How Many Here Make Their Living By Songwriting (or Want To)?

[Colonel]

I was wondering how many of us here make a living songwriting, have collected any money for writing, want to go pro, or like it as a hobby.

I have been writing full time for about five years. It can be rocky sometimes, but to do what you love as a profession is cool.

I would love to see some posts on how to take that "next step" in songwriting.

When I started checking out other writers on the internet, there was a lot of questions but few answers.

Like, by golly, what is the very first step after writing that cotton picker? And how to really reach that "right" person with your song?

And the biggest of all for me was, how blown out a demo is needed?

If you folks would like to, I'd love to start a discussion about these and other questions on pro writing.

Colonel Robert

[john]

Hey

Great idea. Personally I've made some money writing, but most of my songs have been for me and when I was full time my money came from performance etc. Recently I've been writing a lot more again, some for an album, others for pitching to production companies (film, tv, radio etc.). Funnily enough I haven't pitched songs to other artists, though I think many I have would be suitable.

Good topic.

Cheers

John

[Nightwolf]

I'm sure it is a cop out, but I don't have time after a busy work day to spend any worthwhile time honing my skills as a a songwriter. I would Love to be able to do it full time, but lately I am not even able to do it part time. I have never made money from Music outside of touring with various bands over the years.

[roxhythe]

Colonel, I am definitely interested. I do not make my living off songwriting; I have a day job (as a city manager). After having done the "weekend musician" thing for a number of years, I do not actually want to give up the day job--it is a source of too much inspiration--but I would like to make *more* of my living off songwriting, and maybe be able to be just a part-time city manager before I die.

And yes, in my own trying to find information, I've run into the same dilemma you described--lots of questions, but nobody with answers. To paraphrase Shakespeare, Lay on, MacDuff--I've got m'ears on. Thanks.

Joe

[Donna]

The main answer I've seen is to subscribe to "Taxi".

Colnel, your questions are good ones (esp about how blown out of a demo).

Joe, now that is edifying, the inspiration you get as a city mgr. I get it, too (esp lately) at my little day job. You're right, why give that up completely?

[roxhythe]

Donna, I've noticed "inspiration dissipation" happen to a lot of writers who get "discovered." They get forced into a grueling touring schedule of the "every night a different town" variety, and they're also under pressure to *produce*--they have to have new CDs out constantly, that they'll be promoting on the tours.

But we write what we know, right? If your life becomes limited to nothing but traveling and concerts, and the only people you get to hang with that you know are the band, what do you write about? You start seeing songs from some of these guys about playing in a band, and being on tour, and I consider that a danger signal: it means you need to get out more, and get a life. The quality of the output goes down, too, because (my opinion) you're not putting your best stuff on an album, you're putting *everything* on an album, c**p and all, because you have to *produce*, and you no longer get serious critiques any more, you just have mindless adorers telling you everything you do is perfect.

About the only writer who really managed to escape the trap was Dylan--remember how he'd periodically just disappear for months at a time, and nobody'd have any idea where he was, and then he'd surface again with a bunch of new material? He managed to get away with it mostly because he was Dylan. Most artists never do.

Like the clown says in In Living Color, "Homey don' play dat game." My intent is to be a better writer, and I don't want other stuff getting in the way. I've fantasized about what I'd do if I ever got "discovered"--I assume most folks do--and I wouldn't (or hope I wouldn't) do the Trap Thing. I don't think I could tolerate doing tours for more than half the time, and I'd almost like to do it all at once, sort of an extension of what I call "Concert Season"--the 3-4 months of the year when I schedule all my big (yeah, right) gigs. The rest of the time, I want to be Normal. I want to be a Real Person who gets to see his family, and spend time with friends, and work a real job (preferably the inspiration-heavy one I've got), and play little gigs and jam on the weekends. If the record company wasn't going to let me do that, then we just would not have a deal. They might want me, but I don't (and hopefully wouldn't) need them.

Long answer to a short question--sorry.

Joe

[roxhythe]

I'll add one more thing, since nobody's talking (Colonel, where is you? Need professional input).

I had the chance a couple of years ago to talk to one of these professional types who judged song contests, and he said he'd naver rank high anything that wasn't a professionally-produced demo with full instrumentation, no matter what the contest rules said, and he didn't think any of the other judges would, either. Since then, I've made sure anything I submitted to a contest was a professionally-produced demo with full instrumentation.

I've also heard (but have no backup for the "information") that record-company A&R folks, and their ilk, want profesdsionally-done demos, too. Even though what they'll do when (or if) they take on your song is to have it re-recorded, substituting their fiddle player for your fiddle player, yada yada, it seems they're incapable of imagining what something would sound like. So I figure what I have done professionally can do double-duty, as it were.

Of course, when one has gone to all that trouble and expense, what one has is a recording that can be put on a record and offered for sale, or sent to radio stations and played on the air. Just like the Big Kids, in other words. And therefore, I have done that--the former, anyway; I'm working on the latter.

Joe

[Lazz]

what is the very first step after writing that cotton picker?

how to really reach that "right" person with your song?

how blown out a demo is needed?

Important questions, good Colonel.

For me, as to the first, one thing I love to do just for sheer unrealistically sensual self-pleasure of the procedure, is write out a lead sheet by hand. Though it may sound wierdly perverted to many, I get deep satisfaction from the mechanical design process. Trying to make it as practical and pretty as possible. Measuring out bar lengths and note placements. Forcing print to be neat and tidy and legible - unlike normal handwriting indecipherable even to myself. Keeping the route-map clear and simple. Marking intro, el Signo, coda, repeats, with extravagant flourishes able to be sight-read by any passing muso at a couple of paces. Then I stick it in the book with the others. From time to time, courtesy of fine friends in preparation for a session perhaps, they make it into software in that format which makes 'em look like they come from one of the 'Real Book' volumes. Otherwise, I just scan the hand-written chart. Whichever - I end up with a *.pdf file of the song. So if anyone should ever want to do the tune, I can send 'em a copy. And all the time I'm adding to this private masturbatory indulgence called the Lazzerini songbook - a total shameless pleasure - I now have no guilty secrets left to share with scandal-sheets for an undisclosed sum. Planning to self-publish a song-collection in handy fake-book format some time in the future. Once the market happens.

I also register publishing copyright with my local performing rights society. They don't require the lead-sheet for me to do this, of course. I just like to have one handy. All they want to know is the title and who owns it (the title of the title, I guess).

Then it's on to addressing the issues at the next two steps you've got listed.

Those lead-sheets only come in handy for those discerning souls wishing to add the songs to their performance repertoire. Presently, there are four artists with my monicker in their gig-pad. Getting name-checked to a hip listening audience is a literary form of viral marketing for me, I think, while also offering the occasional vanity indulgences of puffed pride. A few CD reviews here and there are beginning to mention our names with approval. I like that. In a couple of months, one of these special artistes is set to sing our songs at a most reputable room on the NY circuit. Hopefully, the material will make some useful impact in distant broader significant reaches of the business and we will be noticed a little more. And also hopefully, other artists/performers will gradually start taking a little bit more notice, at least, than before.

People need to hear the stuff.

The stuff needs to get heard.

It’s difficult to do make those things happen – but once it starts rolling, it should get easier.

Even those who now have a chart have to have been able to have heard the song in order to decide they want to do it before they get to request the music.

So we definitely need a demo as well.

How blown-out should it be ?

I only think I understand what you mean by ‘blown-out’ – but I’m not really certain for sure.

I need a demo to be pretty basic and simple and as good as we can make it. I want the song to stand and communicate. I want the setting to allow play-room for arrangers’ and producers’ imaginations. I want the session performances to be convincing and authentic without being overly professionally intimidating. I want the auditioning listener to be able to believe they can own the material. I have only just started to get the hang of doing this psychological-comfort bollocks and pulling off practical production logistics. But that’s our rough thinking and rationale right now.

Our songs all have targets in mind throughout conception and design. Yet even on the odd occasions where I have been able to stick the demo right directly into the sweaty hands of one of the intended recipients, I have been disappointed by the inability to actually ensure they are gonna sit down purposefully ready and willing to properly listen and study the stuff even after they’ve looked me in the eye with a soft and sincere ‘thanks very much’ while pocketing the demo somewhere and probably forgetting about it immediately.

Getting it to the right people, getting it heard, getting them to listen seems for me, at my own patient snail slow pace, to be dependent upon graceful persistence and the schmoozy building and development of professional relationships. We are starting to make head-way in this. And, as I have already said, I believe it should get easier once a reputation for a certain style of pro-quality starts rolling along and accumulating more believers with coin at each turn.

Needless to say, I have the keys to no city, and I am only such a complete farkin expert in the first place because I am a solid student of failure from a career of direct experience – my measurable income from these most valiant efforts stands at less than fifty bucks so far and, if full accounting for associated expenses are reckoned, they inhabit the wild far reaches of extreme negative quantity.

I could always get a proper job.

Have two of them already.

And if Steve can believe in faeries then we still have a chance at a decent earner one day.

At the moment though, as far as making a living, I have no illusions.

Things could change.

Any minute.

I believe.

I'm working on the latter.

Joe

Curious.

Right now, I'm working on a latte.

[Colonel]

WOW!

Great responses. You all have pointed out what I have learned. That we all come to the dance from different places and with different ideas.

Perhaps, there is not a cookie cutter plan for success in this biz. Where if you do these three things you will be successful.

But again, how do you know what "they" want? I believe the answer is, you don't.

When I was sending Little David Wilkins a cd of my tunes I asked him did he want male or female? Fast or slow?

He gave to me what was the best answer I've ever received.

"Send me your best three songs."

Colonel Robert

P.S.

I have send "blown out" and simple demos. I am reminded of the "old" days in country music when you would lay a simple guitar/piano & vocal track. Put in on a cassette, wrap the lyric sheet around the tape without a tape case, then hold it all together with a rubberband!

You could slip a couple of these in your pocket or purse. If you met someone you thought could help your career, shake hands with them while slipping them the cassette.

We called that the "Nashville Handshake."

CR

[Rudi]

Hi Colonel, I'm the guitarist with 'Blown Out', I never realized our little demo CD had travelled so far!

The 'Nashville Handshake' - had to laugh at that one!