6 Things Worth Sharing | May 2022
Tips, tools and tidbits on songwriting, and a selection of other treats from the wild world of the internet to fuel your creative brain!
My Number 1 this month is by orders of magnitude the book, ‘The Book of Delights’ by American poet and writer Ross Gay. If you are looking for your perceptual world to be cracked open with technicolor light, and to experience prose that sings like poetry, please read this book.
In a recent conversation with a new friend and songwriter Michael Paynter, Michael dropped a knowledge bomb: The Rule of 3’s. It’s one of those ‘rules’, or guidelines in producing music that all experienced producers probably know (even if that knowledge is subconscious); but it was super helpful to me to hear it stated out loud like that.
I recently published a new video on the YouTube channel, diving into a beautiful neo-soul chord progression in the song Slow Cooker, by John Legend. The video goes into a bit of jazz chord theory to unpack this chord progression, and how to apply the concepts to other chord variations.
I also created a free PDF of the chord progression and variations, with chord shapes on the guitar. Download it here:
I also felt immediately sheepish about how obnoxiously click-baity the title and original thumbnail for this video are. To click-bait, or not to click-bait? That is the question, and I wrote about that here.
I’ve been enjoying the podcast “60 Songs That Explain the 90s”. I particularly loved the episode about Mariah Carey, which explained how deeply under-appreciated and unrecognized she is as a songwriter. I, certainly, had assumed that ‘All I Want for Christmas’ was written by someone else. The interview with the culture critic at the end is particularly awesome. She does an amazing job of showing how much sexism was (and is) lumped on Mariah, and other female singers, as well as Mariah’s incredibly impoverished upbringing, and her ongoing struggle with self-worth.