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Honing Your Craft, Songwriting

Oct 31, 2018 06:00 AM

Dan Reifsnyder

The 5 Best Songwriting Competitions (And 3 Key Tips for Success)

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Songwriting competitions are an excellent way to raise your profile, get a little cash, and boost your confidence all in one shot. The sheer amount of songwriting competitions out there, however, can be overwhelming. Which ones are reputable? Which ones aren't? Not to mention that the crème de la crème, so to speak, can be potentially intimidating to apply to.

In this post, we'll walk you through the process and give you some pointers – as well as highlighting five of the more important competitions.

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Songwriting, Honing Your Craft

Jul 2, 2018 06:00 AM

Dan Reifsnyder

4 Ways Songwriters Can Get Their Songs to Artists

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Many songwriters who are just starting out struggle with having a drawer full of songs they feel are ready, but they don't have the resources to get them to an artist. I'll admit this can be a daunting task. To help guide songwriters through that sometimes stressful process of connecting with artists who might want to record their songs, we've compiled these four helpful tips. Have one of your own? Let us know in the comments!

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Honing Your Craft, Songwriting

May 23, 2018 02:39 PM

Dan Reifsnyder

3 Reasons Why Your Song Can't Break the Rules (Yet)

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In both teaching songwriting as well as talking with fellow writers, I often hear, “Such and such a song defies conventions and is a major hit, yet mine, which does something similar gets rejected! What gives?”

It's a difficult issue to address, and the reasons why songs that “break the rules” are successful are numerous – which I'll get into here.

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Musician Success Guide, Strategies for Success, Songwriting

May 2, 2018 06:00 PM

Dan Reifsnyder

3 Ways Your Smart Phone Ruins Your Creativity as a Songwriter

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There aren't many people left that don't have smartphones of some type (myself included), and those that don't have one of these hyper-connected pocket computers tend to get looked at with a certain amount of skepticism and even scorn.

I was having a discussion with a fellow songwriter recently about how our writing has changed since the advent of these miraculous devices, and we both agreed that it certainly has a downside, especially for these three key reasons.

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Honing Your Craft, Songwriting

Apr 9, 2018 06:00 AM

Charlotte Yates

Scaffolding: How to Use Structure to Map Out the Energy Flow of Your Song

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This article originally appeared on Soundfly.

 

Songs are almost always built from sections that will feel very familiar, and yet they still have the power to bring us delightful surprises. How songs are put together has varied over the decades, based on taste, culture, and innovation, but there are some fairly standard musical segments in a song that contain their own specific functions. While the order will vary here and there, the scaffolding itself is easy identifiable.

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