Tag: songwriting

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.

  • Sam Smith, Brian Williams, and the Science of a Song Getting Stuck in Your Head

    Sam Smith, Brian Williams, and the Science of a Song Getting Stuck in Your Head

    I have always been fascinated by songs that sound alike. I love the kind of artists’ mindmeld that happens when multiple songs released around the same time converge in similar sound. I love when musicians pay homage to their favorite influences. I love trying to pick out samples in songs. And I love the gossipy…

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  • How to Write a Musical: The History of Musicals

    How to Write a Musical: The History of Musicals

    This is part 1 of a series on how to write a musical. If you can’t wait to start writing, jump forward to the purpose of the music or how to select song posts! A few weeks ago, I had drinks with a buddy of mine who’s writing a musical about an undercooked piece of pasta named Al Dente. He’s…

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  • How to Make Music with Flip Flops, Bicycles and Tin Cans

    How to Make Music with Flip Flops, Bicycles and Tin Cans

    At Soundfly, we’re all about finding your sound, so when we set out to make a promo video, it made perfect sense to find our sounds in unexpected places. The idea also seemed to work well with one of our other beliefs—that anyone can be a musician because there’s no one right way to play…

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  • Happy Valentine’s Day: The Love Story of Robert and Clara Schumann

    Happy Valentine’s Day: The Love Story of Robert and Clara Schumann

      “You write to become immortal, or because the piano happens to be open, or you’ve looked into a pair of beautiful eyes.” – Robert Schumann   I’m a little ashamed to say I didn’t shed a single tear when I saw The Notebook. On top of that, I fell asleep about two-thirds of the…

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  • An Ethnomusicological Study of Feist’s Let It Die

    Canadian singer-songwriter Feist’s monumental second album, Let It Die came out all the way back in 2004. So why am I all of a sudden offering a perspective on it? Good question. I have no idea. Long car rides often provoke more attentive re-listens, I suppose. Upon first listen, Let It Die has this deeply seductive bossa nova-style…

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  • Mike Evin’s Music for Old Souls

    Mike Evin’s Music for Old Souls

    Mike Evin just released a new single. Most people don’t know Mike Evin. He’s a quiet, strange, talented Canadian who basically loves music and people and works just hard enough to keep those two things close to him, without making too big a fuss… I know Mike Evin, though. In fact, he was the first person…

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  • Gabriel Berezin on Ragas, Bitches Brew and Inspiration

    Gabriel Berezin on Ragas, Bitches Brew and Inspiration

    Gabriel Berezin is a guitarist, singer and the frontman of Brooklyn-based Monuments. I sat down with him at Manhattan Inn recently to pick his brain on his musical process over many rounds of Bulleit Old Fashioneds. His band’s sophomore album Brigadune, released last year, was an exploration in duality (as he explained in a great interview with Greenpointers),…

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  • Dissecting Rob Cantor’s Masterpiece “Shia Labeouf”

    Dissecting Rob Cantor’s Masterpiece “Shia Labeouf”

    If you’re anything like us, you’ve watched Rob Cantor’s absurdly operatic tale of Shia Labeouf’s cannibalism and ultimate defeat 100 times by now. Clearly, there’s so much that makes this video just next level — from the aerial ribbon dancers to the actor himself appearing at the end like a half crazed serial killer pondering…

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  • How to Keep Your Musical Resolutions

    How to Keep Your Musical Resolutions

    Stockings are coming down, crumpled wrapping paper’s being shoved into recycling bins, and people worldwide are skeptically patting their winter weight in anticipation of the coming year. While we whole-heartedly support your decisions to start taking cross-acro-zum-fit classes and maintaining a strict paleo-free-tarian diet, why not add something painless to your resolution list? Here are two…

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  • Ian Davis on Bela Bartok and Raunchy Guitar Solos

    Ian Davis on Bela Bartok and Raunchy Guitar Solos

    Ian Davis is your standard musical chameleon — with a seemingly infinite number of bands and projects going at any one time. You can catch him touring around the country with Landlady, writing and recording his own family Christmas albums, or even arranging pieces for My Brightest Diamond. We asked him a few questions to…

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Ryan Lott: Designing Sample-Based Instruments