About My Output – Behind The Scott Cooley Release Schedule Commitment

The countdown continues.  It’s a permanent advertisement of an expectation for fans and for myself that I’ve established as a constant reminder at the bottom of the left sidebar menu on scottcooley.com.  I’ve created a pattern that was premeditated to release a record of new songs every two years, and the countdown timer widget displays how many days remain until the next one.  As I post this, that number is 141.  When you’re an independent recording artist and do-it-all-yourselfer, you can put out new music whenever you want to.  I could just wait until I’m ready, take my time, and leave people up in the air and wondering without a clue.  Instead, I choose to reassure existing fans another is on the way, and when they can get it.  I do this according to a schedule for several reasons.

It’s self-imposed, for starters.  Every two years, in even-numbered years, on my birthday (June 21^st, which usually coincides with the summer solstice), I make available for sale a new album that has 13 songs on it.  There have been a couple original instrumentals, a few “Trad. Arr. By’s” a.k.a. public domain cover songs, and one or two co-writes with my lovely wife Lenore, but otherwise, they are all new original songs where I wrote the music and the lyrics.  Additionally, aside from my lovely wife Lenore occasionally playing accordion, keyboard, flute, marimba, or singing background vocals on a few songs here and there as a live-in “guest” studio musician, they all feature me singing all the vocals and playing all the instruments myself. 

I sing lead and background vocals, and play all acoustic instruments, including rhythm acoustic guitar, lead guitar on acoustic, slide guitar on a Weissenborn Hawaiian acoustic lap steel guitar, acoustic non-upright bass guitar, harmonica, marimba, snare drum with brush, djembe, congas, bongos, bhodran, wood slit drum, tambourine, hi-hat cymbal, shaker, washboard, and some cowbell, but never enough.  I think that about covers it, but anything else you hear in any of the songs, I made the sound.  These are the things each album have in common with each other.  As a music consumer, I like knowing what I'm going to get to a certain extent, and there's value in knowing an artist I like will not let me down with their next album.  It's comforting.

I decided on this schedule due to my typical output, and like it or not, I put out 13 new songs every two years.  Maybe I should say “ready or not,” because I don’t spend too much time perfecting the recordings, and even if I had more time between releases, I wouldn’t want to get them all perfect.  I come close to how I originally envision each song, get the basic idea down with a few tracks, usually arranged how I wanted, and produced how I wanted, and call it good, and then move on to the next song.  Listening back now, there are a few things I would re-do if I ever hit the lotto and could afford time in a real studio.  A few where I’d change a couple words, sync up the pronunciation of certain syllables in my singing with the music a little better, transpose a few songs into a better key for my vocal range, play the instrumental break in a different spot in the song maybe, touch up a few things here and there I guess.  For the most part though, they’re the best I could do without spending too much time on it – that is to say without it feeling like a big hassle to start over.

Although I’ve recently committed to writing one new song per week, which I’ve previously blogged about here in a recent post, overall through the years prior to the new 2014 1song/week thing, my average productivity level and keeper ratio seems to be about one good song per month, even though sometimes I might go months without writing any songs at all, or write three good ones in one week.  So, the resulting output gave me approximately 24 songs to choose from in a 2-year period, so a little over half of them would end up on an album.  It just seems to work out that way over time, and I’ve managed to stay steadily employed for over a decade now where I have a regular day job, generally working 8-5, M-F.  That leaves me a couple hours in the evenings on weekdays and several hours on Saturdays and Sundays to spend on writing and recording new songs.  I don’t always use those available times, but I would say out of maybe 20 hrs. of available time per week for these activities, I average using about 7 hours per week.  Another way you could look at it, when averaged out, would be one hour per day on this hobby of mine, even though I have long droughts.

I don’t know how people with kids and other free-time pursuits could do much more than me, but I know some who manage to.  I wrote my first song in 1990 or 1991, and I think I’ve written over 500 songs since then, maybe closer to 600 by now, and here it is 2014, so call it 25 years and 600 songs, rounding a little, and by my old way of doing math, that’s about 24 songs per year, or two per month.  Those are total songs though, and the keepers are essentially the ones I’ve released, which when I release my 2014 album later this summer, will only be around 75 released songs I considered keepers.  Looking back, some of those 75 songs wouldn’t make the cut now, but for whatever reason, my weeding out criteria at the time told me they were good enough at the time to release.

Crunching numbers and figuring out averages isn’t really what dictates my commitment though.  The main thing I notice about recording artists I am a fan of is that when you look at their discographies, they rarely release an album every year, sometimes every two years, but usually it’s more sporadic, where they’ll go three or more years between releases .  That has always bugged me a little, since they don’t have day jobs.  When you’re a fan, you crave more, and you’d like it to be predictable.  You figure the major label artists who are popular and famous have plenty of time to focus on writing and recording because they’re not doing gigs non-stop, year-round and they don’t have a 40+ hr per week day job taking up their time like me.  So, I figure I can at least come up with 13 decent songs every two years, and although I’ve felt ahead of the game a little at times, I’ve also been worried I won’t be able to deliver and meet my own self-imposed release schedule deadline at times.  Yes, it’s true that with so many songs already written in my catalog, I could always resurrect an old borderliner, spruce it up enough to pass my criteria when it came down to the wire, but I generally want new songs written since the last release on each next album.  Right now, only a few months away from my next release, I’m a little worried I won’t be able to pull it off, but I’m getting there.

I have to bring up Sufjan Stevens in a topic like this since he sort of supposedly claimed at one time he was going to write an album for each of the fifty states, and he was around age 30 at the time I think, and so far, only wrote one for Michigan and Illinois.  He later said it was sort of a publicity gimmick when people asked him if he could pull off such an ambitious commitment.  I don’t know what was said or not said exactly, but that was the gist of what I read about it online.  I don’t know the guy, but it just so happens I have a distant relative who is married to his sister…I think.  Just an interesting side note there, and I suppose I could get his official contact info and ask him myself if I really wanted to know badly enough, but I don’t care.  The point is, I’ve come up with a reasonable release rate for me, and so far, I’m mildly comfortable with being able to honor it as advertised.  Actually, I’ve never specifically said I’m going to keep this up indefinitely, but I guess that’s what I would like to do if I can, and if I remain interested in it.  I can only imagine the pressure some artists must feel when there’s a contract involved. 

We’ve all known about popular recording artists who just mysteriously stop releasing albums despite apparent demand.  Why didn’t a great songwriter like Chuck Berry keep cranking out new songs all these years and release more albums of new material?  Some lose their mojo maybe, some find new passions, some get dropped from their record companies.  Others take long hiatuses and are wildly popular again when they reunite, maybe they release a new album ten years after the last one and it does well.  Bands break up, then reunite, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes it’s just nostalgia and touring to make money again with no new album.  Sometimes members quit or get kicked out or die, sometimes they get replaced, some could never be replaced.  Who wouldn’t buy a new Beatles album with Paul and Ringo playing with John and George’s offspring in the band, or a new Led Zeppelin album with John Bonham’s son on drums?  Albums like that would sell like hotcakes you would think.  Other artists who are long dead somehow magically keep having new releases of previously-unreleased material decades after they’re long gone.  Record companies and the estates of the departed artists know there’s a demand, so it happens.  People like Bob Dylan and Neil Young seem to be releasing the “basement tape” types of recordings, outtakes, b-sides, rare demos, alternate versions, etc. while they’re still alive, which is cool I think.  I’m sure they’ve each got tons of non-keeper songs no one will ever hear though.  That’s the case with me.

Sometimes you need to make a personal commitment, or even a public one for that matter, to keep you properly motivated to keep going.  There is a ton of great music in the world today made by artists who dealt with years of rejection, negative critical reviews, and the like.  They stuck with it, kept going, didn’t give up, and it eventually paid off.  Some get more famous and popular after they die, which is weird.  Others finally get recognition and gain a larger audience later in life.  In this era of the music business there’s no excuse for not releasing new material since the cost of production and distribution is so low.  I’m proof you don’t have to spend much of your own money, nor do you need to be signed to a record label, to gain a following and create a demand for your music.  It’s a DIY business now more than ever, and we now know that this rock and roll thing isn’t a fad that is only for the young.  It’s totally possible for recording artists and musicians to continue to have an increasing following well into their 50s, 60s, and even 70s. 

I’d like to hold out hope that I’ll be in that category, where as time passes, more people will take notice of my music, and that they’ll appreciate the consistency and quality of the output.  As a music fan myself, it’s great to discover a band or solo artist, check out their past releases, and then also know you can look forward to new records in the near future from them.  My release schedule of a new album every two years also allows me to ensure a quality level I’m comfortable with.  A quality level that is good for me, anyway.  Delays are commonplace in most construction projects.  Building things, creating things, they often take longer than you originally envisioned or estimated, and unforeseen circumstances beyond your control crop up.  Consistency and quality, yep, that’s what’s behind this little unofficial deadline I’ve set for myself. 

If I continue to gain fans along the way, it will make me feel good that they are not only discovering my past catalog of material, but also that they can look forward to new future releases too.  Music is fun, and I have no intention of giving up any time soon.  Saying I’ll release a new full-length album every two years creates a little extra motivation to stay in the game and keep having fun with it, and then delivering on that promise gives me a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that I’m not disappointing myself or the growing group of fans out there either.  If all goes well in the coming months, six albums in one decade, 2004-2014 will be currently available come June 21.  For the first five officially-released albums, there are only 1-2 songs on each I might consider leaving off if I were to do it over.  So far, so good, and 2014 is looking like it will live up to the promise as well and not let anyone down.  

Why The Violent Femmes’ First Album Was, Is And Always Will Be A Classic

It's easy to name many recording artists whose first albums were clearly better than their subsequent ones, and unfortunately, the Violent Femmes are one of them.  I liked the vast majority of the songs on their self-titled debut, which obviously made any subsequent album disappointing in comparison.  While bands should be able to change their style and not feel pressure to clone a past success, it is too bad they didn't give us more of what we loved about that first album, but nonetheless understandable since it would be impossible to live up to.

It would be difficult to duplicate an album so youthful due to the simple fact of aging.  Without a doubt, the band’s legacy is their first album, which I am arguing was an instant classic.  Seems like even if they resolve their differences about royalties and personality conflicts with drummers or whatever, they've matured, and for that reason alone won't be able to easily repeat what most of us loved about them early in their career.  

This is one of those bands where people like me were careful about who we admitted we liked the band to.  I was a somewhat average, heterosexual 16 year old guy who was hesitant to like this group when I first heard their band name, and further, after hearing the singer's somewhat gayish-sounding voice, but I got past my initial homophobia and embraced the "femme" aspect just as I eventually thought the Rocky Horror Picture Show was pretty cool, despite it's gayness.  The love songs were universal and seemed to be a dude singing about or to a chick, and were ambiguous anyway, if not intentionally so.

The reason wasn't a case of a straight guy getting in touch with his feminine side necessarily, but it was the fact that this music was impossible to not like for many reasons.  This was something totally new and bold, and I couldn't help really liking it, but I wasn't sure I could easily explain why back in 82 or 83 - I thought they were badass because they dared to be different.  When I discovered that album, and gave it a chance, it made a lasting impact on me and I still consider it one of the best albums ever made.  I thought I'd blog about why I thought it was so great, so here goes.

What I loved about that first Violent Femmes album was the combination of 1) the unique instrumental sound (acoustic bass guitar, minimalist drums w/ brush, and acoustic guitar all playing a variety of tempos with hints of reggae, country, blues, folk, and punk rock), 2) the unique sound of the singer's voice (raw, whiny, full of rebellious emotion - from lust to rage), and 3) the lyrical content, full of universally-appealing high school angst.  

That wasn't all.  4) Usage of explicit lyrics and the xylophone were surprise bonuses that added to the appeal. Topping it all off was 5) this artsy theme of contrast - the music went from slow to fast, the subject matter juxtaposed dark and light, etc., and then the always-important band name reflected that, and finally, the cover art of the girl tied it all together perfectly for an irresistable package.

It is for these aforementioned five main reasons I consider it a classic and believe it will stand the test of time.  Another indicator is I recently moved to a university town, and they still play it on college radio.  You never hear REM anymore, but they still play VF. The mostly-acoustic, simple, minimal sound played with passion and aggression led me to later have an appreciation for MTV’s Unplugged show starting in the early 90s, which features electric rock bands going mostly acoustic.  It also led me to discover similar music such as early T-Rex, Meat Puppets II, Pixies, the Pogues, Gogol Bordello, and several others.

About a decade after the Violent Femmes album was released, I became an amateur songwriter and musician myself, and I must say the sound of this record was and still is a big influence.  Of course, I consider Gordon Gano to be one of my songwriting heroes as well.  They appealed to all different types of people I would imagine, but probably their biggest fans were like me - just a few years younger than the band members themselves when that record got popular.  I know there are others out there with similar opinions, which is good to know, like this guy for example:

http://zenarchery.com/2008/04/reasons-why-the-violent-femmes-are-not-as-revered-as-the-pixies-and-some-reasons-why-they-ought-to-be-a-life-memoir/

One Song Per Week – Pros and Cons

I recently joined a song-per-week club where new original songs are posted online for review.  You write a song, you record it, you upload it, you review and comment on other’s posted songs, and read other’s reviews of songs you posted.  That’s all you do.  Simple enough.  Right now, it’s just myself and another songwriter who agreed to try this. 

The tool we decided to try for this is YouTube, believe it or not.  Using a webcam, we record ourselves on our computers, then upload the videos.  There’s a built-in comment feature we use to review the other guy’s songs.  You just type stuff and click a button.  We could’ve used SoundCloud or some other free online file sharing technology like DropBox or just Google Drive or something, but didn’t.  We could’ve used some type of online group forum service or even live video like Skype or Hangouts, but we didn’t want to have it be real-time.  YouTube is really easy to use.  We don’t need to see each other necessarily, so the video aspect doesn’t add anything really.  It’s all free, and the bonus is we set it up so that it’s automatically private.  That means only the two of us can listen to, or “view” in this case, each other’s songs.  To make it work, we had to use it with the integrated Google Plus social network, which enables more than one person to have sufficient manager rights to post to the same channel.

Since we’re geographically dispersed, a way to send each other songs online for free, instead of tapes or CDs by mail, was what we wanted, and we also wanted a way to provide critiques without having to type emails separately.  It’s easy to have the comment feature within the tool.  We also didn’t want the general public to be able to view our song videos, and this was easy to configure.  YouTube w/ associated Google + meets all of our requirements.  A bonus is the Like/Dislike (thumb’s up/thumb’s down) buttons, which we use as a simple rating system.  Analytics within the control panel let you see which are the “keepers” this way.  Additionally, you can add songs to playlists, which are basically folders you can name.  We’ve chosen to name ours by the due date.  You can check it out here:

• The Channel:  http://www.youtube.com/user/songexchange 
• The Page:  https://plus.google.com/105778028162547615138

Even though you can’t hear any of the privately-shared songs, you can read about the rules we set up for our group on the About tabs.  In the future, we might decide to invite others to join.  Also, in the future, we might decide to “make public” our favorites.  The guidelines should be universally useful to any similar online song critique group. 

This post, however, isn’t about the tools and rules.  Although the technology is fine, what I mean to examine and describe here is 1) the motivation behind the decision to start this group or club or whatever you want to call it, and 2) what I’ve gotten out of it so far.

The main reason we agreed to do this was that it would be like signing up for some recurring group thing, like a sport, or lessons, or a class of some kind – such things motivate you to “show up” once you’ve made the commitment.  So, establishing one song a week as the deliverable and a deadline (happens to be every Tuesday) would force us to be more prolific, and to write songs according to a schedule.  We thought this would produce more songs overall than our current production output, and indeed it has.  So, yes, having to deliver on a schedule does make you write more songs than you normally would.  For me, I sometimes will write three in one night, but other times go three months without writing anything.  So, theoretically, this would be better for me. 

We also thought a usual keeper ratio would apply, just as it has over long periods of time where we’ve each noticed that no matter how sporadic, once we each had a batch of new songs written, about ¼ of them were pretty good.  This hasn’t been the case with me so far, but it might prove to be over the long haul.  I’ll just have to wait and see.  It makes me realize moving to Nashville and writing to meet a deadline or a quota would be a challenge.  For some reason, it spoils the creativity.  I find myself writing something just to meet the requirement, rather than waiting to be inspired by the muse.  Waiting for the muse to show up can take a long time sometimes.  I am starting to think that taking breaks from writing can be a good thing, just like with relationships – an absence making the heart grow fonder type of thing.  On the other hand, maybe the increased frequency will help hone my skills, just as practice for anything usually helps you get better at it.

I’m waiting to see if this experiment will be a detriment to my enjoyment of the craft.  If I’m writing songs that are below my own standards just to meet a deadline, consistently, maybe I won’t be better off.  On the other hand, maybe practice will pay off eventually by improving my overall skill level, and even if the keeper ratio doesn’t improve, I’ll still feel like I have recyclable portions of songs for future use, and that alone may make it worthwhile.  So far, I’m six weeks into this, and out of my six songs so far, there’s only one where I like the lyrics, and portions of a couple others where I like the music.  Time will tell.  Visit again sometime and I will post an update.

Nashville’s Not An Option…For Now, Anyway

I’m not interested in being famous.  I don’t have the right personality to enjoy the life of a celebrity.  That’s one reason I’ve never been interested in performing live.  Don’t get me wrong – applause and compliments are addictive, and I’ve experienced that, and loved it of course.  I have an addictive personality, so I instinctively know to stay away from something like that, just as with alcohol or gambling.

I would, however, like it if someone famous recorded and released one of my songs, and the song became famous, and the artist even more famous.  I do want to have more people appreciate my songs, and I’m not sure what that says about me, but someone who is a vehicle for that – someone better at the delivery aspect – is who I need to find.  I’ve heard you need to go to Nashville for that to happen, or possibly NY or LA. 

It’s the end of 2013, and when I look at the lists of the most popular songs of the last year, I realize I barely know any of the artists’ names.  I don’t recognize any of the songs either.  When I listen to these songs, I find myself not liking many of them.  Then I try to listen to more by that artist, and again, not finding much I like. 

There’s either terrible hip hop, or terrible mainstream country, and there doesn’t seem to be any rock and roll anymore.  If there is, it has a lot of synthesized drums and keyboards.  It’s a weird time for a songwriter like me to be pitching songs due to the weirdness of what’s popular now. 

They say if you’re going to be a non-performing songwriter, it’s all about who you know, and you have to go to Nashville and network and make connections.  A guy from Michigan with a day job can’t pre-arrange meetings for a vacation down there very easily.  I’m thinking it would be a waste of time anyway, since I don’t write the type of stuff I hear on the radio, nor do I want to.

So, that leaves me with the prospect of selling my own recordings of my own songs, and I’ve got to do it online, since there are no record stores anymore.  In doing so, would anyone looking for a song for a movie or a famous singer’s next album ever run across one of my songs for consideration?  No, probably not, and so I would still need to pitch if I wanted that to happen I suppose.

Questioning why I continue to pursue this hobby makes me think of next steps, getting to another level, etc. which is a natural thing.  In doing so, I question whether I’m good enough to do so.  The reason I don’t give it up and replace it with something else in that free time slot is that I really enjoy it. 

I get a kick out of listening back to my recordings years later, and am a little amazed that without any lessons or training of any kind, I have five or six songs that are real songs, and pretty darned good.  Comparing yourself to others is something that isn’t healthy.  It’s good for me, and what’s good for me, may not be good for a famous artist, but I have a few songs that might be close. 

If presented to those seeking material for an artist to record, they might agree.  There is something to be said for garage rock being played acoustically, and that’s my sound.  It’s quite different than someone trained at Berkley or Julliard who would be writing for a play or a movie or a ballad for a pop star.  It’s rock and roll, which has always been about rebellion, and not too serious, and about having fun and not getting too fancy.  Taking that thought a step further into punk, you’ve got the anti-establishment, ant-mainstream.

They say you have to study what’s commercially successful in the mainstream in order to sell a song to a recording artist.  I don’t do that.  I don’t care.  I don’t listen to the radio or watch MTV.  I don’t care what’s in the top 40.  In fact, I’m primarily influenced by what was on the radio when I was a kid in the 70s.  So, I write what I write, the way I like to do it, and never have an artist in mind, or a style based on what’s currently popular. 

Sure, I could quit my day job, find something similar in Nashville, and after I move there, see if anyone is interested in any of my songs.  I could hang out at the right places in the evenings, get involved in the community, meet people.  Would that help me get a cut?  Probably not, if I don’t pay attention to what the great singers are looking for.  I have my own weird style – a blend of different genres. 

I could go to a studio and bend them into what a popular artist would sound like, and maybe that would work.  I could possibly do that from Michigan – just pay a demo service down there to do a fully countrified version of some of my songs, and then figure out who to pitch them to and how to go about that.

Sounds like a lot of effort, doesn’t it?  I’m sure there are countless others like me whose passion for songwriting led them to do just that – pack up and move to music city.  I’m sure they find places to get the applause, the compliments after the show, the local open mic or song pull or songwriter in the round deals, or those house concert things.  Maybe they’ve made connections, have spent hard-earned cash on pro demos, pitched them, maybe got a hold or two.

Then you have to wonder – are they happier?  Are they discouraged?  Was the place all it was cracked up to be?  Has rejection and criticism gotten them down to the point they wish they hadn’t done it?  I wonder what that’s all like.  I wonder what about those who achieve the cut by a major label artist.  What is the pressure like after that?  What about those who’ve never been able to duplicate that, and many years have gone by?  Are they better off?  Would I trade being in that position for being close to family and friends here in my home state?

All I have are unanswered questions here.  We’ve all heard it said that it’s better to have tried and failed than to not have tried at all.  If I believe that, those people are better off than me.  Maybe they can write books about their experiences now, be instructors at song camps, instead of writing “what if” blog posts like me. 

Personally, I’ve gone for it before with certain pursuits in my life I had contemplated, sometimes against my gut feeling, and they didn’t work out, and I didn’t gain anything from the experience.  I call those regrets.  So far, my gut tells me I’m not good enough…..yet.  Would I get better any faster if I were to dive into that world?  Probably, but then again, I might give up faster, and not have enjoyed all these years of my hobby.  Nashville is out for now.  Thanks to this blog no one reads, I’ve typed my way through to that conclusion.

Songwriting, It's A Lifestyle

I guess more than anything, this blog is a lifestyle blog.  It’s about songwriting, which is something I like to do.  It’s a part of my lifestyle.  It’s one of the many things I do fairly consistently in my free time.  Once in a while, I blog about it here.  I just sort of share my experiences for no apparent reason.  I’m not good enough or expert enough or experienced enough or credentialed enough to write a column for American Songwriter magazine, for example.  This blog is not meant to be educational necessarily.  I don’t know why anyone would read it, really.  I don’t specifically provide instruction to people who aspire to write songs.  As a recording artist, I don’t share my experiences on the road during a tour like touring musicians would, because I’m not a touring musician.  So, it’s not aimed at my fans either.  Maybe by the end of this post, I’ll figure out why this might be of interest to anyone.

More than anything, what is notable about me being a songwriter is that I am self-taught in all aspects of the craft.  I suppose if you’re someone who has already figured out how to write songs yourself, you might be interested in the struggles I share, as a sort of misery-loves-company type of thing.  Like many a blogger out there, I tend to rant and rave about the frustrations I experience related to writing and recording songs.  Actually, I love the writing and recording part, but it’s the “getting an audience” part that has been difficult for me.  I’m not someone who will ever aspire to be a performing songwriter who plays gigs and gets fans from playing live shows.  I hold out hope that I can gain an audience just by having an online presence, and that eventually, recommendation will increase my fan base and music sales.  I’m not big on promotion, advertising, or marketing myself, so herein lies a dilemma that is at the core of what I blog about most – the desire to be heard by more people, combined with a passion only for the creative part of the craft.

It used to be that record companies sunk tons of money into an artist they signed to get them publicity, and that this was the only way the famous bands we all know and love became famous in the first place.  Technology has made it possible for musicians to be self-contained, self-employed professionals who can gain large audiences without record companies.  Although there are some overnight successes and those who have the right idea go viral at the right time, the majority of these acts pay dues by building a fan base by relentless touring, and by having teams of people who help them handle the promotion and publicity.  Creative types typically don’t have much interest in the business side of music.  With a day job, no desire to play live, and no extra cash to hire people to help grow my audience, I’m one of several million.  Although I’ve found free ways to have an online presence and cheap ways to get my music in online stores, and cheap ways to record my songs with a decent level of quality at home, it’s not enough.  I may have been among the first wave of people to do all these things totally alone and very inexpensively, but now everyone and their brother can record a song at home and put it on iTunes for sale and have a website.

Writing about your struggles to gain a greater audience is one thing, but sharing the joy of your passions is another.  Maybe this blog would be more interesting to more people if I wasn’t trying to get them to buy my music, but rather, just to focus on what it’s like to spend a few hours a week writing and recording songs.  Since I know there are millions of others like me out there, maybe they’d be interested in reading about the experiences of someone else who has a similar life.  That’s got to be the audience this blog will gain, if any.  Fans of my music might like to hear how the next album is coming along too.

The best thing I can say about this hobby of mine is that I can’t go very long without doing it, without thinking about it at least.  I wrote a song recently that started in my head on the way to work one morning.  I’d written about half the chorus during my 10 minute commute.  Then I worked all day, and when I got home, I had the whole chorus in about 5 minutes.  Then from that, I knew what I wanted the verses to include, content-wise, since this was a story-type song.  So, I made a few notes, and then all that was left was looking up a couple rhymes at rhymezone.com (free rhyming dictionary online) and writing a bridge.  After about 20 minutes, I had the whole song typed up in a word document.  What I’m really glad about was remembering my morning thoughts.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had great ideas and lines for a song in my head just from thinking in my car, but no recorder or pen and paper to write them down, then forgot them, and they’re lost forever.  All I remembered was that I wanted to remember the great song ideas, but when you wait too long, it’s all over.

The beauty of this hobby is, you can always write more, even when you lose a song.  My memory ain’t what it used to be, but that’s why a big part of my time spent on songwriting is actually typing the lyrics and typing the chords once I have those figured out.  So, with this song, I already had one of those things they call a dummy melody in my head.  Just reading the words to myself in my head made me envision the music, since the lyrics were intentionally written with a certain meter in mind – you know – close to the same number of syllables in each line and so forth.  I never have trouble picking a key, due to my limited vocal range, so then it was just a matter of getting out the guitar and finding some chord changes that worked.  Typing up the lyrics is the key, because after I do that and just read them to myself, I can “hear” in my mind where the chord changes will be.

Sometimes I will even type an X above the word or syllable where the chord would be strummed throughout the song.  Then I’ve got lyrics, and where the chords are to be played, and all that is left is choosing those chords.  Typically, certain chords in a song in a certain key go well with each other – you know, those “chord family” deals.  Sometimes though, you can go outside those rules and still make it work.  This song was one of those.  So, after about 10 more minutes, I had the chords nailed down and I just reach over the guitar in my lap to type those on the lyric document.  I’m lazy, so I only put the chord letter symbols in the first verse, chorus and bridge, knowing they repeat for subsequent sections.

The next step was to hit record on my cassette recorder I use for first takes.  I recorded it once all the way through, rewound, then listened back, when I discovered a few little things to tweak pronunciation-wise and arrangement-wise, then made those adjustments to my document and hit record again.  This time, when I listened back, it was exactly how I envisioned it that morning in my car.  Keeper, done with the songwriting part.  Now, when I get (make) time to record next in my digital multitrack software on my computer with microphones and everything, I’ll do that again, and separately record bass, drums, etc.  That’s another thing – you can “hear in your mind” what instrumentation is appropriate for the song as well, very early when writing it.  So, there I had a finished song in maybe 45 minutes.  It will probably take me, for this particular one, about another hour to get the final studio recording done.  So, yeah, about 2 hours per song, start to finish is not too far off from the time spent.

I release a new album of 13 songs every two years, so it’s like one every two months.  It’s usually a an hour or so on a weeknight, a couple nights per week on average, and then about two Saturdays per month for longer recording sessions where I crank out two songs in three hours or so.  Some songs don’t come so easy, and those are the ones that don’t end up being that great.  All of the above is fun for me.  It’s literally a blast, and if I go a month or so without doing any of the above, I get a little bummed out from missing it.  That should give you a glimpse into what the time spent is like for people like me who consider themselves songwriters.  If you look at it this way, it’s a fairly large part of my lifestyle, and I’m thankful I’m able to do it, whether I sell any records or not!  

Why The Pope Shits In The Woods

To answer this question, and relate it to my free-time hobby of writing songs and recording them, I have to express my thoughts about wanting people to have access to my music while not wanting to spend money on promoting it or playing live shows.  I need to reach deep into my psyche and try to examine why just writing songs and recording them for myself is not enough.  Wax warning:  This post might be construed as all three, but do you ever notice anyone waxing anything but philosophic, poetic or nostalgic?  Maybe some novelists with PhDs and knowledge of literary criticism do to impress each other, but we aren’t them, are we?  Songwriters write songs to try to impress each other I suppose, but what does that say about us?  The pseudo-intellectuals of the world and those who self-identify with being some variation of geek/nerd/dweeb, etc., and who also happen to write songs, may very well get into using big words and trying to out-do each other that way.  Some with songwriting expertise advise the twist on a tired cliche thing as an ingredient for a good song, so if you follow that, maybe you are going to wax something else in your song, or maybe waxing bikini, as in to assume the identity of a hot babe’s bikini.  I’m getting away from the point of this post already - which is to answer the question in the title as it relates to the craft.  

I know, it’s a wacky proposition, but I’ll get there, and if you read along, you’ll get the point, which is that if art is only appreciated by its creator, it doesn’t really exist.  Another way to put this idea is that you must make people aware of your music, like it or not, to truly get the most out of the craft of writing songs.  My wife cured me of being a swearer long ago, but I thought using the only swear word I’ve ever used in one of my songs was necessary for this topic, just as it was absolutely necessary in my most popular song, Mackinac Island (HS&F).  In the continuing saga of the non-performing songwriter/home recording hobbyist and hermit who knows deep down in a bygone music era not too long ago he’d have no business in the music business, but now finds himself able to just barely get a virtual foot in the door, I’m going to attempt to answer one of life’s funniest questions and relate it to my sad struggle to be discovered, heard, and appreciated.

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”  I’m pretty sure this was a line from one of my all-time favorite movies, The Big Lebowski, delivered hilariously by the main character the Dude, played by Jeff Bridges.  It’s a funny twist on “Is The Pope Catholic?,”  which is what you say in place of “of course” in reply to a yes/no question.  

There are a lot of variations of this we’ve heard throughout our lives, which all sort of combine elements of philosophy, science, and comedy:

• If a bear shits in the woods, and there is no one around to smell it, does it still stink?
• If a tree falls in a forest, and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?
• If a man speaks in the forest, and there’s no woman around to hear him, is he still wrong?

The answer isn’t always so obvious though, in my way of thinking.  People tend to immediately accept an intended meaning when hearing these, and after laughing, rarely discuss alternate meaning interpretations.  Without delving deeply into metaphysics, and hopefully not getting myself into deep shit for using a swear word and speaking my mind and offending people, I’m going to describe how the classic tree version applies to songwriting.  If you write songs and never play them in the presence of other people, or never record them and make those recordings available for other people to listen to, then they are the trees.  

If you don’t take a risk, you can’t get the reward, but then again, if you’re not careful, you can find yourself up shit creek without a paddle.  That is, with no income to offset your albeit modest investment in making your music available, which frustrates you to the point where you become a harsh ranter, raving foul-mouthed filth to offend and thereby hypocritically use your way with words to criticize and cause harm instead of helpful laughter, you blog it out and carry on.  Some bail out and swim to shore, admitting defeat, but not me.  I’m raging on in a changing music business that allows amateur hacks like me to peddle my wares, trying to remember not to take it all too seriously, and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that many who’ve come before and achieved sales, did so with wares I personally consider substandard to my own.

Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream

That’s a great song we all know.  If life is but a dream, then you’re not really reading this blog, and the moon in the sky at night doesn’t exist, whether people see it or not.  This concept applies to music marketing/promotion/advertising.  It used to be you could put the CD in the brick-and-mortar record store, and there was a chance a shopper would see it, be intrigued by the album title, the artist name, the cover artwork, the song titles, and/or the liner notes.  Those stores don’t exist anymore, but the same principle on the web means people have to visit the music store site, otherwise, the music doesn’t exist either.  The science behind audience definition/targeting and search optimization isn’t applicable and doesn’t matter when there’s no physical matter to apply it to.  But there’s a revelatory philosophical principle about this simple old tune that is not only a good approach to music, but also to living your life:  Don’t try too hard, and have fun.  I take it, and I advise it, for life and for songwriting.  You typically want to share the things you’ve had fun creating though, with the hope that they’ll be appreciated in a positive way.

Those seven words sum up my approach to this songwriting hobby very well, but the reason I record and distribute (the part that’s not fun) is based on a lack of certainty that this is all a dream.  The “what if?” thoughts of there being no afterlife, along with a belief that art doesn’t exist without appreciation, drives the “work” I put in to be an independent recording artist.  Fortunately, I’ve become aware of some appreciation of my art due to this work.  That appreciation is my fuel for continuing to be a songwriter.  Let the trees continue to fall.  What if the pope, while shitting in the woods, notices a bear also shitting nearby, while simultaneously hearing a tree falling nearby, and a woman is there to verify and provide feedback that it’s all sick and wrong? Songwriters need the feedback, or else their songs don’t exist, so they can either play live in a bar, or use CD Baby to get on iTunes.  It begs another question:  If you’re like me and people won’t pay to see you play live, despite trying, why shouldn’t you also give up when no one will pay .99 to download your MP3.  The answer:  a few people actually have paid that .99, which gives me hope that more of the same will occur, that I’ll get repeat customers if I repeat the process of releasing more trees into the wild, so at a nominal cost, why wouldn’t I trudge on?

We’ve all been alienators and bridge-burners at one time or another in our lives, and some find those personalities a little more interesting.  Maybe the rebels, the ne’er-do-wells, the slackers, the class clowns of the world write better songs.  If you’re going to answer a question with a question, it helps if it’s both funny and deep.  Serious questions are no fun at all.  Take the typical cop question “do you know why I pulled you over?” and think that through.  I always want to say something like “I’m flattered that from briefly glancing at me and my car, you had enough observatory power to gather information and surmise that I might have the type of extra sensory perception that has given me the ability to read your mind.”..and then follow that up with the word “Yes.”  Not a wise strategy.  The cops I’ve met don’t seem to be deep thinkers.  And one might think the smart and expected answer is simply “no.”  After the yes, the cop would then likely retort with something like, “why?,” to which I would then reply, “how would knowing the answer to that help you protect and serve any better than you already are?”  If life is but a dream, a maximum fine and jail time is a nightmare, not to mention the risk of random violence cops are prone to committing, such as being shot and killed by the cop right then and there.  

The “their word against yours power” isn’t fair, and if you’re dead, you don’t care if a passerby got it on video with their phone as evidence for justice in court when the cop lies and claims you were reaching for a weapon, especially if there’s no afterlife.  When a question isn’t funny, and it’s totally on the surface, it’s meant for places like courts of law, not private life conversations with real people.  Lawyers are skilled with asking questions they already know the answers to, and seem to in a sick way really take joy in playing dumb and acting as if they really don’t know the answer when they ask the question.  It’s too bad that their profession trains them for this, which they then inevitably use in their personal lives.  

What you do for a living, unfortunately, can shape the person you are, and certain traits don’t work outside of work.  Winning friends and influencing people is not accomplished by beating people up with words and using questions as weapons.  On the other hand, the hand I’m talking about here, replying to a question that would seemingly have a simple, predictable answer with a funny, philosophical question is always pleasantly thought-provoking.  Add in an unexpected swear word, and you’ve got the makings of an almost sure-fire way to get people to crack up and like you.  When you hear such a question, there’s a brief second before you laugh where you think of the alternate implications it presents - you may not want to admit it, but you’ve experienced it.  

Those who like to self-identify with being intellectual, pseudo or not, will take this ball and run with it, making a game out of pointing out the technicalities and logic flaws involved.  They’ll have follow-up questions of their own in response to your question replies, such as the living thing argument - creatures present with the capability of hearing, the possibility of aliens in parallel dimensions travelling faster than the speed of sound past the tree when it fell, ad nauseum.  Your stereotypical comic book / science fiction fan will have a field day, and it will annoy you, because you’re not like them, and you’re sad realizing they’ll never think it’s funny like you do to hear someone say “Does the pope shit in the woods?”  You’ll glaze over as they ramble, and you’ll start thinking of great new song lyrics but have no pen and paper or recorder.  That’s a bummer, man.  Makes you want to say “fuck it, let’s go bowling.”

To truly expose the underlying, hidden truths behind a question where the answer is obviously going to be yes, you’ve got to talk about why the Pope would shit in the woods in the first place.  You figure they mostly hang out in big cities, travel in luxury popemobiles, spend a lot of time in churches with modern plumbing.  You can brainstorm this.  You can try to think pope, papal, paper, toilet paper, papal paper, no paper handy while in woods, the convenience of the robe vs. pants, you picture squatting, them being right-wing conservatives, yet probably not opposed to walking in woods.  Say you’re a pope, the urge hits, and you happen to be in some woods, it could happen, probably has happened.  I’ll go out on a limb here and say there have been a lot of popes, and I hereby submit they’ve all shat in the woods before,  because there ain’t no papal porta johns in woods, not even when in Rome.

I’m digressing, so to get back on track and do as they do, I’ll write a prayer:  Dear God, please let more people hear and appreciate my songs.  That’s another thing with the internet lately - with all the free streaming going on, you don’t know if your song was played and liked by someone or not. Yes, star trek fans out there, some such services have analytics available, but most don’t for free anyway, and because of google, who pays for analytics nowadays?  People who work in sales I guess. The sales aren’t there, but who knows, maybe lots of people listened and loved my songs, but didn’t feel like e-mailing me to let me know, or didn’t feel like posting a kind review,  or recommending it, or clicking some sort of Like or +1 button.  It’s a hassle to do all that when you’re just out to find and listen to some interesting music for free and move on.  So there’s the finding it thing, and then there’s the liking it, and then there’s me finding out about any of this actually occurring.  

Even the best, most famous songwriter/artists out there don’t get paid for their art like they used to, and even the ultra-popular make more from playing live shows than selling records now.  Despite the business changing, it’s pretty cool that the potential is there for someone to be present with hearing ability when the tree falls, and at least I’m doing what’s necessary to stink up the Amazon, Google Play and iTunes forests with my shitty music, and it’s better that someone could smell it, than to not be that bear at all.  For you fellow songwriters out there, remember:  don’t work too hard, have fun, be the bear.  Luckily, technology has made it so that there’s not much to lose.  There are a billion others like me - with a microphone, computer, and guitar who make up words, try to sing, and hold out hope for something accidental and viral to happen with little expense or effort to boost our audience.  Like the lottery, you can’t win it if you don’t have the ticket.  Well, I’ve offended the intellectual community, the legal community, and the religious right community, so I’ll conclude with a question for you left-leaning, tree-hugging hipsters in the forest out there:  If an internet music fan finds and free-cloudstreams a songwriter/recording artist’s song, and the songwriter never becomes aware that it happened, did it?

Why I Hope Pono Takes Off and My Unsolicited Advice for Neil Young

Names are more important than you think for products and services to do well.  It’s a big reason why Bandcamp and Soundcloud are cool.  The word wiki is cool, especially when you figure out what they do and that the word means quick in Hawaiian.  Which brings me Pono, another Hawaiian word meaning righteousness or maybe just righteous.  I know as little about the word as the new music service it’s named after.  What I do know is that Neil Young is spearheading a company to make higher-quality music available to everyone.  He showed the device on Letterman – an unusually large and oddly-shaped orange thing that kids won’t think is as cool as their new smartwatch music player for sure.  Kids only know low-quality compressed MP3 and iPods. 

To them, vinyl records are things hip-hop DJs scratch, and otherwise, are uncool, old-fashioned, grandparent things and not even used by their parents who listen to CDs.  Kids these days – there might be pockets of them who have record players and buy something from Jack White, but that’s a really small market.  So Neil’s initial market will be his fanbase which includes me, then he’ll have to hope it catches on with the kids.  If it does a little bit, Sony and Apple and Amazon and Google will follow suit and improve their quality, and then Neil will have another achievement to add to his legacy for kick-starting this long-overdue thing.  This itself is somewhat of a contradiction on a few levels.  Neil isn’t known for perfect and pristine music-making like Pink Floyd or Boston that would really shine in high def.  If you read up on Neil, he gets on kicks.  He supposedly got on a kick about digital being the thing of the future back in the 80s and invested in it, then changed his mind and went back to analog. 

If you are a Neil fan, you like the fact that he does what he wants and gets away with it – there’s just something about the guy that is appealing.  He can sell stuff, no problem, especially if it’s music-related.  He’s sold toy trains and electric cars, or maybe if he hasn’t really sold many, he’s tried to make a difference in the world in his own way that makes sense to him.  Willie Nelson sells bio diesel, or at least his bus runs on it.  These guys try to make a difference, and it’s admirable.  Neil’s got connections, he’s influential, likable.  He changes styles a lot, and you like that.  If you read about him, he’s one of many people in the music business who believe records should be made live in the studio, with few overdubs, real instruments, on all-analog equipment, then converted from some type of tape to high-quality digital. 

Many argue the digital-from scratch recording equipment and software like ProTools produces better-sounding, higher-quality music than Neil’s current older-school approach.  You can google music engineer forums and read all kinds of arguments for and against this approach.  You read about what the human ear can and can’t hear, frequency-wise, and learn about hertz and bits and stuff you don’t care about so much.  We all want the highest quality music we can get, and we are willing to pay extra for it, that’s the bottom line.  We care about quality, and we know MP3s don’t sound as good as our records did under the needle when they were new, even if we had cheap stereo turntables. 

CDs are pretty good quality, but are inconvenient.  We all carry around phones with us everywhere now, so there’s got to be an easy way to get high-quality music on them that’s low-hassle.  Neil needs to make something that can be a part of your phone, not some weird-shaped orange deal that is an extra thing you’ve got to carry around in addition to your phone.  The Googles and Amazons of the world have had trouble getting all the “major” record companies on board to compete with Apple’s iTunes, so that’s obviously a hurdle, as is the streaming digital locker in the cloud concept, which is here to stay.  It’s going to take more bandwidth and space, which costs more, but we’re getting there. 

The technology exists for high quality music, and with cheaper cloud storage and faster internet connections, there’s got to be a way to buy and organize your music collection on a website, and listen to it on your mobile phone, and have it be 24-bit/196hz or 1 bit or DSD or SACD or FLAC or OggVorbis or whatever the higher-quality standard is going to be.  We all agree on this, so Neil needs an app with online store/storage/download/sync//radio/streaming service to get it on people’s phones somehow, not the weird orange thing.  I’ll buy the weird orange thing myself, and put up with the hassle of carrying around an extra gadget in addition to my phone, and other Neil fans will too, but eventually, I’m going to want the whole shebang on my phone. 

Another thing is, iTunes won’t let the non-major independent artist to distribute unless they go through an aggregator.  Totally annoying.  There are tons of us out there who can go direct on Amazon, direct on Google, direct on Bandcamp, but have to go through Tunecore or CDBaby to get on iTunes.  If Neil only goes after the major label artists or the next step down from major, that will suck, just as MP3s suck.  Neil should start by letting in independent artists who are DIY’ers without a record deal with an established record company first.  It should be a slow-building, grassroots thing from the ground up.  His approach we’ve read about so far was to first get the majors on board, just like Google and Spotify did.  That’s backwards thinking, in my opinion, and it would really build momentum if something were in place for independent artists to distribute their high-quality recordings at service launch time, along with the major label artists. 

Of course, Neil is himself a major label artist, and might not fully recognize or appreciate the huge audience of independent artists out there in the world who would love to distribute to Pono directly right away.  Affordable home recording equipment and digital technology has made it possible for millions to get their music out into the world without getting lucky with a major label contract first.  He shouldn’t blow us off. 

So, to sum up my advice for Neil:  1) ditch the orange thing and make it work on everyone’s phones, or better yet - make the orange thing be a smartphone as well, and 2) let in the independent artists for direct DIY distribution at launch time.  It has great potential and I hope it works, if for no other reason than to force the big players in the music service game to up the quality.

My Secret Public Life As A Musician

If you’re like me, you have a secret-yet-totally public part of yourself that is your online music presence.  You never talk about it with people at your day job, or with your family, or even your friends.  Only a few people you’ve run across in your life know little tidbits - maybe they remember you mentioning you taught yourself a few chords on a guitar, and maybe that you like to strum and try to make up songs once in a while in your free time.  Technically, since you’ve had no formal training, don’t read music notation, and basically don’t think you’re very good, you don’t even qualify to be able to say you’re a real musician.

Most people you know don’t know you have a blog, a website, and your songs for sale in online stores.  You love making music, and can’t go long without getting cravings to do it some more, but few people know about this habit of yours.  Maybe you’ve kept it that way because you’re modest.  Maybe you’re modest because of your personality but also because you’re not confident that this passion of yours will result in your music being appreciated by other people.  A part of you wants people to know, to listen, to compliment you, to buy your albums.  A part of you envies other amateur musicians who go for it, and make it known to everyone they know, even though they’re not that good in your opinion.  No guts no glory, but you want to keep this part of your life separate.  

Even though it’s nothing to be embarrassed about, nothing that could wreck your career if people found out, you keep it hidden, yet it’s out there online for the whole world to discover.  Your music isn’t all that controversial or explicit or even overtly rebellious.  It’s pretty tame and far from being reputation-damaging, aside from the potential fact that it might not be good, which then might cause people to feel sorry for you, or ridicule you, or think less of you.  Yep, when you’re like me, and when you’re kind of afraid of playing in public, and you have a cheap little home recording rig, and a few cheap instruments, and you like to make up words and sing, you put your recordings of your songs online and nobody notices or buys them.  This helps solidify the notion you already had in your mind that you’re not very good at this little hobby.  

You still love doing it though.  You don’t have money for advertising and you have no fan base or mailing list.  There are little things that you can focus on, which might help attract listeners.  For example, since you’re up against short attention spans, which means you’ve got to have short intros in case someone ever hits that play button.  It might help if the songs are really good, but they’re not.  It might help if you have a great voice or great instrumental chops, but you don’t.  There’s got to be a way to improve your chances of gaining an audience.  

You think about these kinds of things when you’re not writing & recording.  You know how it is yourself to surf around the internet and stumble upon music and listen with your headphones on.  Maybe it’s a recommendation, maybe an accident, maybe someone you know, or someone that someone you know knows.  When you’re a closet recording artist, or non-performing songwriter like me, you miss out on audience feedback from playing live, and you’re forced to take into consideration what can get you recognized online.  This boils down to catchy song titles.

A few months ago, I ventured out of my basement studio and performed some of my original songs in front of a live audience for the first time in at least 15 years.  I had been scared beforehand because it had been so long, and also because the audience included many professional performing singer-songwriters.  I decided to go for it and do the best I could, and it worked out fine.  I got the audience to sing along, got lots of applause, and even got compliments afterward.  This made me feel good.  It also made me feel like I could do this more often if I memorized more of my own songs and practiced more.

Overall, it made me look back on my involvement in music – from my beginnings as a music fan, to someone who learned to play guitar, to someone who played in duos and bands, to someone who played solo at open mic nights, to someone who wrote his own songs, to someone who records his own songs while playing multiple instruments and singing.

Prior to the recent live performance, I had evolved at my own pace to become someone who treated music as a hobby – writing songs and recording them alone in my basement.  In my home studio – where I have a computer, audio interface, multitrack recording software, guitar, bass, drums, microphone, etc. – I have taught myself to be able to record one track at a time and mix those tracks together to produce a song that sounds like a band had played it.

With no formal music training and limited natural talent – particularly vocal talent – I do the best I can with what ability I do have, and with the help of the internet, learn little things here and there about music along the way through trial and error.  I take it slowly, and my progression with the craft of songwriting and recording has slowly improved over the years in small ways that may only be noticeable to me.

Live audience feedback can be a good indicator of memorability.  Herein lies a missing ingredient – the input of others.  Although I sell my recordings online, I don’t sell much, and I get very little feedback from those who do buy them.  Playing live would probably help me sell more, and it would also give me an idea of which songs are better than others.  Instead of relying on my own intuition or a review by a relative or friend, a live audience would help as an additional means of weeding out prior to releasing.

So, the pre-conlcusion here is playing live would no doubt help my cause to bring people my best songs.  What works and what doesn’t in front of a live audience would also help me refine works-in-progress.  There is potential to self-market when playing live and get more people to buy my music online.

Another conclusion I came to when playing live recently was that people love a funny song.  In a live performance setting, people remember your funny songs, or your songs about drinking or partying, much more than your love songs or statement songs or story songs.  When you look at the list of an artists songs online, you read the song names and certain ones jump out at you.  The ones that are funny always do, and the ones that are unusual in some way.

What’s going on here is that catchy titles and humor seem to rule the age of internet singles.  Which brings to mind something music consumers have always known - catchy titles are more important than you might be willing to admit.  For the same reason you liked Fat Bottom Girls by Queen or Big Balls by AC/DC, or even songs whose name you remembered because of a memorable phrase it contained like Hair Of The Dog by Nazareth, catchy titles combined with a little humor and/or rebelliousness stick in our minds.  As a songwriter, you don’t intentionally try to write these, but they happen, and even though the artist in you never admits that such cheap novelty tricks work, they nonetheless do.  

There are artists whose entire careers are built around songs about drinking and partying.  They’d be nothing without those songs.  The music business has evolved into more of a singles business versus an album business.  In an era where single-song downloads are the norm, catchy titles rule.  Memorable song titles that grab the attention of potential listeners seems to be more important than ever.  Something tells me that the kinds of songs artists are remembered for most are the ones that are humorous, controversial, and rebellious…and most importantly, have those elements reflected in the song title.

My guess is that a song is more likely to be downloaded when it has a catchy title and poor melody/lyrics, and that a song with great melody/lyrics that does not have a catchy title is less likely to be purchased.  A part of me thinks it’s unfortunate, but a part of me thinks it’s always been this way.  It’s just emphasized more due to the way people find and buy music online now.  Videos seem to have great potential to help a cause like mine, but I don’t like seeing myself on video, and I never like how I look or sound, just like when you first got an answering machine for your phone and recorded your first outgoing greeting message and played it back...you said to yourself “Is that really me?”  People discover YouTubes every day and overnight sensations are made and recordings get bought.

Just like no one will ever discover this blog if I don’t do anything different than continue to write rambling posts like this one, findability, “sticking outedness,” getting noticed, getting remembered ain’t gonna happen by happy accident.  Naming is important.  Artist/band names get noticed first, followed by album titles, then song titles, and it helps for all three to be attention-grabbing in some way.  Nailing down what constitutes ‘attention-grabbing’ is part user preference - that is, based on the individual’s personality and taste, but also part advertising.  General advertising principles apply, such as the fact that babies and sex sell products.  Songs that have familiar places, famous people, or that have blatant nose-thumbingness in their titles stand out in the crowd of song titles online.  Other qualities that appeal to the masses include anything popular - from popular phrases to cultural colloquialisms to well-known slogans to favorite words, etc.  These same principles are similarly important for books and movies as well.  

Theme time could be the right time.  Just as authors become known for a certain style of writing, songwriters/performers become known for a style of songwriting and performing.  Take Jimmy Buffett for example - chances are if you brainstorm a list of words that are tropical (coconuts, palm trees, sandy beach, ocean, etc.), you will find them in his album titles, song titles, and within the lyrics of the songs themselves.  There is a clear theme to his music.  You can say the same about instrumentation for certain musicians, as well as their clothing, performance style, dancing, etc.  Certain musicians are well aware of the importance of aesthetics - Jack White of White Stripes fame comes to mind here with the red & white theme he created for that band.  Album art can no doubt draw people in, but not as much as the old LP brick and mortar record store days.  Not only do you have a theme in visual style, but you also have a theme of musical style, and a big part of musical style involves the lyrics.  Lyrical themes delivered consistently create an expectation, and thus, draw an audience accordingly.  Here you get into pigeonholing, labeling, classification, categorization, genres, tagging and so forth, which goes against the grain of artistic freedom.  Having a recognizable signature style evolves out of experimentation, and can eventually help one build an audience.

Figuring out what people like while not repeating a formula is something to keep in mind.  Rather than taking a risk of your music being considered contrived, you can blow off trying to repeat something that appealed to many.  Record companies who get a hit out of an artist want another just like it, and rightfully so.  However, no artist wants all of their songs to sound the same as each other.  AC/DC stuck with a formula and have had a consistent signature sound, whereas Led Zeppelin included more variety in tempo and style, doing reggae, country, folk, and ballads as well as hard rock and blues.  You can change tempos, instruments, song forms, singing style, etc. and still sound like you, but sometimes, it’s contrived when it’s obvious you’re intentionally stretching too far from your home base.  

Punk rock musicians who suddenly switch to classical, or jazz musicians who change to recording country are rare.  Crossover attempts sometimes occur, but other times they are more contrived like when Garth Brooks recorded a rock album as a different persona.  Nashville songwriters seem to successfully pitch formulaic songs to mainstream country artists and it’s noticeable.  Sometimes you notice, and you don’t care, you like it anyway, and it just works.  There’s no accounting for people’s tastes, except that you can bet something fairly new and different will come along eventually that will be a breath of fresh air, and then others will try to emulate it.

Dealing with this knowledge can be tricky.  Despite knowing all of the above, I still just write what I feel like writing, and record the best of what I come up with.  The self-rated keeper ratio remains about the same from year to year, and I throw away about three fourths of what I write.  The remaining one fourth may suffer further weeding out due to not sounding so great after my best effort with the recording process, and then I’m left with a handful of songs every year that I consider “release-worthy”.  The songs I release are perhaps unconsciously influenced by my knowledge of what works, but I never set out to try to write a hit according to my knowledge of what worked in songs by others I enjoy.  My songs just happen, and although I’ve done some rewriting that worked on occasion, it’s usually a case of trusting the weeding out process I use.  The song has to be pretty good from the get-go to make my final cut.  The best ones fire on more cylinders than others right from the start, as if by pure accident.  More often than not, those that make the cut have some of the important catchiness in their titles and lyrics, and always in the music, but getting people to hear the music is greatly aided by the title.  

We’re in a try before you buy world now, where you stream it online first.  Prior to hitting play, the song title matters.  Can you rename a great song so that the title stands out more?  Yes, but only if it doesn’t take away from the song.  It usually means rewriting the chorus too, so you have to be careful.  The bottom line here is if you have a few attention-grabbing song titles, you’ll maybe be lucky enough to get fans who want the whole album.  They might be intrigued enough to try out the more boring-sounding song names as well.  Catchy titles happen naturally for me, but I never start writing with a title in mind.  It’s an accident, but when it happens, it helps to have a catchy song title.  The beauty of it is when you’re writing a song, maybe mid-way through, and you realize it’s going to be good, and then you realize at some point it’s going to work out that it has an attention-grabbing title according to the aforementioned criteria, you’ve got a definite keeper.  It’s cool when that happens, and I know that if I write enough songs, the keeper ratio will produce another.  It’s just a matter of time.

From a bedroom, basement or woodshed, you can get a somewhat decent recorded product, depending on your quality standards.  Nowadays you can record at home, then sell online, and never have to get out of your pajamas.  You can remain anonymous if you want to, and develop a following without ever needing to play in front of people though viral online recommendation.  Since I don’t even have a good voice, and am not a great guitar player, I shy away from playing in front of people.  I’m realistic in knowing I’m not a good performer.  Yet, I think my finished recordings show that my songs are pretty good.  It’s not that I doctor them up with fancy digital trickery - in fact I intentionally resist these temptations and try to produce a very realistic version of each song using the bare minimum of effects.  I must admit that I wish my music could reach a wider audience.  I’d love it if people liked and bought my music, and so that’s why I’ve made it available for sale in digital retail stores.  So my main confession is that I want that to happen without having to perform live.  Secretly, I’d like to maintain a slight bit of mystery, and maybe someday there would be a demand for me to play live.  If that ever happened, I would definitely be excited to learn my own songs and play them for people.