(Contributed by BMI Member Cliff Goldmacher)

As a recently transplanted songwriter from Nashville to New York City, I’ve been given the chance to observe, up close, the approaches to songwriting and the songwriting communities in both cities. Also, I feel I should mention that the following observations are really more my impressions than hard facts.

It’s also probably easiest to start with a similarity between New York and Nashville as they’re readily apparent and then explain how, within that similarity, one city differs from the other.

First of all, both cities have huge songwriting populations. The depth and breadth of talent in both places encompass many more genres that the obvious country music for Nashville and pop/rock music for New York. There are great pop writers in the suburbs of Nashville and extremely accomplished country songwriters living in Greenwich Village. In response to the need for country demos for New Yorkers, I’ve actually started a service where using streaming audio and both my New York and Nashville studios, I’m making country demos for New York songwriters using my Nashville studio, session musicians and singers while we listen in real time and full-fidelity from New York. For more info, visit my website.

One difference between the two songwriting communities though, is how easy they are to locate. Because Nashville’s artistic community is made up predominantly of singers, songwriters and musicians, it’s much easier to find the music/songwriting community there. New York, on the other hand, has a wonderful songwriter population, but it’s mixed in with the countless other artists and creative types that live there and is thus obvious. In other words, it takes a little more effort to find the songwriters in New York, but believe me, they’re there.

Before moving from Nashville to New York, I’d taken several writing trips a year up to New York and, by a process or trial and error, I found a core group of NYC songwriters that became my “go-to” people on every trip. This way, when I eventually moved to New York, I felt like I was instantly part of the community - even though I had to discover it little by little.

Although both New York and Nashville have large numbers of songwriters, cowriting is much more a part of the day to day routine in Nashville. It’s not unusual for a Nashville writer to have five cowriting appointments in a week where they meet with a different cowriter every day in a publishing company office on Music Row.

This happens for several reasons:

First of all, as a hired staff songwriter for a Nashville publishing company, you are given a yearly quota of songs that you need to fulfill. The more songs you write, the more quickly you’ll fulfill your quota. Publishers make a real effort to connect songwriters they think will work well together and go as far as to set up cowriting appointments for their writers. As a result, it’s fairly common in Nashville to be set up on a “blind date” cowrite.

Secondly, even though you’re only credited with half a song for a cowrite, it’s easier to motivate yourself to write if you’ve got someone to collaborate with. The act of scheduling appointments and being expected to show up really does make it easier to create on a schedule. This approach seems odd to a lot of New York writers who are either artists themselves and used to writing when inspiration hits or are used to working with artists whose schedules are much less predictable.

Speaking of artists, another similarity in the two cities is that they are both home to major record labels and their signed artists. This alone attracts a huge number of songwriters to both cities. The difference here is that country music artists are still largely dependent upon outside songs for their projects. In New York, bands tend to write their own material and it is less common for these artists to go looking for outside songs. Occasionally songwriters will be paired with these bands/artists in New York and that is a way for the writers to end up with cuts on these acts. Of course, all of these distinctions are lessening as more country artists write and cowrite their albums as well.

At the end of the day, both communities are great places to work and create. Ironically, after living in Nashville, working as a staff songwriter and writing for the country market for twelve years, my first cut was with a New York writer and was recorded by an Irish tenor on Universal Records named Ronan Tynan. In my opinion, it was the blend of our New York and Nashville songwriting sensibilities that came together to create that song. What I mean by this is that somewhere between the soaring melody more suited to pop and the lyric which had more of a country attention to detail, we came up with a classical crossover song. So, if you’re a Nashville writer thinking about working in New York (or vice versa) I’d highly recommend it.

Sometimes it’s the differences that create the best art.

Company: Cliff Goldmacher Music Production

Website: www.cliffgoldmacher.com

Credentials: Staff songwriter for Wrensong Music Publishing in Nashville, Cut on Ronan Tynan’s Universal Classics release “Ronan”,Co-writer and producer of a song in Trust the Man (movie opens August 18th), editorial contributor to EQ Magazine.

Projects I’m working on:
http://www.cliffgoldmacher.com/producer/producer.htm