Right now my website is having a major revamp, and when it goes live I will have moved away from Wix. I'm pretty excited by how it's going to look, hopefully including a very cool visual feature to see and stream my released music and all my co-writes. As part of my website upgrade I am moving my Music Industry Blog onto the Medium website and app. It's designed for blogging and writing and has lots of great content from other writers that you can access alongside my own articles. I'm hoping to attract a bit more traffic to it there, and maybe a bit more traffic back to my website also. There ..read more

I like trying out new things when it comes to lyric writing, so I had to have a go with this Artificial Intelligence (AI) assisted lyric writer called Lyric Studio: https://lyricstudio.net/songs It doesn't write them for you; think of it more like something to bounce an idea off but get new suggestions back. These lyrics are the result of a very short test: The devil is the fool So let me be your angel Make me believe in you Gonna be what you want me to be Cos I believe in love But you don't give a damn And every day I die A little more, a little deeper Killing me so sweetly As they spill from ..read more

January has come and gone, and perhaps the fast pace and motivation of the New Year is now feeling a little bit weary? It doesn’t have to be the New Year to experience your mojo going AWOL! This can hit at any time! Perhaps one of your music goals was to carve more time out to actually songwrite. Then just as you felt motivated to start, you hit a creative block. You wanted to write, but what do you write about? You thought you understood writer's block, and it was just a case of writing anything and not editing, but what you found is that you were blocked before even beginning. You didn’t wan ..read more

Maybe you’ve dreamt about forming a songwriting team with some high flyers in Los Angeles, or a European producer? Well when you write lyrics for tracks that is exactly what can happen In this situation you are given an existing track, sometimes a melody too, and you are expected to write lyrics to match. This is quite often to a preset title or theme. That might seem constraining, but actually it helps you focus on the lyrical content, it’s just a matter of making the words fit the track, working with it, and not fighting against it. SoundBetter platform The other great thing about this work ..read more

It's important to keep your songwriting sharp; here are some methods you can try to keep everything sharp.  ,Chorus Get a title, either from your list that you keep, or find a random title idea from a book or newspaper headline. Anything you like, whether it makes sense or not. Write in plain language what it could mean Write down a single emotion that most strongly connects to it Write down how you want the listener to feel after they have heard the song: happy, sad, empowered, wanna dance E.g. Title: Kettle Chip Meaning: You feel fragile and might break After feeling: Empowered to fee ..read more

Songwriting in the Andalusian hills - it's a tough job, but someone had to do it! As part of my year long songwriting mentoring with the London based Songwriting Academy, I got to spend a whole week in a remote hilltop village entirely inhabited by songwriters. We all had the opportunity to write with Grammy Nominees and Songwriter stardom!  I mean you don’t often sit and have lunch with the woman who co-wrote ‘Genie in a bottle’, or spend the day playing guitar alongside the guy who wrote ‘Waiting for tonight’ So what did I learn from my days in the sun? Showing Up Everyday You don’t ha ..read more

Track writing is when the music is already done, and only the lyrics and topline melody have to be added.  There are producers who find it easy to create outstanding tracks, but really struggle to write words and fit interesting melodies to them.  Writing lyrics for tracks is a needed skill within the industry.  If you can extend that and provide a melody too (you don’t have to be able to sing, someone else can do that for you based on a rough guide vocal) then you will find yourself invaluable to some producers. I’ve done this myself several times and either been paid to write ..read more

If you don't maintain your house things start to deteriorate. It's been a few weeks since I talked about the SongHouse, and look at the state of it! To avoid this happening with your own writing, and to help you out of creative ruts there are a few practice techniques you can try: Flow of conscious / Free writing You are a writer, that means you WRITE.  You are not an EDITOR in this exercise! Start by setting yourself a short time, maybe just 1 or 2 minutes. Use a timer with an alarm. Settle in your favourite chair or space with a comfortable book, or notepad and a pen that you find easy ..read more

It’s cool to be Indie right? Yeah!, but is it fair to put the pressures of a signed artist on yourself, when you are everything including social media manager, booking manager, tour bus driver, roadie, merch seller, oh and the actual singer / songwriter / artist?! You don’t want a label holding you back and telling you what to do right? True, but you also don’t have that same label backing you physically, and financially. So are we expecting too much of ourselves as an Indie Artist? I believe there is this real danger of creating a great amount of stress by having all these big expectations. M ..read more

How do you build a fanbase? One fan at a time! You don’t start out by booking an arena and hoping people will show up. You wouldn’t dream of doing that, praying that by some social media reach, promo package or ad budget that you would reach enough new people that will actually turn up. As I’ve said before, because there is so much music created and uploaded everyday to Spotify (60,000 songs a day - insane!) you have to find a way for people to know you exist and become YOUR audience. You are not just going to get ‘discovered’ without some effort from your part! So where do you start? Starting ..read more