Start with a single note or single word

Play a single random note and just listen to your imagination. Does a second note enter the picture? Does a chord or harmony enter the picture? If so, then add what you hear to the mix and keep listening like that. Don’t think about it or edit what you hear in your mind, just dictate.

If you don’t hear anything in your imagination, then force it. Play a single interval up or down. Does that spark another idea? If so, then dictate. If not, play a different interval. If after a number of tries your imagination doesn’t take over, then force it even more. Play a pattern or a sequence that you are familiar with and build a melody around that.

The important thing to remember here is that your melody is not going to be perfect. It’s just a first pass. You can edit after you have 32 bars or so of material to work with. The point is you can’t have a melody to edit if you don’t start writing one.

You can apply the same technique to lyric writing. Write a single word. Use a random word generator or just pick a word from a book. What does your imagination tell you to write next? If nothing comes to you (which would mean that you really just aren’t paying attention) force it by just making stuff up. Rhyme comes later. Prosody comes later. Form comes later. Same as with music, you can’t edit a lyric until you have a lot of lyrics to edit.

An exercise like this should open your mind to the constant stream of ideas that is always occurring beneath the surface of your conscious mind. Just practice opening the aperture until you always have music and lyrics to write.

Table of contents for 2006 Celebrations and Reflections

1. Top Ear Training Articles for 2006
2. Top Songwriting Articles for 2006
3. Top Music Theory Articles for 2006
4. Top Music Hacks for 2006
5. Top Peak Performance Articles for 2006
6. Top Music Business Articles of 2006
7. Top Music Technology Articles for 2006
8. The Best of The Graham English Blog 2006

I’m celebrating quite a few good songs written in the past year. And I’m reflecting on how I can make 2007 an even better year for songwriting. Look for some fresh songwriting ideas in the new year and enjoy the best songwriting articles of 2006.

• The Perfect Song Title – 5 Things To Remember
• 4 Things That Will Make Or Break Your Song
• Find New Music With Musicovery – And Songwriting Ideas Too
• List of Opensource Music Software
• Seed Your Creative Process With…
• Why I Write For The Garbage Can
• Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 10-13-06
• Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 09-29-06
• Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-22-06
• Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-09-06
• Hit Songwriting Tips Podcast 08-03-06
• Vernon Reid Songwriting Tips Interview
• Jesse Harris Songwriting Tips Interview
• Random Word Generator
• If Leonardo da Vinci Was a Songwriter
• Perfect Rhyme and Family Rhyme
• Sexy Object Writing Word Generator
• Get Your Creative Juices Flowing
• Don’t Forget Square One…
• How To Find The Head-Turning Hook That Reels ‘Em In
• Can Hit Songs Really Be Reduced To Science? I Mean, Really?
• Songwriting For Busy People
• How Do You Develop New And Interesting Chord Changes?
• Top 10 Lyric Writing Insights
• The Astonishing Hit-Making Magic of Song Titles
• The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll
• Get My Hit Song Cheat Sheet
• MasterWriter Review

Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies

A Random Word

A Random Sentence

A Random Paragraph

A Random Web Site

You have to put something into your mind to get something out.

You haven’t? Me neither. And that’s why I write for the garbage can.

Johnny Mercer, the songwriter, said he used to write for the waste basket. When I first heard this, it blew my mind. After hearing a 3 minute song that seems so perfect, many people get the impression that it was written the way they heard it — in a short flash of inspiration. And even though we know better, we can be overly critical of work too soon in the process.

Writing for the garbage can solves this problem. Write just to write. Only edit once you have enough material to work with. I’m not trying to write the next timeless masterpiece anymore. I’m just figuring out what it is that I want to communicate and then writing, writing and writing some more.

Here’s 7 steps to powerful writing:

1. Know what you want: State your intention.
2. Collect the information: Get the facts or tools that will support your intention.
3. Just create: Silence the critic and go for it. If it’s a musical creation, don’t forget to record it.
4. Take a break: Get a way from the project.
5. Just create some more or start over: Either extend step 3 or start fresh.
6. Take another break: Take at least 24 hours off to let the ideas incubate.
7. Analyze and correct: This is where you get critical. Just remember to be nice to yourself.

As it is now, it’s perfect for object writing and brainstorming. What other uses can you find for it?

Leonardo da Vinci was a brilliant musician. If he was alive today…

He would have an insatiably curious approach to songwriting and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning.

Songs can be like problems or puzzles that we must solve or piece together. Asking creative questions can open the mind to new ideas. Keep a journal to record songwriting principles or insights. We can always learn something new.

He would have a commitment to test knowledge through experience, persistence, and a willingness to learn from mistakes.

Write, write, write. Then write some more. After writing each song, reflect on how the song could be better. Learn what not to do next time. Put the songwriting principles you’ve captured to the test.

He would continually refine his senses, especially hearing, as the means to enliven experience.

Music is an auditory art. Musicians are alchemists of sound. Reflecting the sounds in our imagination into reality requires precision. Ear training to a musician is like tasting food to a chef. Without it, we end up putting ketchup on everything.

Leonardo da Vinci was a master story teller. All good story tellers know that to move someone’s emotions requires sensual detail. Emotions are experienced in the body and great writers know how to make you laugh and cry through sensual imagery. Lyric writing is no different. Show, don’t tell.

He would have a willingness to embrace ambiguity, paradox, and uncertainty.

Songwriting is 100% inspiration and 100% craft. You should only be concerned with satisfying your artistic vision and always write for the listener. Songwriting is absolutely never about the goal and always about the process except when it isn’t.

He would develop the balance between science and art, logic and imagination. “Whole-brain” thinking.

“Those who become enamoured of the art, without having previously applied to the diligent study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to mariners who put to sea in a ship without rudder or compass and therefore cannot be certain of arriving at the wished for port.”
-Leonardo da Vinci

He would cultivate grace, ambidexterity, fitness, and poise.

Let’s face it, our physiology has an effect on our attitudes and emotions and vice versa. Since our bodies are the instruments we use to create art, our art is directly influenced by the state of our physiology. Beyond basic health, there are many fun ways to embody art as well as develop a balanced body and brain. Try writing lyrics or picking out melodies with your non-dominant hand. You can also try using both hands simultaneously.

He would have a recognition of and appreciation for the interconnectedness of all things and phenomena. Systems thinking.

Leonardo da Vinci would probably consider a song from multiple perspectives: first person, second person and third person. He would understand how it fits into the culture. He would contemplate the ephemeral nature of sound and how it relates to our social musical habits, like the music industry or the RIAA. (hint) Leonardo da Vinci would recognize how a single note changes the world.

“How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day” (Michael J. Gelb)

Perfect Rhyme has three characteristics:

• The rhyming syllables have the same vowel sounds
• The consonant sounds after the vowel (if any) have the same sounds
• The rhyming syllables begin differently

A good substitute for Perfect Rhyme is Family Rhyme:

• The rhyming syllables have the same vowel sounds
• The consonant sounds after the vowel are phonetically related
• The rhyming syllables begin differently

In Family Rhyme, there are three phonetic families:

• Plosives: b, d, g, p, t, k
• Fricatives: v, TH, z, zh, j, f, th, s, sh, ch
• Nasals: m, n, ng

You can substitute members of the same family: cut/luck, rich/wish, fun/sung. Use this chart to help you find family rhymes:

In the future I’ll talk about how to use rhyme to control the pace and flow of your lyrics, use rhyme to balance and unbalance your verses, and a lot more. Remember that rhyme is a powerful songwriting tool to help you say what you mean.

Yesterday I posted how to get your creative juices flowing with object writing. Today I found a great site that you can use to randomly generate objects to write about. It’s more of a surprise word generator than a random word generator because you have to type a word in first. But at least it’s fast and easy and works when you don’t have a thesaurus or dictionary around. It also tells you the relative popularity of the word you chose. Pretty cool.

Click here: WORDCOUNT / Tracking the Way We Use Language
(Found via Graphic display of quantitative information 2.0)

The technique is called Object Writing and it’s so ridiculously easy that you’ll be pissed you didn’t know about it sooner. I learned it from Pat Pattison.

Here’s how it works:

First, gather your materials. You’ll need tools for writing like a computer or pen and paper. You’ll want a thesaurus or dictionary or any book that you have lying around. Object Writing works best when you have a timer.

Second, open the book you chose earlier and randomly pick any word. Alternatively, you could write about any object you see around you.

Finally, write about the word you picked using the following guidelines.

• Write from your senses (touch, taste, sound, smell, sight). In other words, avoid abstract ideas. Keep it real.
• Write with a timer. Keep the time short. 2 to 5 minutes is best. 10 minutes max.
• Don’t stop writing. It doesn’t have to rhyme or be in complete sentences. Keep writing rapid-fire.

That’s it. It’s simple. Now here’s why it works.

Sensory language is what connects the listeners to your writing. It follows the writing principle “show, don’t tell.” If you want your song to speak to your listener’s emotions, then you have to use language that resonates in the body. Emotions are embodied. You feel emotions. Emotions aren’t ideas that you think about. They are experiences. And experiences are real. So keep your language real and concrete. This is especially true for verses. Choruses can be meta to your verses. They can talk about the verse or the idea of the song. But your verses are the blood of the song. They live and breathe and the language should reflect that.

Object writing is the tool to develop your unique perspective. Only you can make the connection between an orange maple leaf and the smell of your lover’s wool sweater. With object writing, you tap into your personal experiences and memories and find your own unique perspective about life and the meaning of things. Object writing comes from your heart.

When you need quick stimulation, object writing allows you to dive in to the depths of your experience and pull out the relevant details that will make your writing interesting. It’s instant. And it gives you more choice because you have a vault of wonderful details to consider on the other side of your 5 minutes.

Here’s what an object writing session could look like:

Object: Leaves
Crunching under my feet I look down and see leaves of gold, burnt orange, and blood red. I imagine nostalgic moments of youth in the fall – argyle sweaters and jean jackets. Walks meant to soak up the last of the luke-warm sun and to hold hands with a young girl. Football and underage drinking. Parties too cold to be outside but too much in love to care. The leaves fall from the trees and they seem to stop in mid air as I imagine a September wedding…time stood still…I look around at the guests and they’re motionless, smiling, frozen in a conversation, and I feel blessed to be alive witnessing this moment of wonder and awe at the gifts of the heart. It’s my wedding day and the woman who these people are here to help me celebrate with is hiding in the house. Perhaps she’s peaking out of a window and maybe time is standing still for her too. And I wonder if she was the girl that some lucky boy held hands with in the fall of her youth. I can see them happy walking among the leaves on the sidewalk. The air is crisp and fresh. The sun falls to the west and my heart rises in the east. The past is romantic and the future is hopeful. The present is transfixed in an absolute moment of this – a celebration of love and happiness. A union of leaves to ground and separation from the tree. The aging bark is flexible and sways in the breeze and the scene begins to move again…leaves slowly falling, voices laughing, glasses clink and hearts open to the possibility of forever and ever.

See how simple it is?

Object Writing Hacks:

• Start your day with 5 minutes of object writing. Once your inner writer is awake, it stays with you all day.
• Object write from all parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.
• Whenever you get stuck in a song, stop what you are doing and object write for a couple of minutes.
• The more specific the picture, the more emotion it creates.
• Before you begin, write your senses across the top of the page: sight, sound, taste, touch, smell, body, motion.
• Ignore rhyme, rhythm, and sentence structure. Your writing doesn’t have to be polished at this stage. Let it be ugly.
• Let the object take you wherever it wants. You don’t have to stay focused on the object. Follow the thoughts that arise.

Go ahead and take 2 minutes to do some quick object writing right here in the comments section. I’ll even get it started.

And when you’ve finished writing and recording your song, send it my way for a free and constructive review.

Before you commit to a single note of your next song, you want to do some serious sleuthing behind the scenes.

I call it being a hook detective. What you’re looking for is the “hook” of your song–that unique part of the song that arouses burning curiosity, and drags the listener into your song like a baby boomer to a Rolling Stones concert. A great hook–especially in your song title…

Will FORCE People
To Remember Your Song

It’s the key to writing a big winner. When you find a great hook, you’ll know it… because it will ring in your ears constantly.

Here’s how to do it: First, you gotta get into a Sherlock Holmes-like frame of mind.

You’re going on a search for specific details to write about… something that no one else has paid any attention to. Gather about you all the great hooks of the past (I like to use this list for inspiration), the current Billboard charts, and any other popular song playlists and references you can think of. Use them to get a “feel” for the qualities of a great time-tested hook.

You won’t find your hook here, however, No one’s written your hook yet.

No, the only reason to use all that stuff is to…

Know How To Walk The Walk
And Talk The Talk

You want to be completely immersed in the details of great hooks, the placement, the lyric ideas, the melodic motion, everything. Because… you’re now going to investigate the human connection in all of this. The heart-pounding connection to the song that will jar even the most distracted listener into full attention.

Think of it as a little game of “connect the dots”.

Because you’re now going to mentally interview everyone who can pull off “the eternal hook”. Get inside the songwriters who do it every day, who breathe, sleep and eat hit songs.

Ready? Good job, detective. Now cuff ‘em and book ‘em. You’re taking them to the interrogation room where you’re going to pump them for information, looking for the following:

1. Lyrical Insights: You’re searching for human interest tidbits–small yet fascinating pieces of information–that are unusual, provocative, titillating, and intriguing.
2. Melodic Insights: What is the melodic motion of the hook and how does it contrast with the rest of the song? How does the melody build intensity as the song approaches the hook?
3. Hook Placement: How is the hook emphasized? Where exactly is the hook positioned in the song section? How many times is the hook repeated? What surrounds the hook lyrically, melodically, harmonically, rhythmically? Notice the note lengths, phrase lengths, and space.

An idea, use the hook in your song like a short, outrageous headline… that is so achingly incomplete, you wouldn’t be human if you weren’t dying to find out what it was about. And then, in your verses, weave the story. Complete the hook.

Remember this:
Most folks do not get to meet interesting people…
Or go to interesting places…
Or do interesting things.

And that’s your opening. Your hook is a chance for the listener to feel something special for a few moments… to be titillated, shocked, startled, and metaphorically…

Pinched On The Ass!

Mind Hacks posted how choice is demotivating when there are too many options.

“Offer students a choice of 6 essays, rather than 30 essays, for extra-credit and more will take up the opportunity if there is less choice of essay titles – and, what is more, they write better essays.”

And if you have 45 song ideas in your notebook, chances are none of them will get finished.

Here’s a few tips for busy songwriters that have trouble finding the time to write and for songwriters who have too many ideas to finish.

1. Have just a few places to capture song ideas
If you have your song ideas in 5 audio recorders, 7 notebooks and 13 computer folders, then chances are all those unfinished “open loops” are unconsciously stressing you out. If you capture your song ideas in a central location, then your songwriting will be better organized and easier to manage.

Here’s the minimum of what you need to capture:

1. Lyrics
2. Song Titles
3. Written Music
4. Recorded Audio

My advice, capture each written idea on a single index card (a la Hipster PDA). If you have 20 separate ideas on a single sheet of paper, it may save physical space, but it will take up psychological space. Picture having a separate file folder for song titles, a separate folder for choruses, etc. How much easier would it be to collect your ideas when you need them? But if you have various song titles, melodies, and chord changes on a single sheet of paper, when it comes time to recover your ideas, they’re going to be much harder to find. If you do your songwriting on the computer, keep every idea in a separate .txt file in a single folder or with sub-folders like ‘choruses’, ‘verses’, etc.

Try to capture your audio recordings on just a couple of devices. I used to record everything first on my iPod–until it crashed and I bought the new video iPod that doesn’t have a mic available for it yet. Everything was synced in iTunes in a special playlist that I kept organized. If an idea became worthy of development, it went into GarageBand and finally into Logic Pro when it became worthy of finishing. I could probably skip the GarageBand step but I just really like the program. All songs are stored in a single ‘audio’ folder which has sub-folders: ‘archive’ for finished songs and ‘maybe’ for songs that I’ve set aside.

2. Have 1 song that you are finishing at the top of your list
Always be focused on finishing 1 song. If you successfully write more than one song at a time, good for you. But if you struggle getting songs finished, narrowing your choices will be more motivating. Plus, with the above system of capturing your song ideas, you will have a beautifully organized cornucopia of inspiration to draw from when you’re ready to write and finish song number 2

3. Tag all of your song ideas
I can’t personally speak for windows users, but with Spotlight for the Mac you can find any file quickly with just a couple of keywords. Adding metadata to your song ideas will help you organize them and find them quickly. If you called a .txt file ‘title-windowless-room.txt’ or ‘song-windowless-room.txt’, then you’ll be able to find them by name. But if you tag them with other descriptive terms like ‘happy’ or ‘rock anthem’, you’ll be able to make unique connections between all of your captured song ideas using criteria like emotional content, subject matter, tempo, or key signature.

Before the ubiquity of recorded music, the way we would pass music from one person to another was through written music. And music notation has mood markings like Vivace (lively) and Maestoso (majestic or stately) which also have tempo connotations. These markings/tags can be very useful for tightening the message and tone of your song if you decide on them beforehand. They can also be useful when you’re interested in writing something different than what you’ve written in the past.

Here’s a technique I use to begin writing. Let’s say I have a title, Windowless Room. While working through the rhythm of the title I settle on a tempo marking of 90bpm (Andante). Going to my thesaurus, I see that andante also means slow motion. With a little deeper digging, I have a word list to flesh out my song idea and to tag my song with: crawl, walk, dragging, trudge, shamble, limp, hobble, slow march, linger, delay, take your time, etc.

Now I have a focused tone for my song, a word list to help me write, and keywords to search my other captured song ideas for inspiration.

4. Review your song ideas at least once a week
Your weekly review is the time when you archive finished songs, choose your next song to write, and celebrate all the great song ideas you came up with during the past week. I also add tags during this review to help my song writing during the upcoming week. The weekly songwriting review is good for reevaluating, reprocessing and feeding your intuition.

The mechanics of the weekly songwriting review are simple:

1. Organize and process your loose song ideas, i.e. put song titles in the ‘song titles’ folder and so on.
2. Review current song(s) you are writing and review your ‘maybe’ song ideas.
3. Commit to finishing another new song.

5. Commit to write at least 10 minutes a day and for longer periods a couple of times a week
There’s a small number of things you need to complete to finish a song:

1. Song Title: Lyrics, Melody, Rhythm
2. Chorus: Lyrics, Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Form
3. Verse: Lyrics, Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Form
4. Prechorus/Bridge: Lyrics, Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Form

It’s good to know what song sections you have finished and what you have yet to finish. If you print out my ‘Hit Song Cheat Sheet‘, you’ll know exactly what you need to do next.

I hope these tips help you finish more songs and relieve any stress that you might have over the multitude of unfinished song ideas you have floating around your mind. If you have songwriting tips to share, please comment. Happy songwriting.

Here’s my top 10 lyric writing insights:

1. The rhythm of your melody and the rhythm of your lyrics should match.
Rhythm has *strong and week beats. So do words. When you speak to someone, you use conventional stresses–found in the dictionary–to communicate your ideas as efficiently as possible. If you spoke with the ac-CENT on the wrong syl-LA-ble, people would have a hard time understanding you. Yet this happens over and over again in lyric writing. Match your stresses and your listeners will get what you mean.

2. Show, don’t tell.
Compare “I was nervous” with “My palms were sweaty” and you’ll get the picture. The first example is about the experience while the second example is from the experience. The easiest way to do this is to stimulate your listener’s senses by using sense-bound language. Write from the 5 senses and you’ll find interesting details that will keep your listeners captivated and emotionally involved.

3. Use prosody. Support your meaning with your lyrics.
How you put your lyric together should support what you have to say. You can create prosody with:

Form: Organize your song functions into effective song forms, e.g. verse/chorus, AABA, and verse/prechorus/chorus, etc.
Musical Stress: Put words in relation to each other according to its relative stress in the bar and its relation to surrounding notes. Put the most important word in the most important stress, beat 1 of bar 1.
Line Length and Number of Lines: You can balance or unbalance a section accordance to its meaning by having an even (balanced, stable) or odd (unbalanced, unstable) number of lines. You can also match line lengths perfectly (balanced, stable) or match lines imperfectly (unbalanced, unstable).
Rhyme: Perfect rhyme and Family rhyme will support a stable or resolved meaning. The more remote rhyme types (assonance rhyme, consonance rhyme, etc.) will support an unstable or unresolved meaning.

4. Create contrasting sections.
Lyrically, line length is one of the most effective tools to create contrast. Create contrasting sections using one or more structural elements, i.e. contrasting ideas, number of lines, rhyme schemes, etc. Ask yourself, “What have I got? What’s different than that?”

5. Consider when to balance and unbalance your lyric.
The main point of balancing and unbalancing is, again, prosody: supporting your meaning with your structures. Do you need stability or instability to support your meaning? Combine all four structural elements–number of lines, line length, line rhythm, and rhyme scheme–to balance and unbalance sections.

6. Use fresh metaphor.
To see one thing as though it is something else is your unique ability. To make sure your metaphors aren’t cliche, use the “duh” method (I got this from Shane Adams). You start with your first object, cake. Think of the most obvious characteristic of the object, as in the cake is round. These are called the “duh” descriptions. Now take the “duh” description and think of something else that has that quality or characteristic. The cake is round…duh…what else is round? The moon. Now think of a “duh” characteristic of the second object, the moon glows, the moon is distant. Now plug those new traits into the original, the cake glowed like a distant moon. Now that’s original.

7. Develop your verses.
Develop your song idea from verse to verse making sure the chorus gains meaning and interest each time it is repeated. Give your final verse a “pay off” that rewards your listener for their attention. Think of how you tell stories to your friends. Usually, the point of the entire story comes at the very end. Where you begin your story and how much you share depends on what material is relevant to the understanding of the song’s climax.

8. Control the song’s point of view and verb tense.
Discuss a song’s story-line from the singer’s point of view. This solves a lot of problems: verb tense, setting, point of view, gender, etc. Write from the perspective of the singer of the song.

9. Use fresh rhymes.
Rhymes occur at the ends of lines. These positions are natural spotlights. Since your listener has time to consider what you just said before the next line begins, make it worthy of the spotlight. Avoid cliche rhymes and boring rhyme schemes. Learn how to find fresh rhymes that stick in the mind of the listener and that help you say what you mean in a unique way.

10. Spotlight important ideas.
Certain positions in a song spotlight important ideas. These power positions get special attention:

Opening lines
Balancing lines
Unbalancing positions

When you have something important to say, these techniques can help emphasize the point:

Shorten lines to spotlight important ideas
Lengthen lines to spotlight important ideas
Put your important ideas in opening lines, balancing lines and unbalancing positionsAnd use power words (action verbs, sensual adjectives, unique words, etc.) in your power positions.

Rules are definitely meant to be broken. But please learn the rules first.

*This relative pattern of strong and weak beats, from strongest to weakest:
In 4/4: Beat 1, Beat 3, Beat 4, Beat 2, Beat 4&, Beat 2&, Beat 3&, Beat 1&
In 3/4: The only strong beat in a bar of 3/4 is the downbeat. The second and third beats are weak. In order of strength, the beats line up like this: Bar 1, Bar 3, Bar 2, Beat 1, Beat 2, Beat 3, Beat 2&, Beat 3&, Beat 1&
In 6/8: Think of it as two quick bars of 3/4. In order of strength, the beats of 6/8 line up like this: Beat 1, Beat 4, Beat 6, Beat 3, Beat 2, Beat 5

Why almost everyone is completely wrong about what makes a good song title… and why this is a tremendous advantage for anyone who knows the secrets.

Most people – and shamefully, most so-called experts in songwriting – wouldn’t know a good song title if it bit them on the ass. The fact is, there is more incompetence in songwriting than any other field except, perhaps, advertising.

Lesson number one: Great songwriting – the kind that will grab your listener by the throat and force them to give you every ounce of their attention – has more in common with…

P.T. Barnum And The National Enquirer
Than With Britney Spears and Ashley Simpson

Barnum was the circus man (Barnum & Bailey’s “The Greatest Show On Earth”) who made a fortune by never underestimating the allure of sensationalism. A genius at marketing impossible-to-ignore sideshows – the one-horned goat billed as a unicorn… the bearded lady… the human pretzel. He was a man of the people, and knew what punched their buttons. He created such an urgent sense of curiosity that crowds fought to get into his shows.

And did you know that more people read the National Enquirer every week than read Time, Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal all put together? That raunchy little checkout-stand weekly sells out across the land… and yes, even people you know read it.

The hook is the headlines on the cover. The guys who come up with them are among the highest-paid writers in the world. When they hit a nerve, the publication flies off the shelves. (My favorite headlines are “Preacher Explodes On Pulpit“ and “Boy Eats Own Head“.)

Barnum and the writers at the National Enquirer understand human psychology. The unrelenting power of curiosity to pull us in. The sheer pleasure in being shocked and titillated. How to create…

An Itch
That Has To Be Scratched!

I’m assuming that you’re somewhat tech-savvy. You are reading a blog, aren’t you? You might even be reading this blog in your RSS reader. And if you’ve read this far, I can tell you why. It’s because of my title – the headline.

And if you’re one of the many songwriting underdogs (translated: you don’t have a major label deal) and you’re actively marketing your music on the internet, then what’s the first thing people see when they’re poking around iTunes looking for some new music?

Exactly. Your headline – Your Master Salesman-In-Print – Your Title.

A master salesman has a solution to the most pressing problems in your life. He possesses secrets that will make you richer, or happier, or better looking. He knows how to tease your “hot buttons” to just the right level of distress… and only then offer you sweet release through the wonders of what he is selling.

Then how, you ask, can you apply this to songwriting? Well, it’s simple, really.

What direct response song titles have in common… is that they grab the attention of their target audience (California Girls – actually, guys interested in girls)… make an irresistible offer (Please, Please, Please)… and then ask for action (I Want To Hold Your Hand). For a listen. A download. They invite you to click on the link, listen to a free sample, download a 99 cent song. And do it…

Right Now!

They ask for a response from the listener. That’s where the term “direct response” comes from.

This request for action is what sets effective, money-making songwriting apart from the glut of mediocre songwriting out there. If the appeal works, people download the song and the song is a measurable success.

One final thought: Rejoice in the fact that most people haven’t got a clue about what makes a good song title (let alone how to write a direct response song title). This puts you in rare company when you finally do understand the secrets to getting your song played in this blood-thirsty competitive market. Let the rest of the world go about their foolish ways. You’re about to be very busy keeping track of your increasing song downloads

More titles to get your creative juices flowing. Think of who the target audience is and the action involved:
Pump It Up
Gimme Some Lovin’
Baby I Need Your Loving
Let’s Stay Together
Beat It
Rock and Roll All Nite
Girls Just Want to Have Fun
Lively Up Yourself
Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)

There’s many time-tested techniques for writing song titles – and some of them are great – but I’m giving you a technique to put in your arsenal that will help at least some of your songs grab people’s attention (especially useful for the internet). Use it with taste.

First of all, I give MasterWriter two big thumbs up. It has been an invaluable songwriting tool for me since the day I bought just over a year ago.

MasterWriter is a powerful Windows and Mac compatible suite of songwriting tools. MasterWriter is an educational, creative and organizational powerhouse for the professional songwriter and songwriting hobbiest.

When you open MasterWriter, you’re presented with a database of your songs. There’s a robust search engine with filters and grouping capabilities – I’ll be extremely happy if they add Mac OSX Spotlight support. A simple double-click on the song title and you’re in the Lyric area – a fully-functional word processor. You can see your completed lyric sheet or go straight to the Sketches area where you can write and store bits and pieces of your lyric. You can screen-split the completed lyric and the lyric sketches for better editing.

But what I like most about MasterWriter is the Collected Area. Here is a special window that shows your completed lyric or lyric sketch and all of the rhymes and words you’ve collected in MasterWriter’s thesaurus and many dictionaries. The Collected area is where most of your writing will be done. It’s laid out well visually. All of your lyrical choices are right before your eyes.

The rhyme dictionaries are fantastic and thorough. I still pull out my trusted Roget’s Thesaurus from time to time though. There’s something about looking through classes of intellectual thought and the kinesthetic feeling of paper under my fingers that stimulates my creativity. With MasterWriter, you can search rhymes for any word in a number of categories. MasterWriter filters rhymes by Primary, Secondary, Pop-Culture, and a list of your favorite rhymes. It even gives you alternate pronunciations for even more rhyme choices. MasterWriter’s unique rhyming feature is “Sound-Alikes” – a family rhyme tool. MasterWriter also includes rhymed-phrases, an alliteration dictionary (the only one in existence), a pop-culture dictionary, a thesaurus and more.

I also use the stereo hard disk recorder to capture ideas. Unfortunately, you’re limited to 5 minutes of audio at a time but you can record multiple takes. It’s great if you don’t feel like booting up another program and you need to capture an idea fast. Plus, it keeps all of your audio within your song file which is nice for organization. You can even set audio markers for quick location and there’s a MIDI drum loop player with quite a few useful loops (over 250) to keep you inspired.

Another unique feature of MasterWriter is Songuard, their online date-of-creation song registration service. You can keep track of all your song publishing and copyright information in one place and feel secure that you have a solid record of creation.

If you’re serious about becoming a better songwriter, MasterWriter can definitely help. The flash tutorial that comes with MasterWriter is very inspiring and will get you using the program in only minutes.

Best of all, I’ve negotiated a $70 discount for you when you use discount number 2070. Download a free 30-Day Trial at http://www.masterwriter.com or call Toll Free 1-866-892-8844. Remember to use discount number 2070.