The Making of naimehoB ydospahR 

I get some unusual requests from my piano students. Case in point: a middle-school student who'd been playing with a backmasking app and thought it'd be fun to learn to play Bohemian Rhapsody backwards.

Sure, I said, stalling. The next recital isn't for three months. Why don't we start with you learning it forward?

 

So then this happened. A reconstruction involving mirror-imaging, cut-and-pasting, and a whole lotta pages. We had to do a lot of rewriting to make this understandable in music notation…

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Nothing about sunglasses or running shoes 

 

My blog has been on hiatus, but for some reason a post about songwriting collaboration has garnered a ridiculous number of comments. I thought I'd share a few of them (sans irrelevant links) for your amusement. I'll be back to normal blogging soon. Enjoy!

Comment:
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Comment:

Thankx so…

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Q&A from Individual Songwriting class 

Thanks to everyone who participated in my Individual Songwriting workshop at Madison Music Foundry on Saturday. This was my first time teaching this subject in such a short time-frame -- I usually cover this material over 15 hours! -- so I wanted to address some leftover questions and give you a chance to follow up.

Q: What resources would you recommend for someone who wants to write serious, personal songs? I have a musical background but haven't learned theory.

A: For music theory you can start with a…

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Finding your co-writing style 

If you’re new to co-writing and you’ve found a songwriting partner or two, you may be wondering how to start writing together. I find it helps to choose a collaborative working model first. Here are some popular ones:


 Lyricist and Composer

This is a pretty straightforward division of tasks. It’s the obvious choice if you’re much stronger in one area than the other, or if you have a set of lyrics or composition you’re certain you want someone else to finish. Bernie Taupin and Elton John worked this way…

To collab or not to collab? 

Some songwriters are collaborators or solo writers by temperament, and never have to ask this question. Others, like me, ask it every day.

I'm a huge proponent of songwriting collaboration. Writing with others has expanded my horizons, been some of the greatest fun I've had -- and resulted in hundreds of songs that wouldn't have been written without the synergy of two or more minds. The results often feel like magic. And there's plenty of history to support this model of song creation favored from Tin Pan…

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