Tag Archives: Song Writing

Nobody Knows How Long Creation Takes

Posted on August 11, 2022 by tropicaltheartist

Nobody who does not create a form of art has any understanding of how long it takes to create art in that form. Ask a non-songwriter how long it takes to write a song and you’ll get some alarming answers. … Continue reading →

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Forgetting to Breathe

Posted on June 7, 2022 by tropicaltheartist

There’s a mistake that less experienced composers sometimes make. When writing music for singers, brass or woodwind players, they write phrases so long and elaborate that nobody can actually perform them. They forget to leave spaces to breathe. Creativity in … Continue reading →

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Time is Running Out

Posted on May 27, 2022 by tropicaltheartist

Mortality, eh? You’ve got to laugh. If you’re lucky, you will get old. The trouble is: your creative ideas and plans won’t care. You’ll probably be planning creative projects as if you were a teenager, many of which you can’t … Continue reading →

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Progress-Limiting Habits

Posted on May 24, 2022 by tropicaltheartist

We’re creatures of habit. One of our dominant modes of learning is repetition. We start slowly, but by developing a habit for doing, we improve incrementally. We get better at things by doing them over and over again, initially badly, … Continue reading →

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Prosodic Event Mapping in Songwriting

Posted on May 18, 2022 by tropicaltheartist

What are you talking about? There’s music in the spoken word. Poets know it. So do songwriters. Phrases and words have a rhythm. The way we stress and emphasise the syllables in our utterances makes accented rhythmic patterns. Some words … Continue reading →

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Imprecise Music Production Terms

Posted on May 15, 2022 by tropicaltheartist

What even are these, exactly? These are all terms you’ll often hear in music production sessions, but do we all know and agree on what they mean? Can we measure them? Do we even know how to do them? I … Continue reading →

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How Do You Engage the Emotionally Unavailable?

Posted on May 14, 2022 by tropicaltheartist

Research indicates that lyrics have gradually become less positive, over the past 60 years. Our tunes contain more swear words and have gotten sexier too. There are more references to having lots of money. It’s all a bit grim and … Continue reading →

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Nesting Behaviour

Posted on December 21, 2018 by tropicaltheartist

When expectant mothers are nearly due, they often begin fussing excessively about preparations for the soon to be newborn. The decor of the nursery will take on a heightened urgency. Everything has to be just so, or the mother-to-be will … Continue reading →

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Art Smuggling

Posted on October 3, 2018 by tropicaltheartist

There’s something important about LP records that the inventors of the compact cassette, compact disc and streaming music services evidently failed to grasp. If they were to be believed, these music delivery formats had a single function – to deliver … Continue reading →

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If You Want…

Posted on September 16, 2018 by tropicaltheartist

If you want to be a better Composer Song writer Music producer Rhythm guitarist Bass player Band member Drum machine programmer Dancer Drum machine designer Musician Empathic human being then takes some drum lessons. I’ve started taking drum lessons and … Continue reading →

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