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  • Songstuff Writer and Artist Development Challenges

    By john

    Independent writers and artists face several large disadvantages when they are compared to signed, mainstream writers and artists.  Disadvantages that add up to making it a competition that indies can’t win. Hell they can’t even compete.   Lack of budget and poor contacts are fairly obvious disadvantages. Lack of experience and a lack of knowledge restricts songwriters and artists alike. Lack of an overall strategy, and a limited set of incomplete tactics, makes for a critical problem
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Joe Hoe

Conceptual Writing workshop 101.

Conceptual Writing workshop 101.           DEFINING CONCEPTUAL WRITING Conceptual writing is a form of “song writing” that involves a specific goal or message. Songs that are “conceptually based” are often built around subjects that are very important to the lyricist. These songs are normally intended to be very serious in nature and are meant to send a powerful message to the listener. Conceptual writing is not just for musicians looking to push an agenda. It

joehoe

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Songstuff Stuff

Feaured Artist - Simon Darveau

Featured Artist - Simon Darveau Montreal based French Canadian artist  Simon is a singer songwriter, self-taught guitar and piano player and wannabe sound engineer in his free time.   Simon is currently building his home studio where he hopes he will spend most of his time writing and producing his own music as well as collaborating with other artists in a near future.   A proud member of "The Travelling Songstuffers", a virtu

Songstuff

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Lisa Gates

Lyrics about grief. Can they be used in music really?

Working with a licensing publisher by shear chance has opened my eyes to the uses of all lyrics.   My current grief has all these poems, thoughts, and full fledge lyrics pouring out of me. I kept thinking there is no way they can be of any use. They are dark and personal. Can anyone really identify with this? (enough to make it worthwhile?)   When I write, I try to make it a timeless scene. One that young and old, present and future can all identify with. Grief can be so spec

Lisa Gates

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Lisa Gates

Nashville was great!

I was thrilled to have a week off to go visit friends up North and take a jaunt to Nashville. Yes, it was colder than Florida by a long shot. The warmth came from visiting with friends and moving toward my goal to move to Nashville this year. It amazes me what we will put with just to see friends and visit new places. All well worth it. Nashville was as expected. A big city with more crime than I want to live with and tons of traffic. On the positive side, the cost of living in the area is

Lisa Gates

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Rudi's Blog

reasons to exercise and my incredible teacher

Still well overweight. Exercise is essential but difficult. I take dancing lessons at the moment. Have done for about a year now. When I started the instructor asked if I was a musician; which impressed me a lot! Dancing is complicated and an ongoing struggle to remember all these steps. I fail most of the time but I'm still trying.   I also took up badminton at the suggestion of my son Ben. Only once a week though. Then it transpired that they break during the summer months. So n

Rudi

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Rudi's Blog

what girlie's like

On Tuesday, I went to Mazak in Worcester in the West Midlands on a work trip. My friend and colleague Danny drove. In the back were the the office interns; three young ladies (girlies to us) who witter & giggle constantly. We felt lucky to be going in a Merc S series hire car for the 280 mile round trip.   The radio was on most of the time. On the return journey a pop-rock tune was being played at one point. Towards the end of the tune, an unusual change occurred. It sounded as if

Rudi

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Musings

My "Success Story"

I was recently asked about what success means to me as a songwriter and musician. Explaining what this broad term means took me good thought. But recently, something that happened made things much easier for me to answer this question. Every individual is on the journey of finding some purpose in life. There are good times and bad that each of us wade through. Though we cannot possibly quantify all of it in a sentence (or a hundred), there are certain experiences that embrace the essence of

Mahesh

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Rudi's Blog

the signal processor method

The amount of knobs I’d want on my ideal guitar would be none at all. I only need one pickup; a single coil in the neck position. I don’t need a tone knob because I leave them on max treble (the one exception being the Hofner Archtop, but that’s not a gigging guitar). Volume? Don’t need it. The expression pedal on the signal processor is always set to ‘volume’, so I use that. It’s also much easier to control volume that way. Once the soundcheck is done, the max volume doesn’t nee

Rudi

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Lisa Gates

Nashville in the air

Ah the smell of coffee! The empty page looking at me. The pen in my hand, patiently waiting for inspiration. Then WHAM! My Twitter lights up with some new followers from Nashville! YES! Love it! That starts the conversation with a co-worker (yup, the day job scenario...) who used to live in Nashville, has contacts there, and knows a realtor there! If you could only see my happy dance. (OK maybe you shouldn't see it! LOL I'm a writer not a dancer!) James, my co-woker, is on board to help me get t

Lisa Gates

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Rudi's Blog

not another one...!

I thought I was going to finish 2016 without getting any more guitars. But no, I have another on the way. The pickup change on the Esprit was supposed to provide me with the Fender sound I miss. It sounds good, but it doesn’t sound like a Fender.   I’ve been considering options for quite a while now. Oddly, actual Fenders are low on my list. I’ve looked at G & L, MusicMan, Flaxwood, Chapman (Yes Rob Chapman. His models are made in Korea and most have ebony fretboards), Yamaha,

Rudi

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Songstuff Stuff

Lyrics Challenge Ballad #1 WInner - Amy Abernathy

"You Rocked The Country" by Amy Abernathy, @ames1212   Amy's piece was selected as the closest to the initial challenge brief. Well done Amy and congratulations!   Read Amy's entry and an interview with her by following the link below: Ballad Challenge #1 Winner Amy Abernathy   To everyone else who took part, many many thanks for getting involved. There were some great lyrics contributed, covering a range of genres. It was great to see your lyrics evolve, tryi

Songstuff

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Rudi's Blog

more pick stuff

One or two of you may know that I’ve spent a deal of time and money on picks. It’s been ongoing for about 2 years now. Changing picks has been of more real benefit than any new guitar or any other piece of kit could’ve been. While renewing the edges & points on favoured worn picks, I have experimented by adding bevels or a modifying the shape using files, emery cloth and whatever has come to hand. Some mods have been successful, others not. I’ve even considered making some, a

Rudi

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Songstuff Stuff

Featured Artist - Danny Rains

Featured Artist - Danny Rains   Songwriting once cast a spell on a wayward youth named Danny Rains. It sent him stumbling headfirst into a mystifying underground world of melodies, harmonies, and words.   Now, many years since, he still returns to that deep well of unknowable truths. In the early morning dark, he often finds himself staring into a fog of half-remembered dreams, feeling around the bed for a pencil or a guitar, hoping to capt

Songstuff

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Rudi's Blog

minimal work is optimal

This hot weather has been making my guitars move. The careful set-ups are compromised or ruined. Only a couple seem ok. I re-adjusted the Les Paul on Monday, just prior to practice. I tried to adjust the Esprit yesterday, but that’s proving a little awkward. Rather than undertake a lengthy comprehensive set up, I thought I would just play it for an hour as it was. ‘As it was’ is with the G, B and ‘e’ sitting higher off the fingerboard than is usual, and the strings are also

Rudi

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John Moxey's Blog

Planning an EP and an Album plus Singles

Well a while ago I shelved plans for an album due to life getting in the road... but here I am back again, in the early stages of planning an EP and an album with accompanying singles.   For now I have a provisional timescale, with the plan to release the single in October, followed by an EP in November. Hopefully then I will release singles and an album to follow in April / May. The tracks are mostly written for both EP and album and recording has begun. Tracks are being selected for

john

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Songstuff Stuff

Featured Artist - Achazia

Achazia Achazia (real name, Gry) is from Oslo, Norway. She is an artist, composer and ethereal musician.   As a gamer, Achazia is fascinated by how music can help you to immerse in games. She has some of her music in multiplayer and mobile games.   Achazia currently has a song, "Empress of Vincenza" placed with fantasy radio station Radio Rivendell. The song is part of a project/compilation called Book of Ages with other compo

john

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Songstuff Stuff

Featured Artist - Dave Bradley

Dave Bradley is a science journalist by day, but by night he's Cambridge's most wannabe singer-songwriter rockstar. Dave has played guitar for four decades or thereabouts and writes and performs acoustic and electric in a range of styles and has been likened to a range of artists, including Glenn Tilbrook, David Bowie and James Taylor, which is very flattering to him, of course, but he really is just a Geordie chancer with a loud shirt and six string...   Click through and support!

Songstuff

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Rudi's Blog

I'm not a Gibson Player

I have a couple of Gibsons, but I am realising that this does not make me a Gibson player. (all that follows only concerns soloing, not chords) I plugged in the Les Paul last night & played for a couple of hours. My regular alternating pick technique didn’t sound as good as it should. It has something to do with the sound (and definitely the sustain) of the guitar. So I concentrated more of hammer-ons & pull-offs. This made it sound much better. There was less pick noise and ma

Rudi

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Surviving the Music Industry

The Value of Knowing Your Worth

"Hey, can you come play my party for free beer?!" "If you come play guitar for me for $50 this time there will be more gigs to follow!" "Do you have some unlicensed or royalty free music I can use for my video?" "I can pay you in (insert social media platform) more followers if you do this for me."   Knowing one's value or worth is the best advice I could ever give anybody wanting to jump in this crazy music industry...OK, the end!! Whew, thank goodness you don't have to

brandonstrings

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Songstuff Stuff

Guitar Tutorial - Learning the Major Scale

Learning scales on your guitar fretboard is very essential though some may argue that it is not absolutely necessary. Legends such as Eric Clapton and BB King never learnt scales but the importance of it cannot be denied.   Scales are like the grammar of the language called music. One of the most important scales in music theory is the Major Scale. Most other scales in music is built upon the major scale. The following article teaches you

Mahesh

0
Songstuff Stuff

Practicing Guitar: Self Discipline or Fun?

Practicing your instrument is an art in itself. For guitarists, some find it a very fun routine while others look at practicing their finger exercises and scales regularly as a discipline and may see it as a boring chore. There is no reason why it can be both: a disciplined process and a fun activity. Finding the right balance between the two is very essential.   The following article gives you insight on what it means to practice with dis

Mahesh

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