Songwriting News for June 2011
‘An ultimate little songwriting machine’ is what Vedder calls ukelele
I don’t think I thought in those terms at all. I was just struck by how quickly I was able to establish a relationship with this little instrument. I see it as just kind of an ultimate little songwriting machine. Melodies are produced in a way that I could never quite establish that connection to melody on a guitar with more strings and more options. But having had that experience, I was able to transfer some of that knowledge onto the guitar.
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Taylor Swift Explains How Her Songwriting Has Grown
musical evolution has been pretty clearly aligned with her age. While she’s writing about love and heartbreak, as she did when she was a teenager, the way she expresses that joy and pain has grown from the puppy-love lyrics to more mature reflections.
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Bravo tries to make songwriting interesting
In “Platinum Hit,” four teams of three songwriters each wrote four songs about Los Angeles, incorporating the four winning “hooks” from earlier in the competition into four complete songs. Not even the performance is on the line, these artists are assured. The main focus is the songs.
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Leonard Cohen wins Spanish prize for poetic songwriting
The prize foundation said Wednesday it was awarding Cohen its Letters prize, praising him as one of the most influential authors of modern times. The foundations said “his poems and songs explore with depth and beauty the major questions concerning humanity.”
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Battles Carry On as a Trio, Condemn ‘Ridiculous, Boring’ Math-Rock Label
Battles came together in 2002 as a veritable super group of seasoned musicians and veterans of the ’90s avant-rock and hardcore scenes. The original lineup included Ian Williams from Don Caballero, drummer John Stanier of the pre-grunge band Helmet, Dave Konopka of the spazz-rock group Lynx and multi-instrumentalist and orchestral composer Tyondai Braxton.
During the inception of the band’s second LP, however, Braxton left the band and the trio decided that they were more comfortable composing songs that revolved around the marauding instrumentals of the three core members. ‘Gloss Drop’ continues their minimal approach to songwriting and features guest vocals from the likes of Gary Numan, Matias Aguayo and Kazu Makino from Blonde Redhead.
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Battles’ Dave Konopka explains how the band puts a song together
“We had songs fully written in the studio space. This time around it was more about going into the studio a little unprepared. The interesting part is that it allowed us to re-contextualize how we approach writing songs. We ended up having a lot of parts that we worked individually. We’d go into separate rooms in the studio, and then we’d come together in the control room with our producers, Keith [Zousa] and Seth [Manchester]. That became the planning room, where the songs really came into fruition. We started building songs in Logic, and it was like putting together a piece of a puzzle.”
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Tags: Songwriting
