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Episode #1 “How do you write about a broad concept like “the extinction of species”? Doris Folkens, Ontario, Canada Click below to access a free downloadable PDF of this lesson! It contains the information summarized, key writing exercises, and song examples. How do you get the songwriting process happening when you want to write about a…
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The music I listen to doesn’t always (umm…actually, never!) sounds like the music I make. Here are some of my favourite albums I listened to in 2018. Nils Frahm – Solo Remains Strawberry Heritage – Overgrowth Anais Mitchell – Hadestown Melody Gardot – Currency of Man Adanowsky – El Idolo Julia Michaels – Nervous System…
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“All you need is 3 chords and the truth”…I’ve heard that attributed to Bob Dylan. In Dylan’s wonderful song, Ballad of Hollis Brown, he has clearly revised his position. Apparently all you need is one chord and a good story where everyone dies.
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One of the most incisive essays I have ever read on the art of writing is the short and stunning piece, ‘Politics and the English Language‘, written by George Orwell in 1947. Here, Orwell described a cliche as a ‘dying metaphor’. Orwell follows up with a succinct list of guides to follow: Never use a…
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The song ‘Hallelujah’ by Leonard Cohen is now thought of as a glittering jewel of genius. But the story of its rise to recognition reveals that it was the thinnest thread of circumstance that brought the song to the attention of the public imagination at all. Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of the song in his wonderful…
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I have a public confession to make. I have a serious problem—a profound weakness, and it only gets worse with age. I am completely, totally, helplessly in love with reading. But not just one book. I find myself embroiled, entangled, enmeshed, ensnared, and ensnarled in reading sometimes more than 10 books at a time. It’s not healthy.…
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SISTER URSULINE is a Sydney-based cello-wielding songwriter with a soft spot for pigeons, bloomers, and hidden historical stories of woe-begone women and confounding men. The first song she brought to me became the name-sake of her alter ego, Sister Ursuline. Sister Ursuline was a real person—a well-meaning former nun who somehow mistakenly ended up interned…