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Connecting
Songwriters Throughout Northeast Ohio | |
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The
Reprise: The
Creative Process Never Stops | |
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In 2006, we songwriters thought it would be an interesting idea to create a public
showcase to highlight the talents of our members as well as generate funds. So
we placed four stools across the stage at Quirk Cultural Center, put microphones
in front of those stools and invited the public to listen to our musical creations
for a small fee. No fanfare, no costumes (except for Jon Moody,) nothing fancy,
just four songwriters sitting on stools taking turns playing original songs. Sixteen
performers poured their hearts out to the audience that afternoon. |
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The
following year, we were at it again. This time the stage was available Mother’s
Day weekend so we made it a Mother’s Day Showcase.
For
seven straight years we performed our annual showcase. The interesting thing to
me is that the creative process was no longer limited to just songwriting, it
expanded to HOW we presented our showcase. In 2010, we suddenly had a theme. Many
of our members worked very hard to bring and set up living room furniture to create
“An Afternoon at Don’s House.” Another year was a coffee shop complete with
one of our members as barista! We even created a short film to set the stage for
the showcase. As the film ended, the two characters in the film enter through
a door. Amazingly, they ended up walking through that door and onto our coffee
house stage.
Creativity
is more than just music and lyrics. Sometimes it’s in the presentation. And
when you’re lucky enough to get it right, it becomes the whole package. |
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Your
Executive Committee At Work In April | |
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The
April meeting was pretty routine as executive committees go. In attendance were
President Don Henson, Vice President Ken Moody-Arndt, Recording Secretary Dave
Waldeck, and David Palomo. Bob Sammon was absent due to illness.
The
minutes of our previous meeting were approved.
Don
Henson is still working at assuming the financial stewardship duties. We’re
still working on whom to add to the Huntington Account as authorized signatories.
It was estimated that there is approximately $2300 in the treasury; we couldn’t
get an exact figure because the books weren’t there.
Old
Business dealt with completing the Mission Statement. We resolved to get it done
electronically by that Wednesday. There was some discussion around the Mission
Statement reflecting that we are aiming at “music makers,” rather than “music
consumers.”
There
was also some conversation around the By-Laws. We resolved to remove any language
having to do with term limits because there is no one to replace Don, who, technically,
has term-limited out of the President position. We agreed that we can always re-visit
the by-laws and insert term limits if the need arises in the future. We left it
that Dave Waldeck would send around the finished by-laws to all the executive
members of the board.
There
was conversation about coming up with an up-to-date roster of members with dues
paid in full. That list is in-process. We want to put everything on one database.
There
was also some discussion about remote meetings. Options for the future could be
Facebook Live, for general membership meetings, and video chat and |
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Facebook
Messenger for Board meetings. We resolved that we have to come up with a procedure
for respecting the desires of people who may not want to be live — put all of
them together at the beginning, or at the end of the meeting video.
Our
discussion of marketing materials, banners, business cards, social media, etc.
was tabled.
We
agreed that we need to come up with a Google Voice phone number: one that is easy
to remember, such as two numbers followed by two numbers, e.g. “2299.”
Under
New Business, we acknowledged that we are now collaborating with a Facebook group
called “NEO Musicans and Songwriters Collaboration.” (Chris Peshak, a leader
of that group, was in attendance at the General Meeting. He’s also come to Cleveland
Songwriters at least once.)
With
the business out of the way we proceeded to set up for our first live “broadcast”
of our meeting. | | |
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Great
Songwriters Now On Amazon Prime | |
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If
you want to hear the stories behind the most famous people that you never heard
of - I promise you will know their music - check out Barnegie Hall.
Barnegie
Hall is a 13 episode series of interviews and jam sessions with a variety of award
winning professional songwriters out of Nashville. Each visit is about 25 minutes,
hosted by Verlon Thompson. If you don't know who Verlon Thompson is, (where have
you been?) he’s a |
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guitar
virtuoso, former sideman for Guy Clark, and an unknown professional songwriter
and “true”- bador in his own right. He hosts each session in his own home,
outside of Nashville, Barnegie Hall. It's an old barn converted to a home that
Verlon helped renovate.
The
show has the feel as if you are sitting there with them in the music room. The
conversations, like the songs, have that honest, natural, real feel to them and
you're hearing it all. You can catch all 13 episodes on Amazon Prime for free,
or you can order downloads or DVDs for a fee. I watched them all in two sittings.
I felt that it was well worth the time.
A
quote from the barnegiehall.com press release: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
- Practice, practice, practice. How do you get to Barnegie Hall? - Write incredible
songs!” | | |
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Aballoon
Songwriter App: A Review | | | |
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A
couple of months ago I came across the Songwriter
app by Aballoon in an online article and decided to give it a try. It now
sits on the home screen of my phone. It's now my first choice for catching ideas
on the fly. Let's cut to the chase. The
good: when you open the Songwriter app, you hit the plus symbol to open a new
project. You can put in a title at the top or wait until later. Here's the really
useful part: on the right side of the screen is a microphone icon and a pen icon.
It you want to capture a melody idea, hit the mic icon. If you want to jot down
some lyrics, hit the pen icon. Hit save when you're done. The recorded ideas and
written ideas will be saved in the same project file. The
bad: not great when you're driving and have a tune come into your head that you
want to capture or you want to record a tweak to an existing song. In addition,
the app is only available for Android phones. I find snippets of melody
sometimes come through when I'm driving. Also ideas for tweaks of existing songs. |
Recording
those ideas into Songwriter is a 6 step process where the native recorder on my
phone is a 3 step process. For
this reason I have both Songwriter and a plain recording app on my phone's home
screen. The
Songwriter app was instrumental (pun intended) in working up the song I presented
at the March meeting. The project started out with the title "Time" as I was initially
reacting to the Willie Nelson-Loretta Lynn duet of her "Lay Me Down." Later
I changed the title to "Hope And A Prayer." The home screen of Songwriter tells
me there are 13 audio tracks and 4 lyric boxes in this project. I think having
these ideas together in one place really helped the development of this song. Bottom
line: I really like the option of having lyric and melodic ideas in one place.
But I don't use it when driving because this benefit comes with the cost of several
extra steps. Maybe when I'm more conversant with the app this will change. |
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Don’t
Miss Our Next General Meeting. May
7th at 7 O’clock. | |
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If
you are like me, you’ve probably brought in a song or two written years ago.
Maybe you were looking for an idea to make the song a little better or maybe you
simply wanted to perform in front of a friendly crowd. The Song Writer Summit,
for me, has been the perfect vehicle for both, a place to seek both audience and
critique. And the dues are cheap.
I
would like to discuss not the singer/songwriter, but the audience/listener/critic.
Of course it is fine to say you liked the song, but don’t stop there. There
are concrete aspects of the song and performance that need attention, more than
a pat on the singers’ back.
Most
of us focus on the lyric and since we do have them in front of us it’s easy.
But what about the melody? Does it repeat too much or not at all. Does the melody
surprise you in any way or does it move up and down with complete predictability.
Do the chords support the melody? Do the chords go with the style of song? Do
they change evenly? Is there any syncopation? Is there a sense of time, not rushed
or dragged, but |
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observed?
Does the song have recognizable patterns and utilize structural form like verse
chorus or 12 bar blues? And what about a bridge?
Finally,
does this song have the potential to be a hit song on the radio? I guess the writer
must be the one to evaluate that one. You will probably knock on many doors. If
that is your goal…. go for it. Be the person from Songwriter Summit to have
Reba McEntire call you to the stage and hand you the award. We will all cheer
you on. Not that I would turn Reba away mind ya’. I’m just aiming lower. |
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Terry
Richardson, Foreign Correspondent | | | |
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Don
Henson’s posting on Facebook relating to his biggest inspiration - Jim Croce
- inspired me to write a short editorial on what it was that got my interest in
music.
I
was born in the UK, a few years before Don entered this world, so I kind of come
from a different generation and lifestyle. My father was a hobby musician and
performed with friends during the Blitz bombings in London during the Second World
War. He played six string acoustic guitar, four-string tenor banjo - which I still
have - harmonica and accordion. Just for clarification, he never played them all
together, just one at a time! He
also had an old wind-up gramophone at home, on which he would play old 78 records,
using a steel needle. His music interests were much around traditional Jazz (hence
the banjo) and Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. He used to play these old records
and of course that stimulated my interest. | |
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My
personal inspiration, came from a Scottish ‘Skiffle’ musician, Lonnie Donegan.
He was famous for being the first musician who had a joint number one record at
the same time in the UK and the USA - that song was thought to have been written
by Leadbelly and was called The Rock Island Line.
Lonnie
Donegan’s repertoire was very much based on songs by Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly
which is where my knowledge of the songs my Dad used to play come from. They were
somewhat Anglicised by Donegan. House of the Rising Sun, Frankie and Johnny, Puttin’
on the Style were all sourced from the American music scene. |
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Paul
McCartney once said that Lonnie Donegan was an inspiration to the Beatles and
inspired their playing and performance styles.
When
I came to live in the USA from 1999 to 2011, the old folk scene included many
of these songs that Lonnie Donegan performed and many written by Woody Guthrie
and Leadbelly and others. There are several very successful musicians who were
also inspired by Guthrie and Leadbelly. Talents such as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen
are both hero favourites of mine. Unfortunately, my musical skills were far more
amateurish and I never made any serious headway on the music scene.
Today,
my musical preferences are somewhat eclectic. I like what I like, regardless of
genre. But my favourite musicians will include, Springsteen, Steve Earle, Marc
Cohn, Gretchen Peters and Neil Young. I also have huge respect and admiration
for some of my favourite local musicians that list includes, Mike Bunn, Billy
Foster, Bob Patetta and Don Henson to name but a few.
Long
live music! | | | |
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There’s
More To Copyright Than Your Lyrics | |
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Back
in 2015 a jury decided that Robin Thicke, Pharrell William and Clifford "T.I.”
Harris were guilty of copyright infringement because their song, Blurred
Lines,(WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT)
took elements of the Marvin Gaye classic Got
To Give It Up and incorporated them into their song without attribution.
The case was just one of many that have forced a change in how music is produced
and released.
As
writers, we tend to be aware of how our lyrics flow and - to some extent - are
influenced by everything we’ve ever heard. We might be inspired by something
we hear on the radio or as background in a TV show. Maybe something from our streaming
service sparks an idea. We tend to be careful not to steal the words of other
writer’s compositions.
But
when it comes to the music, itself, it sometimes isn’t all that easy. We work
with a handful of notes and a chart full of chords. There are only so many ways
those notes and chords can be arranged and sequenced. I am more often amazed at
the variety of melodies that can be built around a I-IV-V progression than I am
by similarities.
Sure,
there have been times I’ve been sitting at an open mic or in a club listening
to one of the myriad of local singer/songwriters and I have this nagging feeling
that I’ve heard a particular riff before. Sometimes the phrase eats at my brain
until I have that voilà moment when I realize
where I’d heard it before. |
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Sometimes
I never put my finger on it. Not
all that long ago I discovered that I had stolen a melody from one of my other
songs without realizing I’d done it. It was brought to my attention after a
set by a couple of other performers who know my catalog. I was embarrassed but
at least I didn’t end up in court.
We
do need to be on guard. Listen to the two songs linked at the beginning of this
article. Read
this article for some of the details and the forensics that are now being
used to suss out similarities between songs. It’s an interesting new world out
there and as writers and composers we really do need to be aware of it. |
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Check
Out Our First Facebook Live Meeting | |
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And
You Thought You Were Having A Bad Day | |
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For
Those Playing At Home... | | | |
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Last month’s ID The Member was none other than David Palomo in all his glory. |
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Your challenge this month is to ID this beauty. to us today! | | |
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We
meet next on May 7th at OUR NEW LOCATION, 2 Girls Cafe
and Bakery, 3707 Darrow Road in Stow at 7:00 PM. If you are presenting a song
please bring 20 copies for distribution to the other attendees. Copies will be
returned to you at the end of the meeting. You do not need to be a member to attend
a meeting or bring us a song. | | | |
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While
you’re browsing the web drop in on our site for member lists, open mic suggestions,
and so much more. You can find it right
here. | | | |
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Know
someone who might enjoy our newsletter? Feel free to forward it to them. Thanks. |
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Let Us Know What You Think | | | |
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What
would you like to see us cover in The Bridge? Would you be interested in
writing for us once in a while? Do you have an event you’d like to have published
to share with our membership and the others who read our publication each month?
If so just drop us a note. Like what you see? Catch a mistake? Let us know. We’ve
set up a special email address that goes directly to those responsible for compiling
this newsletter each month. It’s the best way to . We look forward to your input, comments and suggestions. |
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Officers And Board Members | | | |
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(Left
to Right) Don
Henson -
President Ken
Moody-Arndt -
Vice President Dave
Waldeck -
Recording Secretary David
Palomo -
Board Member At-Large
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Bob
Sammon -
Board Member At-Large
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©
2018 Summit County Songwriters Circle dba Songwriter Summit, All Rights Reserved
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