Music Industry Workshop

The song is the key to the ballgame. It unlocks all the doors to the yellow brick road. You can’t say enough about how important it is to the success of an album project. You can have a smokin’ band, a great producer, and a tremendous marketing campaign, but without the right song, none of it is worth a broken guitar string. You can be Tommy & The Ten Pins fresh out of the local bowling alley, have your dog for a producer, and a marketing campaign financed by your school lunch money, and with the right song, it could work.
There are songs and then there are hit songs. While you can’t teach someone how to write a hit, the aim of this workshop is to familiarize you with the elements involved in writing and marketing such songs. Hopefully, this will prick your own creative desires.

Song Writing

More than any other kind of writing, songs are created rather than crafted. You don’t usually sit down to write a song by first drafting an outline and some notes and then proceeding in an orderly fashion. Then again, you could do it that way. You could do it any way, and there is no absolute right or best method. Don’t try to write songs in a rigid pattern. Songs have to flow. They start in all kinds of ways and develop in every pattern imaginable. There are so many formulas to writing songs that there are no formulas.

As a songwriter, you should never limit yourself to one method, and this is especially true when you’re starting out. You might begin a song with the last thing your girlfriend said to you before she slammed the car door on your hand, or you might start with a drumbeat that you can’t get out of your head. It doesn’t make any difference. The trick is to find your own ways of developing those things into full-fledged songs.

Don’t be hindered in your efforts to write by your own displeasure with your work. Almost everybody starts out writing love songs with words like “thud” and “mud” in them, but keep at it. Don’t throw sheets of poetry away because it embarrasses you. Study it and learn what it is that you don’t like about it. When you were sixteen you didn’t hide your car away in the garage the first time you shifted into the wrong gear, did you? Rewrite your songs until you like them, or until you write something new that you like better. This is true for both music and lyrics. Despite the myth surrounding creativity, you can learn to develop it.

Individual songs may also come in pieces. More often than not, you will come up with a part that you really like, which doesn’t fit well with anything you have already written. It may be lyrics without music, or music without lyrics. Paul McCartney once told how he was walking down the street and the melody for“Yesterday” came into his head. He used to sing it using the words “ham and eggs” for the part that later became “Yesterday.” He had the melodic hook, but the words didn’t come until later.

Song Evaluation

Once you have that song written and recorded the next step is to have it evaluated by an industry professional. Sure your friends and relatives are going to tell you it's great but what you really need is an unbiased opinion as to whether or not your song will make you money. Keep in mind that there are many ways a song can make you money, it does not just have to go to the top of the music chart or get aired on MTV to make you money. That's why you want to someone who can fairly evaluate the song and make suggestions where to go to try and sell your song.

Bob Monaco is an award winning music producer, he sold over 250,000 books about the music industry and has worked with some of the top names in the music industry. Bob has graciously offered to evaluate a song and give you professional counseling to help you find the best market to sale your song. If you are interested in having Bob evaluate your song create a FREE "MIDB" account and upload your song and he will review the song personally and send you back his comments and suggestions to help you be a better song writer and help you sell your song.