Guitar Noise

Let’s offer a warm “welcome back” to Nick, who brings us a look at the interlocking relationship of three important creative aspects of musicianship – improvising, composing and transcribing – and how you can use them to move up from being someone who just dabbles with the guitar to a serious musician.

For many guitarists, playing and songwriting go hand in hand. Since both skills improve with practice, why not try practicing on both simultaneously?

Guitar Noise is pleased to introduce you to Dave Sanderson, songwriter, musician and jingle writer for the BBC. Dave is kind enough to share some of his experience and insight with us on the subject of writing a successful jingle for radio promotions.

If you go to any major art museum, chances are likely you’ll see a student or two dutifully attempting to copy an old master. This is one way that people learn to become great artists themselves. And since songwriting is an art, why can’t this idea apply to songwriters as well? A-J shows us that it certainly can be a way to improve your own writing or to at least help you get out of a rut.

The song Picking A Flower was the January winner in the International Songwriting Contest Song of the Year in the category jazz/world/instrumental. Guitarist (and Guitar Noise contributor) Gilbert Isbin tells us of the steps he took in writing the music for this award-winning song. At the end of the article, Gilbert is kind enough to give us more links and information on the song and the contest itself, including reviews from listeners.

Sometimes you write down something that sounds good and later (often much later) you figure out why. Here’s an interesting look at this from A-J, concerning one of his songs, Jasmine Scents.

Being naïve can both hurt and help you. It’s a great asset to the artist or songwriter but it can also lead one to make less-than desirable (read disastrous) choices. A-J explores both sides of this trait in this interesting and thoughtful article.

The long-awaited sequel of Nick’s Songwriting for Beginners has finally made it online. Here you’ll find more tips to help develop your songwriting skills even further, including a neat little step-by-step guide.

Award winning songwriter Keane Li returns to the pages of Guitar Noise with tips on writing commercial material. Don’t tell anyone, but there’s actually good tips for writing all sorts of songs here!

The do’s and don’ts of packaging your CD.

The cost of making an album is becoming more affordable. But just because you can make an album doesn’t mean you always should.

Here is a concise and handy reference for all the songwriting lyricists out there. Also the difficult topic of giving and receiving criticism.

From silly idea to demo recording – you get to sit in on the process of creation and listen to the final results.

This is not a technical how-to on the art of songwriting but rather an essay on the ways to open yourself to the muse.

Being able to simply let yourself be yourself is essential to the songwriter. Daniel Cowgill offers up some more tips on how not to be your own worst critic.

In this article we’ll go over the legal definitions of copyright. This is an important read for anyone interested in protecting their songs.

In this article we will be going over poetic terminology and see how it can be incorporated into songwriting.

Music charts are a good way to share the songs you’ve written with your bandmates. It gives them a chance to learn the songs before rehearsals start.