can apply to make your co-writing relationships better.

If I introduce you to my girlfriend, don’t ask her out behind my back. Unfortunately this is a common mistake in the co-writing arena. If a co-writer of mine brings an artist in to work with us, I don’t go behind his or her back and try to get the artist to write with me alone next time. This happens to me at times as well. A writer friend of mine asks if I will write with him and a friend of his. As soon as the guy I know goes to the bathroom, the one that I don’t know starts saying “We should get together sometime, just you and me.” Bad form – in life or in co-writing. If someone introduces you to an artist or to a hit co-writer, show your appreciation by continuing to write with the two of them. That’s what I would call basic manners.

THE SONGWRITER’S SECRET SAUCE

5/22/2020

Any time people complain to me that they aren’t having the success that they want with their songs; I tell them to “write better song”. I’m not trying to be cute or clever when I say that, either. Writing better songs is the only answer I know to lack of success as a songwriter. Whenever I’m frustrated with my own lack of activity with my songs, I remind myself that I need to buckle up and write better songs. I recently found out that I had a song recorded by a rock band. I didn’t try to write a song for them. I had honestly never heard of them. And, no one I knew had a connection to them at the time. The day I wrote “Take Me To The Mountain” I was just trying to write a great song. I didn’t worry whether or not it was country or pop or rock. I didn’t agonize over who might record it. I just wrote the best song I could write that day. Fast forward about two years, they just liked the songs and cut them. Numerous times in my career, I got a cut “out of the blue” just by focusing on writing better songs and showing up to write day after day after day. That’s the ticket.

KEYS TO CO-WRITING SONGS WITH A BAND

5/15/2020

Someone asked me the other day, “What is your secret to co-writing with a band?” Over the years I’ve been blessed to co-write songs with some great Iranian and international bands. As a songwriter, it can be tricky to sit down with three or four other people in one room and make magic happen. Is there a secret to it? I don’t know about that, but over the years I have developed a few techniques that helped me. I’ll tell you the secrets but, shush, don’t tell anyone...

Do Your Homework. Whenever possible, I like to listen to the band’s material a few days ahead of time – very casually so as not to mimic what they already do or limit myself to their past material. I listen just enough to get a feel or vibe for who they are. This isn’t always an option with a new band that hasn’t recorded any albums yet, but you can ask management if demos are available. Just listening to their existing stuff will give you an overall understanding on what musical environment they are in and what is the general feel of their music.

IF I CAN BECOME A PROFESSIONAL SONGWRITER, YOU CAN TOO!

5/8/2020

Yes, the photo is from my childhood album!

In many ways, I am the least likely person to become a hit songwriter. I grew up with serious self-esteem issues. I’ve always been told by my father to be humble and never talk myself up and never express my thoughts and feelings directly - exactly opposite of the two main requirements for being a songwriter; be confident and be expressive! I was always extremely self-conscious for most of my life because growing up in a Persian family means no matter what you achieve, the family always say it’s not enough and you must do better. On the other hand, because of my rough attitude and just being into sports and being pretty much of a “boy-boy” I was never popular in school. Even until today that I am running my own label and dealing with a number of artists, producers and songwriters, I still am painfully shy and introverted. I grew up believing that you should always make the safe choice.

A POWERFUL TOOL FOR SONGWRITERS

5/1/2020

I believe that “perspective” may be one of the most powerful concepts in our lives. Your perspective can totally change your experience of an event. Siblings can have dramatically different takes on a traumatic home situation because they take different perspectives on what occurred.

When I was in high school, my English teacher and theater director was always challenging us to look at things in different ways and from different angles. He lived a small apartment and would grade our papers at a makeshift desk he laid across his bathtub. When we practiced our plays, we would sometimes look out to see him standing on his head in the seats of the auditorium, just to “get a different perspective” on the play. His unique view of life was a catalyst that made me start looking at my own life and challenging many things I had accepted as ‘fact’ before I met him.

YOU’RE ONLY AS GOOD AS YOUR NEXT SONG

4/24/2020

I read an article about Adele, after she had broken the record for the biggest debut for an album ever. She was asked why it took her 4 years to come out with a new album. Her respond to that question was quite interesting. She had recorded more than another album’s worth of songs in the meantime and scrapped all of it to start over. Her response was, “You’re only as good as your next album”. She explained that she wanted the album to be great and that the previous material was good, but not great.
This is one thing that I actually believe in, but also on the other hand I disagree when the uprising artists work one year on one track and a few years on an album. The reason this theory is that when an artist is just upcoming and trying to build a brand out of their name and their music, they should work harder and release as many quality songs as they can. When that name / brand is built, then it's time to take it slower and release only the songs that they're confident enough about them that they can bet their life on.

TRUSTING YOUR GUT ON YOUR SONGWRITING JOURNEY

4/17/2020

I hear people all the time talking about “trusting their gut”. While I am a big proponent of that in many ways, I have discovered that the “trust your gut” strategy has cost me thousands of wasted dollars when it comes to my songs.

When I got my first writing deal, my gut had urged me to demo around 20 songs at a cost of $6,000 or more out of my own pocket. That same gut told me that these songs were awesome. Awesome enough to get cut. Awesome enough to be on the radio.
I had pitched these songs around the town and met only with rejection. I was perplexed because my gut is usually right in other areas of my life. It has literally saved my life on several occasions. So, I blamed the people hearing my songs. “They don’t know a good song when they hear it.” “They just want the same old thing.” “They are biased in favour of ‘their’ writers.” You know the drill. But...

LYRICISTS AND MELODY

4/10/2020

I am primarily a composer and producer. I contribute to lyrics on my songs, but that’s not my strength when it comes to English language songs. Because my vocabulary is not that wide (yes, I am still working on it) and more importantly because most of the time I “think in Persian” language. So, I try to stay with my strength and put most of my energy on composing melodies, arrangement and whole production.

By definition, a lyricist is someone who writes the lyrics (words) for a song. If you write without any regard for how those lyrics will work musically, you are a poet, not a lyricist. I can’t build a car part without any regard for how and where it will fit into the car. I have to work hard to make sure MY part fits into the car and works with the other parts. So, if you only write lyrics, here are some things I would suggest.

HOW TO TELL WHEN A SONG IDEA IS WORTH PURSUING

4/3/2020

A lot of folks’ emails are asking if I can tell them whether an idea is good and worth pursuing. Though I’d love to give an answer, I generally believe it’s better to teach a man to fish, than hand him a fish. This is what my mentors did for me and I’m lucky he didn’t give me the answers. Instead, they gave me questions! So, I’d like to share with you some questions I ask myself before spending too much time on an idea:

Does your song idea feel real or clever? Real always trumps intellectual or clever in my book! I like to find a lot of ideas that happen naturally in conversation. Like when I, or the person I’m talking to, says something with conviction. I’ve gotten some of my biggest songs this way. Especially with artist co-writes. Artists are great at expressing themselves. That’s their job! So, I like to take things they say and feel — and then write it!

DO YOU SUFFER FROM THIS COMMON SONGWRITING ILLNESS?

3/6/2020

I can spot the affliction of Write-Up-Itis among songwriters immediately, the moment I see them, because I have battled this dreadful and potentially fatal disease in the past. The symptoms generally start after you write the first song that you think is really commercially viable. A slight fever starts to develop. You get what I call “the bug”. The bug leads to hallucinations. You see yourself driving along in your car when you hear a familiar intro come on the radio. The RADIO. Not the CD player. The real live FM radio! The intro fades into an opening line that you would know anywhere.

You wrote it. A SUPERSTAR is singing it. Luke Bryan, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Kenny Chesney. You pull over and just soak in the moment. Then, the guy behind you starts to honk and you are jolted back to reality. That’s not your song on the radio. It’s another one written by Mrs. X, the hottest writer in town.

STEPS FOR ENHANCING YOUR SONGWRITING

2/28/2020

What Does Creative Flow Feel Like?

1. You feel completely focused. So much so that you forget your personal needs. You may even forget to eat for hours while you are working!
2. You have a clear vision of what your art should sound or look like while working on it.
3. You are certain the task at hand is attainable. You find that perfect balance of your current skill level and the challenge that is in from of you
4. You feel an energizing power that seems to come from outside of you. Even if you were tired and brain dead before beginning, the work revitalizes you and gives you energy you didn’t know you had.
5. You lose yourself in completely in your work and feel totally at peace.

THE POWER OF WRITING A LOT OF SONGS

2/21/2020

If you are trying to get a song recorded on a major artist, you are competing with professional writers who write a song almost every day. Those professionals are pumping out more than 200 songs a year in many cases. The sheer volume of material they produce increases their chances of getting a cut exponentially. Why, you might ask? Here is a story to illustrate. Recently, I pitched a song to an A&R person for a big shot artist. She responded that she loved the song, but she thought that it had already been cut. I told her that I had no knowledge of it being recorded.

I had my former publisher (who published the song in question) look into the situation. They discovered that the song was scheduled to be the first single for a rising star artist that had just been signed to a major record deal. Neither I nor my publisher had any idea that the artist in question was planning to cut the song.

WHY DO YOU WRITE SONGS? AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO KNOW?

2/14/2020

I have discovered that there are many reasons people write songs. Sometimes we assume that everyone writing a song must want a major artist to record it. While that is true for many writers, it’s not the real motivation for many others. Based on my “survey” through my fellow writers, here are some of the more popular reasons people write songs:

They feel like they have something to say. Many people write because they have a message they want to share with the world. Sometimes the message is religious or moral. Sometimes it’s an attempt to share something positive with the world. Other times, the writer is promoting an idea or cause they believe in.

They were “inspired” to write. I have had many people tell me that they just “woke up with this song in their head” or that they were “given” a song and didn’t really know where it came from. Sometimes inspiration just strikes, and it seems as if we are simply writing it down as it comes to us.

WRITE A SONG THAT INSPIRES YOU

2/7/2020

One ordinary Tuesday, I went to a co-write with really low expectations. My co-writer and I were going to try to finish a song that I wasn’t really in love with. But we had decided we would finish it, so I drove to his house. We started working on the song and when lunch time came, we had not even added one word to the song. So, we decided to take a break and come back to the song after we ate. On the way back from lunch, he asked “Do you like the song we are working on?” I replied, “Not really, but I thought you liked it.” He laughed and said, “I don’t like it – I thought you did!”
Beside the fact that we both were happy about our mutual respect (without saying it out loud), for working on a song we didn’t like but we thought the other one likes it and we were rolling in, we were both relieved that we didn’t have to work on a song that we didn’t like any longer. When we got back to his house, we talked about music we loved, and we discovered that we both really like R&B feels. Then the conversation turned to the lack of that kind of feel on modern country radio. At that point, he said “Let’s just write something with an R&B feel that people can make out to.”

THINGS TO DO EVERY DAY TO GET AHEAD AS A SONGWRITER

1/31/2020

Here are 5 things I try to do every day. Doing these 5 things helps me feel like I’m making progress in every area of my songwriting.

Learn something. I’m trying to learn to play harmonica now. Yes, sometimes I work on learning an alternative tuning on the guitar. I want to try to learn something that makes me better each day. This way I’m constantly forcing my brain to be active and don’t go lazy. Brain is just like the muscles on your body. The more you use it, the stronger it will get. Plus, learning all these can be fun and you never know when they come handy.

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