Blogging in B Minor

I receive a lot of emails every day from people - a lot of brain tumor survivors, family members, friends of survivors and of course from fellow musicians. Every once in awhile an email comes through that really grabs my attention. Today was one of those days. Several days ago I received an email from a woman who explained that her father has colon cancer and that he was going to be leaving on a trip to receive some specialized treatment. She said that she really liked my song River of Faith which is the title track of my CD and that she had searched the internet high and low for the lyrics. She continued by saying that her family was getting together to see him off that she wanted to make a family circle at this get together, play my song and give everyone there a copy of the lyrics to take with them - as a reminder to hold on to strength and hope. I sent her the lyrics and told her that my thoughts and prayers were firmly with her father and her family.

Today she sent me an email just to thank me and said that listening to the song really touched her and her family’s emotions. What an amazing compliment and how humbling indeed. As a songwriter, certainly this is what we strive - to connect with people through our music.  For me, this song was really something that came in the middle of my trial and was my way of keeping the faith - not swimming against it but letting it flow.  What I was happy to hear is that someone else was able to garner the same strength, hope and faith from the song as I did. Of all of the songs on my CD, this song has also enjoyed some radio success. For me, this song along with The Messenger and Angels of the Night are closest to me for my own reasons.

Many times in life it’s the little things that make life worth living.

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May as well put the other great cut by The Fray up. This is the video for Over My Head (Cable Car) by The Fray. Another great song. Isaac Slade, the lead singer, pianist and songwriter is a talented guy and for a band that just formed in 2002 they are tight.

The song “Over My Head (Cable Car)” was written about Isaac’s brother Caleb (whose nickname is “Cable Car”) who had been the first bassist for the band. Feeling Caleb was not helping them reach success, the band asked him to leave. In the music video for the song, Isaac’s youngest brother Micah was cast as a childhood version of Isaac. Isaac Slade went to Faith Christian Academy with Joe King

Another interesting note - this video was made on their own before they were signed by a record label.

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Tags:  Lyrics , Music , Other Artists , songwriting , The Fray

I thought I would take a moment to make songwriters aware of an amazing resource available on Bill Pere’s web site. Bill Pere is an internationally published songwriter, recording artist and songwriting coach. He has had 13 top-ten songs on various Indie charts for more than 120 consecutive weeks. He has been included on soundtracks and podcasts on college and satellite radio - quite simply, he has been extremely successful and knows exactly what he is doing. We learn from those who are successful and understand the craft, plain and simple.

What he has created, for all of us to learn from, is something called “The Songcrafter’s Coloring Book”. It is absolutely amazing. The links to the PDFs that make up the Coloring Book can be found on the link to his site above. It is worth pointing out, however, that in my opinion one of the most interesting resources here is a diagram called “The Anatomy of a Song”. Basically, he has taken the process that we all go through (if done correctly) in crafting a song and boiled it down into a flow chart type of diagram. It is an interesting study to say the least.

I would encourage anyone who is serious about their songwriting and wants to improve their craft to study what he has put together from A-Z. What Bill has put together for all of us to access is such an amazing tool - and he has done so freely which is just as amazing in this day and age. I would like to give Bill credit here for doing this. It obviously took him a tremendous amount of time and as I’m sure he utilizes this in his coaching, for him to place this on his site for access by songwriters like you and I is so very nice of him.

Kudos to Bill - and to the songwriters out there, again, you are missing out if you don’t study this in great detail.

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Tags:  Lyrics , Music , podcast , Resources , songwriting