Break out of a creative rut, find new songwriting strategies, and improve your writing process with this collection of songwriting articles from Flypaper. For more in-depth help, check out Soundfly’s course The New Songwriter’s Workshop.
+ Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly. Whenever songwriters use ordinary conversation in lyrics, the song quickly becomes very direct and very personal. It’s a profoundly effective technique, despite its simplicity. Conversational lyric allows…
Over the last 15 years, I’ve been part of seven different musical projects. I’ve played in all kinds of bands: a shoegaze trio, an experimental metal duo, an electronic pop group, an indie rock band, an ambient octet, a punk rock quartet, and a German teen pop group. I ended up leaving all of them.…
+ Soundfly helps curious musicians meet their goals with online courses like The Creative Power of Advanced Harmony and Pop Vocal Production. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it. Subscribe for unlimited access. With their newly released album, 7, Baltimore dream pop outfit Beach House have reached new emotionally intoxicating heights, but with a sound that feels denser and…
What may be institutionally indefinable, the obscure genre term “indie pop” is considered an umbrella for most of the accessible-yet-alternative pop music being made today by predominantly young, western songwriters. Indie pop is hard to define because it covers an enormous range of sounds, from electronic synth-driven voyages to jangly and reverby guitar-based music, to warm harmonies…
The generally accepted rule of songwriting these days is that your title should be part or all of your hook, it should appear in the chorus at least once, and it should repeat over and over and over and over and… This is reflective of a “marketing” perspective on songwriting, a legitimate approach to the…
Another month, another round up of some of the best student work here on Soundfly! This month, we have a budding producer pushing himself to create full tracks, a field recordist mixing works for a museum piece, a couple songwriters crafting new tracks, an orchestral artist transforming his sound, and some artists looking for a…
Last summer, I took a road trip to the Grand Canyon with some friends. After some time passing the aux cable from phone to phone, we ended up on Aerosmith’s 1993 7x platinum, 20-million-selling, mega-hit record, Get a Grip. This was one of the albums that seemed to follow us everywhere we went in the mid-’90s. All…
It’s not uncommon at all for composers, producers, and songwriters to take inspiration from the literary world. There are literally hundreds of examples of great songs written from the perspective of a literary character, or that reimagine their fate, or that simply just take the essence of a novel or short story and create a new…
Welcome back to the dance floor, Quick Trackers! Once a month, we hook you up with a short production or songwriting challenge, aimed at helping to up your musicianship. To respond to the challenge, just email us, leave a comment, or post to social media with the hashtag #quicktracks and tag us @learntosoundfly. Just in time for your…
+ Welcome to Soundfly! We help curious musicians meet their goals with creative online courses. Whatever you want to learn, whenever you need to learn it: subscribe now to start learning on the ’Fly. Perhaps one of the biggest differences between a professional and an amateur musician is what I call “showing up.” Now, obviously, this can take many forms. When faced…
