Rhyming can be a powerful tool for tying the meaning of your words to your music. One way to do this is to use rhyme as an accelerator. For example, let’s say you have a rhyme scheme that rhymes on every other line. We’ll call this an ABAB rhyme scheme. It might look like this: [...]

Contributed by: Cliff Goldmacher of EducatedSongwriter.com Making your way through the maze of a musical career is a complicated endeavor to say the least. It’s doubly so given that you’ll have to make not only the musical decisions but also the critical business decisions along the way. I heard an expression a few years ago [...]

Stage fright is very common problem among performing songwriters. You can feel very confident about a song you wrote and recorded, but when it comes to playing it live, it may be harder for you to deliver the song with as much confidence as you had when you scratched it out on paper. But don’t [...]

The professional demo recording process is a necessary part of the equation for songwriters aspiring to get their material heard by music industry decision-makers and, hopefully, cut by successful recording artists. Despite the fact that hundreds of demos are recorded every week in places like Nashville, New York and Los Angeles, new songwriters often find [...]

Contributed by: Cliff Goldmacher from Educated Songwriter Sometimes songs come easy. You sit down and the whole thing pours out of you almost as if you’re simply transcribing it as it’s handed down to you from the heavens. Those are great but I’ve learned you can’t always count on it working that way. The other [...]

Someone named Richard W submitted a question to a songwriting forum: “How do you deal with self doubt as a songwriter?” Good question. It is something all creative people face. First, let’s take a look at some of our great creative types and their battles with self doubt: The famous painter Agnes Martin said: “An [...]

Make progress with your songwriting using a system for great work. You’ll wake up one day and see your music reached a tipping point.