General Advice
Survival Tips For Indie Artists
Standard vs Alternate Guitar Tuning: What’s Best For Your Songwriting?
One of the best things about your guitar is that it is a flexible and versatile instrument. While the vast majority of guitarists, either amateur or pro, use what we call a standard tuning (where the strings are tuned following the pattern E - A - D - G - B - E), many others enjoy experimenting with alternate tunings. If you are a songwriter and a guitarist, chances are you sometimes ask yourself: what tuning shall my next song be in? It is indeed a crucial decision, as adopting a different guitar tuning can result in a completely different sonic environment for your song. As a fan of Joni Mitchell's music and the blues and folk genres, I have encountered many different guitar tunings along the way and I have often asked myself that very same question. Today, I'd like to reply to this question: what guitar tuning is best for your songwriting? Let's start with a little introduction, in case you are not very familiar with alternate tunings.
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Five Life-Saver Creative Techniques For Songwriters
Have you ever felt uninspired or unmotivated about your songwriting? Have you ever struggled with a song you couldn't complete? Whether you are a beginner or a pro, chances are you replied yes to both of these questions. In fact, it is very common for songwriters to have those challenging feelings. As a result, we may become professional procrastinators. Songwriting ceases to be our priority and we decide to keep postponing our most creative task, losing our focus and motivation. Luckily, when we lack the inspiration and the motivation needed to write our next song, we can employ some proven techniques to get our creative juices flowing. In this article, I am going to give you five ideas on some creative techniques you can use to boost your inspiration and stop procrastinating your songwriting duties. Keep reading for more!
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How To Overcome Songwriting Blocks: Six Practical Tips
It happens to anyone. You sit down, with your guitar, and you really want to write the best song ever, but you have no ideas... I know how frustrating it can be. It is even worse when you have most of the song laid down, but you feel there is something missing and, oh boy, nothing interesting comes to mind to fill that gap. What do you do? Sometimes, waiting is the best choice. Getting back to a song with a rested mind can already be a solution to your writer's block, but what if the lack of ideas goes on and on and on? If you haven't been able to sit down with a good bunch of ideas for a long time, you could try and understand where that block comes from and/or adopt a few techniques to overcome it. For example, I know that whenever I experience a block, it has to deal with my imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is quite a complex psychological pattern, but I'll simplify the concept for the sake of this article. People who suffer from imposter syndrome constantly feel they are not enough. Their skills are not enough. Their talents are not great enough. Their achievements are just jokes, and so on. Most people with imposter syndrome simply underestimate their abilities. Obviously, when that happens our brain starts ruminating on unpleasant thoughts instead of focusing on the song we are writing. Thus, it becomes extremely hard to come up with good ideas. These sorts of thoughts might arise if you are also struggling with the fear of failure. The whole point of creating is that you never know what the final result will look or sound like. You have no idea whether your creation will be successful, whatever that means to you. This uncertainty is not easy to deal with, so a lot of people struggle with it. Me too, obviously. The fear of failure might also lead to other issues like perfectionism, which can be another reason behind our block. Now, these are all internal obstacles, but you might have to face external obstacles too, such as a lack of time or space. Maybe you have a full-time job, you are also a parent, and you have a lot more commitments going on in your everyday life. Or maybe you have all the time in the world, but you share an apartment with six other people, and the only private space you have is the bathroom! How can you deal with internal and external obstacles, in order to overcome your block? Obviously, there is no right or wrong answer. It really depends on your personal situation too, so don't take my advice too literally. What I know is that I've been there before, several times, so I think I have learned a couple of strategies to apply whenever I feel blocked. Here are some tips for you, taken from my personal experience.
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Why Is Songwritng So Hard?
Songwriting might be cool and fun, but it is also very difficult. Whether you are a seasoned or a beginner songwriter, chances are you found yourself struggling with your songs at one point. Why is songwriting so hard? Here are five aspects that make songwriting quite challenging, and some tips on how to keep working despite them.
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Five Songwriting Mistakes To Avoid
Songwriting is a difficult and somewhat mysterious process. Nobody can deny that. The road to great songwriting is paved with loads of questions, uncertain steps, and a few mistakes. In this article, I am going to guide you through five common songwriting mistakes I made (and sometimes still make) too. Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned songwriter, you can audit your songwriting process and see if these faulty approaches are part of it. If they are, worry not! Sometimes we need to make these mistakes to come out on "the other side" and realize our full songwriting potential. This is why we should not publish every song we write and accept that some of these are simply part of our training. That said, here are five songwriting mistakes to avoid!
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Email Marketing For Musicians
There are two ways I could write this article. First of all, I could list some tactics to help you grow your mailing list. The Internet is full of similar lists, but, since you’re here, I have a feeling none of them helped you reach your goal. This is why I decided to write from a different perspective. How would a mailing list benefit both you and your fans? What keeps many musicians from investing their time in email marketing? And what keeps many fans from joining their favorite artists’ list? To answer these questions we must take a step back first. We call it email marketing, but I find this terminology a bit confusing. Sure, as an independent artist (and solopreneur), you have to promote your music. A mailing list, in this sense, can be seen as another marketing tool to advertise your songs and get your biggest fans to buy your products. However, this is not the most effective way to treat emails. Email marketing is a tool to build a relationship rather than simply promote something. First of all, you want to create and nurture a bond. You want to offer value. You want to ask for feedback and be open to your fans’ messages and ideas. The promotion of your music and your other products should be a natural consequence rather than the ultimate goal. For example, I offer a lot of freebies to my mailing list subscribers. I let them access songs and other content I don’t publish anywhere else. I ask them for feedback and I personally reply to any email I receive from them. It is a rewarding process, yet a lot of fellow independent musicians overlook this tool. Why? Here are some of the reasons I came up with.
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