Writers Of Song

Cast your votes! November 23, 2009

Michael and I have posted 6 original songs so far, and we’re curious which one you like best… You can hear them all in one giant list at our Song List page.

So, cast your vote and let us know what you like best!

A Good Critique Of Broken Up… November 10, 2009

In addition to publishing our songs on this blog, I’ve also been trying to post links to our songs to various songwriting sites and forums in the hopes of getting unbiased reviews and publicizing our songs in general.

One nice songwriting community can be found at http://forums.songstuff.com/. I posted a link to Broken Up there a few days in this forum topic.

And there, Michael and I received our best review to date from Tom Hoffman (http://www.tune-smith.com). It’s not really a rave review of the song, but it is our best review in the sense that it was a well-balanced commentary that offered very specific feedback. And so I’m sharing it here (with Tom’s permission).

Nice job….I actually thought the song was pretty cool! You really didn’t give much guidance about what aspects of this you’d like critiqued, so I’ll just give some random thoughts….

– as a general rule, it’s really helpful to the reviewers if you post the lyrics up with the song link

– It really didn’t seem like the imagery presented by the first 2 lines of lyrics were a good fit for the musical feel of the song. Birds & plants brought things to mind for me that didn’t set me up very well for where you took the rest of the song. Those 2 lines come off a little weak, a little too popish and they are the first 2 things sung to the listener…..you know what they say about 1rst impressions

– I’m not sure how well the non-ryhme at the end of the last line of that verse worked….it sounded a little akward. If you decide to rewrite thoses first lines, it might be good to give some thought to meshing them somehow better with the final one.

– I thought the song was a cool mixing of styles. The verses come off kind of grungy-pop & the choruses reggae….I thought keeping the bridge reggae was a good choice, loved the harmony lead sections….very nicely done. This player format doesn’t give the listener a way to fast forward or rewind, so I’m not possitive, but I thought you changed the format of the 3rd verse to reggae also? If I’m remembering right, I thought that worked well also. Up to the point of that first lead, that verse-to-chorus format shifts twice on the listener….after that lead I liked the style maintaining a more consistant feel throught to the end….another good choice!

Overall I thought it was interesting & well done…..nice job guys! Welcome to the site!

Quick update October 23, 2009

It’s been a busy week for both Michael and me, so we haven’t had a ton of time to work on new songs throughout the week.

Michael’s been driving between Portland and California, trying to finish moving to California. And I’ve been practicing with a rapidly-formed work band to play at a company Diwali celebration this Friday (tomorrow).

The work band has been practicing every night, trying to master 11 songs for an hour-long performance. Tonight, we finally ran through the whole set twice without falling apart, so I think we’ll be ready to put on a decent show tomorrow.

The Indian music that we’re playing is pretty interesting… Several of the songs are male/female duets, and tricks are played with the chord structure so that the female verse is the same chord pattern as the male verse but just twice as stretched out. And there are interesting chord rhythms, etc. — maybe Michael and I will try to work some of these ideas into a future song.

Anyway, that’s what we’ve been up to. Thanks everyone for their comments. We also posted Please Come Home To Me for review at http://www.musicmarketing.net/forum/topics/song-review-please-come-home, so you can see what people have said about it there (just one review so far).

We hope to post another song to the blog this Saturday morning, so stay tuned =)

What works for us October 18, 2009

I think every songwriter or songwriting team does things a little differently… Michael and I have been trying recently to identify what our ideal writing process is — something where we don’t get stuck with writer’s block or get frustrated with any songs.

One approach we’ve been trying recently is Michael will play and sing the chorus to a song he’s been stuck writing for years, and I’ll try to improvise lyrics for minutes at a time while he plays verse chords on guitar. We’ll record the whole improv session and then listen to it afterwards for any clever or insightful lyrics that stick out from the jumble. The tricky thing is picking out good song lyrics that still get the point of the song across without just stringing together words that sound nice.

We just took a break from a songwriting session right now, where I improvised lyrics to songs tentatively called “Christine” and “Hey Down There.” So maybe you’ll see something about those in the near future.

While I’m using this break to write this blog entry, Michael’s using it to cook himself another 6-egg omelette — got to keep those guitar fingers fueled.

Anyway — we’ve gotten some good feedback on Please Come Home To Me so far from friends via email, but if you have any opinions on the first song we posted, please leave a comment and tell us.

Songwriting: The beginning… October 17, 2009

Hi! Welcome to our corner of the web, where we’ll be sharing updates on our songwriting efforts and releasing recordings. This is a joint effort between Michael Stephenson and Mark Johnson, who have been writing music together since Spring 2002. Recently, we’ve been re-focusing our efforts, and we want to share the results more widely.

Please feel free to comment on all posts — we’re encouraging audience participation here. Expect a lot of updates over the next few weeks — we hope you enjoy what you hear.