Elvis Costello with...

I'm looking forward to the following Elvis Costello series as he's one of my favourite songwriters and I'm sure he'll be engaging and selective with is guests... I haven't been a fan of Elton John's latest music (though I like his early stuff with Bernie Taupin), but he Sir Elton is right about his statement that Elvis knows his popular music... Original CTV article here.

Elvis Costello, Elton John collaborate in music show

Updated Wed. Apr. 2 2008 9:25 AM ET

The Canadian Press

TORONTO -- Renowned British musicians Elvis Costello and Elton John are collaborating for a new show airing on CTV that was conceived and developed in Canada.

"Spectacle: Elvis Costello With ...'' will be hosted by its namesake and is executive-produced by Elton John's company, Rocket Pictures. The series aims to raise money and awareness about AIDS in Africa.

The 13-part series, a Canada-U.K. co-production, will feature performances and in-depth discussions between Costello and some of the world's most influential artists and personalities.

"I'm not interested in extracting some dark secret,'' Costello said in a news release Wednesday.

"I'd rather hear about a bright secret, a deep love or a curiosity that might be otherwise obscured by fame. This is a wonderful opportunity to talk in complete thoughts about music, movies, art or even vaudeville, then frame it with unique and illustrative performances.''

Elton John described Costello as "the foremost expert on popular music.''

"I thought it would be sensational to use his knowledge and intelligence to explore the artistry of musicians and other fascinating people involved in making great music, as well as true music aficionados.''

The series, which will likely debut in the fall on CTV, will also be broadcast on the Sundance Channel in the U.S. and Channel 4 in the U.K.

The series is co-produced by Toronto's Reinvention Entertainment, SpyBox Pictures and Prospero Pictures, along with the London-based Rocket Pictures.

Measure for Measure - Songwriters' Blogs

The NY Times has a wonderful new blog feature called Measure for Measure: How To Write Songs and Other Mysteries. As detailed in the "About the Blog" section:

With music now available with a single, offhand click, it's easy to forget that songs are not born whole, polished and ready to play. They are created by artists who draw on some combination of craft, skill and inspiration. In the coming weeks, the contributors to this blog -- all accomplished songwriters -- will pull back the curtain on the creative process as they write about their work on a songs in the making.

The "accomplished songwriters" include Andrew Bird, Darrell Brown, Rosanne Cash and Suzanne Vega. If the first post by Andrew Bird is any indication ("Words Will Tell") the blogs will get very detailed about each songwriter's writing process/thoughts - the true creative process.

Here's to the "calcified arhythmitist" in all of us (read Mr. Bird's post to get that one) and may the Muse be with us all... Happy Friday!

Record Your Acoustic Guitar

Acoustic Guitar Central has a nice article by Sean Coleman titled "Record Your Acoustic Guitar" although it's equally applicable to setting up any home digital recording studio, not just to record acoustic guitars...

As I've learned, and as Mr. Coleman states: "...these days, a prospective home recordist has access to more multitracking, effects, and mixing options than the Beatles or Bob Dylan ever had in their heyday—often in a system the size of a briefcase."

Now if I could just write like John, Paul or Bob...

The author reviews audio interfaces (including my choice of the M-Audio Fast Track USB Pro), microphones, headphones/monitors and mic preamps (another reason to like the Fast Track as it is also a mic preamp). It's a great place for an overview for those who haven't set up for digital home recording yet.

"Think carefully about what you want your recording to sound like and what system will enable that in the most cost-effective manner. And remember that there’s more than one way to make a great recording. The best engineers have always been the most resourceful, and many of the most famous records of all time have been made by musicians and engineers who figured out ways to make do in less than ideal circumstances. With a little ingenuity and imagination you may end up amazed at how far your home studio can take you—no matter how humble or high-tech it might be."

Let your home studio take you far and may the Muse be with you...

Canada's Bill Henderson - A Songwriter and Mentor

There's an article entitled - A Man of Music and Mentorship in a British Columbia daily (The Vernon Morning Star). The article features a look at Bill Henderson, his thoughts on songwriting and a look into his upcoming songwriting symposium in Vernon, B.C. I encourage you to read the entire article, but I've included some quotes here:

"When I was a kid, I was very timid," he said.

"Music was a channel that I could use where I could be myself and I felt comfortable being myself - the rest of the time, I didn't."

...

"But emotions and energies tend to get bottled up sometimes, and if people don't release them, they can be quite unhealthy . . . and people who feel that way can do some pretty strange things that society doesn't always feel all that good about."

...

A founding member of Chilliwack, one of the most-influential rock groups in Canada, and a Juno-award winning producer, Henderson has made music history in a career spanning four decades.

But escape wasn't his only muse and, in addition to tears, Henderson put a lot of blood and sweat into his music.

"I remember way back when people would tell me I was talented and they couldn't do what I did, and that really struck me as odd, because I had spent so many hours learning to do what I had done," he said.

"I sat up every night playing and playing and playing the guitar and trying to figure it out and working at it.

"It was a lot of hard work, but it's what I wanted to do. There's no question, there's nothing else I wanted to do more."

Now, along with band-mate Roy Forbes from his side project UHF, Henderson mentors aspiring songwriters.

In partnership with the George Ryga Centre, Henderson and Forbes will host a one-day songwriters symposium on April 5 in Kamloops and a songwriters weekend workshop with aspiring artists April 12 and 13 in Summerland.

Three dozen area songwriters, including four from Vernon, have been selected to participate and will learn tricks of the trade, as well as have their work critiqued at the workshops.

The 13th annual weekend workshop is being held at Ryga's former home, steeped in songwriting tradition.

...

"This is not an airy-fairy exercise. It's very down-to-earth," Henderson said.

"This is the real stuff of songwriting. This is what you have to learn to deal with before you can really write good songs."

Expecting a broad range of participants, Henderson added, he's looking forward to having his work cut out for him.

"There are some people who've got a few things figured out, which is great," he said.

"And there are people who are really at the beginning and obviously don't spend a lot of time working on it and I'm happy to help them learn."

At the top of his agenda? Commitment and curiosity.

"Maybe talent is not that you have the facility, but that you have the curiosity," Henderson said.

"It's just not so simple as someone has it and someone doesn't. Maybe the God-given gift is the desire to learn."

Sharing his gift not only with his students at the symposium, Henderson will take the stage at the Pavilion Theatre on April 4 alongside Forbes and with special guests Blu and Kelly Hopkins.

Tickets for the performance are available at Kamloops Live! Box Office, 1025 Lorne St., or by calling 250-374-7467.

If I was in Kamloops, I'd be going... May the Muse continue to be with this songwriting legend...

From the Wired Magazine Blog comes this recent post by Jenna Wortham:

Weezer Frontman Taps YouTubers to Write New Tune

By Jenna Wortham March 25, 2008 | 1:52:00 AMCategories: Celebrity, DIY, Music, Social Networking, Web/Tech, YouTube

Is YouTube becoming a hot new poaching ground for musicians? Rivers Cuomo, frontman for indie geek rock band Weezer, is asking fans on the popular video sharing site to help him write a new song.

Cuomo has posted a series of videos polling fans for their input. The introductory video asked for song title suggestions, inspiring 50 video responses and a 100-plus comments. (80's Radio emerged victorious, beating out Big and Bouncy and Showdown in Candyland.)

The most recent clip (embedded right) polls users for chord ideas. Cuomo has yet to announce a winning sound, but he's got 43 videos awaiting his listen.

No word yet on when or where the fruits of this fan-made labor will debut, but it could be anywhere, possibly on Weezer's summer album or as a digital download. It barely matters. The rare vantage into the stages of songwriting alone makes this whole experiment worthwhile and intriguing, not to mention the fun in watching the interactive exchange unfold between a musician and his audience.

Hey, I've written a song with John Mayer, so I may as well try writing one with Rivers Cuomo...

The Song The World Wrote

Another press release about another songwriting contest. I believe the item that speaks for itself, and the idea of the world writing a song

Unique International Songwriting Collaboration

A song written by writers from around the world, over a period of one year, to bring people together and raise money for cancer research.

Oceans of Love - The Song the World Wrote

Toronto, Ontario, Canada (PRWEB) March 25, 2008 -- Aspiring songwriters from around the world have completed a song collaboration which began one year ago (http://www.songtheworldwrote.com). This unique contest was designed to achieve two goals - bring people together to promote love, peace and paying it forward and to help win the battle against cancer.

The BC Cancer Foundation will be the grateful recipient of a percentage of the net proceeds from publishing, along with another international cancer research organization. (to be determined).

The idea to put together a worldwide songwriting effort originated when Lucy DeLima-Wilson and her son Johnny DeLima decided it was time to unite the world in spreading cheer and goodwill to others. Today, that dream became a reality as the final radio-ready demo was completed.

Lucy DeLima-Wilson states, "This collective brainstorm demonstrates what can happen when people join together without boundaries to create something magical to perpetuate positive change worldwide."

DeLima is in pursuit of Celine Dion as the recording artist because Celine will be opening the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.
"The Song the World Wrote" is upbeat and inspirational and represents several countries, as do the Olympics.

The song's title "Oceans of Love - The Song the World Wrote" and its first line were written by multiple Emmy Award Winning Songwriter A.J. Gundell and the world wrote the rest of the song. The song boasts writers from Canada, USA, Ireland, Lebanon, Argentina, England, New Zealand, China, France, Germany and India.

About Lucy DeLima-Wilson and Johnny DeLima:
Johnny is a performer/songwriter in Vancouver. He survived major brain surgery as a teenager and awoke with a newfound commitment to life and giving back. Lucy is a social worker in Toronto who enjoys spreading the ideas of love and unity to others. She believes strongly in diversity and paying it forward.

More information about the contest and a sample of the completed song can be found at the Web address below:

http://www.songtheworldwrote.com

For an interview or more information, please contact Lucy DeLima by phone at
(416) 519-6000 or Johnny DeLima at (604) 518-4893.
Web Address: www.songtheworldwrote.com

Pretty ambitious and I'm sure there's some misses when you collaborate with the world at large, but if it hits, maybe it will hit big as a product of the world... Submit a line if you can...

Q Podcasts: Paul Anka and Ray Davies on Songwriting

Here in Canada, we have our public radio broadcaster, the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), and the CBC has a weekday radio program, hosted by Jian Ghomeshi, called Q.

Visit the Q website for its podcasts and you won't be disappointed. The program from Friday, March 21, has Jian interviewing Ray Davies discussing his epic rock career as one of the best singer-songwriters of our time.

Paul Anka, who was recently feted by the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame earlier this month, is featured from the program aired Monday, March 24, 2008 (which I happened to hear in its entirety yesterday). From the show site: "The Ottawa-boy Paul Anka cut his first single when he was just 14 years old. He went on to became a legendary singer and songwriter in a remarkable career that has spanned 50 years."

These podcasts are well worth a listen for those interested in how these legends approached songwriting, or if your interest is in these legends as artists... In either case, you won't be disappointed...

World Quest Music Songwriting Contest 2008

"Everyone has a song"

News release from yesterday, which I will set out to explain another songwriting contest (this time from Canada) coming to you and the idea behind the contest (with some interesting judges to boot and a contest entrance fee for amateurs - FREE - which is hard to beat):

The World Quest Music Songwriting Contest is a new Canadian songwriting contest open to both professional musicians and members of the general public.

Musical director and composer Troy Bynoe, along with Sammi Shi, a digital video editor and graphic designer, have based The World Quest Music Songwriting Contest on the theme "everyone has a song".

As such, the contest will open Wednesday March 26th to the general public, with professional entries being received since March 17th.

There are cash and product prizes to be won, the contest is free of charge to the general public, and $10 for professional entries, organizers describe.

The contest itself is open to professional and non-professional songwriters who submit entries at www.worldquestmusic.com. Professional and Non-Professional entries are paired off into two independently running contests. There are no musical categories in this competition, which makes this Contest rather unique, there is a public voting area and a unique wild card vote by select judges.

Judges represent all genres and feature award-winning industry professionals including veteran music publisher Tony Tobias, Gemini nominated Jennifer Podemski, Idol musician Wilson Laurencin, and Doug Bedard of AVR Toronto's "The Plex Show".

The contest runs for five months and entrants can enter up to five (5) songs in the Non-Professional grouping and up to ten (10) songs in the Professional grouping. Both groupings run together, the Professional March 17 through July 26, and the Non-Professional March 26 through August 8. Contestants go head to head online where fans vote for their favourite entries. Semi-Finalists, Finalists and Grand Prize Winners are chosen based on these tallied online votes.

For more information, visit www.worldquestmusic.com.

American Idol Songwriter 2008

Well, I'm not a resident of the U.S., so I don't qualify... but for those of you with an American Idol type song and $10 burning in your pockets, you have until Monday, March 31, 2008 to upload your song to the American Idol Songwriter competition website for a chance to have this season's final two contestants battle it out of your song...

Of course, the competition is not without controversy as detailed in this web post entitled the American Idol Rip-Off. The post contends that last year's songwriter competition for American Idol had 20 finalists, 10 of whom were "pros" who had previous relationships with Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, show bandleader Rickey Minor or host Ryan Seacrest.

Ah well... I guess looking at the glass as a half-full kind of guy, 10 amateur songwriters had a shot at winning that competition... I hope this year, that's what will happen...

Sebastian on Jug-Band Music

From the latest edition of American Guitar: An interview with songwriting legend John Sebastian includes the following exchange on the pre-war jug band blues influence on '60's songwriting:

Jug-band music isn't nearly as well known or clearly understood as, for instance, prewar blues. How would you describe it?

SEBASTIANWell, jug-band music was essentially African-American party music that preceded electricity. It contained elements of so many different types of music-that's one reason people have trouble describing it. Here will be something that's definitely ragtime, maybe being interpreted by a rough bluesy style. But then the next tune is more like hokum where the singer is making fun of himself, the tradition that sprang out of medicine-show music-which was racially derogatory in many cases.

A lot of this music was unsingable for young folksingers. My solution was, OK, let's take out the parts that we can't say. So I ended up rewriting tunes like "On the Road Again" and taking out the racial epithets. As modest as this was, it was the beginning of songwriting for me. One of the nice things about this material at the time-this is confession number 857-was that nobody knew it wasn't your tune.

Why did jug-band music become a foundation for '60s rock songwriting in bands like the Spoonful and the Grateful Dead?

SEBASTIAN I think it had a couple of things that musicians enjoy. It had antiquity, it had lack of familiarity, and it had an atmosphere of naughtiness and contrariness. So guys like Garcia and me were listening to the Harry Smith catalog and going, "What a cool thing about a gal who might slit you with a razor! Whoa-I don't know any girls like that!"

In the Spoonful you often played instruments like Autoharp and keyboards. Was your songwriting focused on guitar?

SEBASTIAN It was really focused on the guitar for many years, but I used keyboards, which I can't play to this day, as a way of defamiliarizing myself with my musical medium. We're all trying to do this in one way or another: shake yourself loose from the pattern that your fingers are used to following. That's how you come up with something that might have a unique quality. I think this is where this whole [alternate] tuning thing came out of-somehow making the guitar less familiar. Good things do come out of throwing yourself off the cliff one way or another.

The Autoharp totally came about because I had heard Mike Seeger on a Newport Folk Festival album with the New Lost City Ramblers, and I was trying to impress girls at summer camp.

Some interesting insights into "borrowing" a pre-existing style of music and making it your own and to "shaking" things up by writing with a different instrument or tuning...

Now go write songs and may the Muse be with you...