Category: Song Starters

• February 8, 2017

  Ryan Adams: Let Your Ego Come Out to Play

  I love this video of Ryan Adams revealing his daily songwriting method, that he calls ‘Stacks’. It basically involves taking one reference book (like the Roget’s International Thesaurus) on one side, and another random book—a novel perhaps—on the other side. Open each to a random page. Scan the page of the novel until a line…

• April 12, 2016

  ASCAP Blog – ‘Bringing Cliches Back From the Dead’

  I’m very chuffed to have had this article published on the ASCAP Blog, ‘We Create Music’. Click on the image to access the article.

• August 12, 2011

  Eagle Rock Fall Songwriters Retreat

    EAGLE ROCK SONGWRITERS RETREAT – OCTOBER 8 2011   Former Berklee Songwriting faculty Keppie Coutts presents the Eagle Rock Fall Songwriters Retreat on Sunday, October 8!   Fall Retreat will involve a series of creative exercises and time-proven writing techniques in the morning, equipping you with processes to bring your unique perspective and voice…

• May 20, 2011

  Getting Fruitful Feedback – (Eagle Rock Songwriters Retreat this weekend!)

  One the most important things in the journey of a songwriter is being part of a community who can give you helpful feedback. Your friends, parents and audience will always be more than willing to tell you how much they love your songs (aka how much they just love you), and sometimes how much they…

• February 22, 2011

  Song Starter: De-Tune Your Guitar

  If you write on the guitar, try tuning the strings into an unfamiliar tuning. You will start hearing sounds you like rather than sounds that you might think are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. I find doing this helpful, particularly when I start to get frustrated about doing the same thing over and over on the guitar,…