How to Make It in the Music Industry

This is a method I rarely use, but my friend Bonnie swears by it, so I’ll share it with you. It can be applied to things other than songwriting too.

Songwriting is often 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. The second part is the hard part, taking an idea and making a finished song out of it.

The coffee cup method is simple. You go to a coffee shop, and you sit down at a table, on your own, and you sit and drink coffee until you finish writing your song. This frees you from distractions and focusses you on the task at hand. You are not permitted to leave until the song is complete, and the more coffee you drink the more you will want to finish it, as I’m sure too much coffee will make you feel ill.

Like I said, I don’t always use this method but I will admit songwriting is often just a matter of ‘turning up’ and putting in the time, and the results come after a hard slog. I’ve used this method before for some tunes, and it can work wonders, usually by ending months of creative procrastination in just a couple of hours that weren’t so hard after all.

Good luck.

I think this article I have found online captures the whole essence of songwriting in a conscise fashion. Of course, nobody can tell you how to write brilliant songs, but advice is helpful. Rather than create an inferior article, you can read it directly from the link below.

The article can be found here:

http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Song

Here is a simple trick that you can use in songs to make them sound a lot slicker.  Contra-melody is a term I have made up to describe it, and the principle is very simple.

If you have a descending bass line or descending chords, you have a melody that is ascending, i.e. for each note the bass line goes down, your singing melody takes a higher note, or vice versa.

This tends to create a more epic feel, and it is why you will hear this kind of melody a lot in classical or theatrical music. It has a knack of sounding great to the listener when used right.

I’d say 90% of the people you see at the amateur open mic nights look really happy to be there, and to be playing, doing what they love. 10% of people are tense, distant, antisocial, and knobheads. Those guys are tough to strike a lasting conversation with, and they care intensley about their music, without an objective point of view. Often this will lead to a person with complicated instrument parts, but the songs are ultimately not very entertaining.  Such a person focusses on the details and not on the bigger picture.

So, if you go up on stage, and tense and quiet, you won’t win many hearts. On the contrary, there is nothing more hypnotic than watching someone who adores playing and plays with a wide smile across their face. In other words,

• SMILE and be happy and bubbly, even if your songs are serious in nature.
• Chat with the audience.
• Thank them for clapping and listening.
• Laugh if you can.
• Enjoy yourself as much as you can, with a positive mental attitude, you will electrify an audience, even if the songs are only average.

Remember, nobody likes a miserable git, so be positive, be bold, be brave, and smile.

When showing off your art to family and friends, or even when you play a gig, you will always receive compliments. Very rare is it for somebody to tell you to your face what’s wrong with it. No art is perfect, people will always have opinions about it, good and bad, that they would prefer to keep to themselves. When you play somebody a piece, often they will want to compliment you whether it’s good or bad, because that’s what friends do. It’s being nice, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

The problem is this. Sometimes, it’s possible to fall into a false sense of security that what you are doing is in fact good, at a time when you really must objective about your art. Ask yourself the honest question about how good it is. Is it a good competitor amongst Jeff Buckley, John Lennon or David Bowie? Could you show them up with your tune and performance? The purpose of this question is not to belittle your music or your ego, but rather to continually remind you to keep pushing to the next level of writing and performance, one step further than the last. Do not let this discourage you, quite the opposite, you should be encouraged. And do not let you friends & family lull you into thinking you’re great. You may only be great by their standards, not by the standards of an A&R man at a record label.

So: Good is the friend who tells you the truth.

Being told you’re rubbish

This will probably also happen at some point. I’ve been told I can’t sing, my songwriting is rubbish and I can’t keep time. In retrospect, all of those things were true, though I didn’t see them at the time. I took it all with a pinch of salt (most of the time) and kept pushing harder and harder to improve. I still get negative feedback, but these days less of ‘give up’ and more constructive stuff like ‘don’t strain your voice’. Listen to what people say, and then act on it in a positive manner.

In the last decade technology has become so available that anybody can sit at home and make a top 10 album if they wanted. But very few do, and here’s why.

You will meet a typical unsuccessful unsigned band or who spend their time ‘working on the first album’. This usually means sitting at home, recording tracks on the computer. Normally, they will produce a mediocre track which goes onto MySpace and gets a few dozen hits. Sometimes they might hand this out at the very rare gigs that this kind of artist plays. And that’s about it. Artists who work in this fashion do not produce professional quality music, only mediocre ‘unsigned’ (unsignable) tracks.

This tends to be because recording is too easy, so recordings are made too early, before enough practice/songwriting has taken place. Recording takes ages and ages to do at home, time which would be better spent practicing, writing, gigging and generally improving.

Let’s look at the ideal artist now. The ideal artist knows nothing about recording, nothing about MySpace, but focusses on practicing and playing. This person is a much tighter musician and much more interested in the songwriting craft than the previous artist described. When making a recording, this person has somebody experienced do the recording work, and may use a pro recording studio. By contrast, this artist or band sees the studio day more like an impotant gig date where the playing must be exceptional and all the writing and practicing is complete and there are no loose ends.

This second kind of artist is far more likely to:

a) Be successful, because they are playing more often.
b) Be better musicians, because they are focussing on the performacne, and leaving the recording to someone else.

So the lesson to learn is, if you are an aspiring musician, focus on your performance and nothing else, and try and delegate tasks like recording and promotion to other people. Ensure that you are absolutely exceptional, so that even if you have to go up and play your song on your own, people will be blown away.

Here are some do’s and don’ts:

Do:

• Practice, practice and practice. This does in fact make perfect. If you want to be as good as Jeff Buckley, practice, practice, practice. It will come. Your goal is to blow people away.
• Delegate non-music tasks such as recording, mixing, promotion or management to other people, people who are better than you, so you can focus on the important stuff. Don’t worry about splitting potential revenues in the future; you will make more money with the help of other people, and remember that 10% of nothing is still nothing.
• Treat any recording days like gigs of the highest importance.
• Buy your recording buddy a bottle vodka before he starts to let him know how much you appreciate his help (and don’t let him drink it before the session!). This makes them more committed to helping you and it’s amazing how much better the results come out!
• Use somebody who can show you work done before and see if you would be happy to have your recording be of this quality. If it’s not someone you know, be aware of sharks who over compliment you on how amazing your music is. They just want your money.

Don’t:

• Get distracted with the details of recording.
• Shell out thousands of pounds on recording equipment. The adverts all say that you can get pro studio recording at home for nothing; but why are good studios still full of clients? They aren’t stupid.
• Use recording as an excuse to not gig. If you make a recording, it might get played to a few dozen people. Every time you play a gig, you are likely to have more people listen to you play than listen to the recording. Ultimately record labels will sign artists who already have built an audience they can sell to. They don’t sign bands with only a dozen fans.

Remember, focus on the performance. Recordings are just performances. The most successful artists have been successful without computers and without crap recordings, so don’t waste your time. If you spend hours every day on the computer, and less time really playing, you will probably stay that way forever, and this will suck.