Sunday, August 24, 2008

Vampire Weekend, 70+ New Songs, Summer's End, the Silver Jews


keyboard picture by


Forgive me bloggers, it's been weeks since my last post.

But, in my defense, I wrote 50 songs for this year's 50/90 challenge hosted by the fine folks over at fawm.org. I've got an album that's about 80% finished.
I've met a few songwriting goals. This February I wrote a little over 20 in 29 days. That puts my year song count at 70+. Dang. I've never written that many songs in one year's time, but then again, I've never tried until now. Granted, many of the songs will never, ever be on an album, but many will be coming soon to a theater near you.

I've discovered a band that reminds me of an indie rock ska band fronted by Paul Simon. I must have had my head under a rock and missed them. Surely you've heard their hit single? And the band name is just awesome: Vampire Weekend. C'mon! What DO vampires do on weekends?

In other news, the lead singer of the Silver Jews gave quite an interesting interview on the process of writing songs for his album. His a complex and interesting man. And he had an eye transplant too.

It's with a little sadness that I bid farewell to summer. I have quite a bit of freedom to work on music during the summer months, one of the reasons I originally became a teacher. Now I enjoy teaching AND playing music. Any chance I get to do both at the same time, I jump. If you haven't had a chance to catch some of my songwriting tutorials on youtube, you can find the whole lot of them here. The teacher in me had fun.







Thursday, August 7, 2008

I'm Covered




"Covering" a song by another artist is simply the process of playing a song that was written by someone else.

Now, if you want to record that song onto a CD, you'll need to read this article.
It's painful. It's not easy. But if you're a musician and you care about being fair, legal, and legit, do yourself a favor and read this.

Clever Joe's Cover Song Advice