For this special episode, Phil dives deep on the Burt Bacharach / Hal David song This Guy’s in Love With You, made popular in 1968 by Herb Alpert. We talked about: Our Songwriting Challenge for 2023, and thank-you to everyone who have already sent in their songs! Using ChatGTP to write (a really vanilla draft …
production
Home Recording Series: Mixing and Mastering Tips
For our ongoing series of episodes helping you with your home recording studios, our audio engineer from the before times, Don Thompson, joined us to talk about mixing and mastering tips. We talked about: Our songwriting challenge for 2023 to write in an unusual mode Our previous episodes in this series: Home Recording and Digital …
Writing in a rock band with Billy Lunn of The Subways
Billy Lunn is the singer, guitarist, songwriter, and producer of the UK-based rock band The Subways. The Subways released their debut album Young for Eternity in 2005, and they’ve just released their fifth album, Uncertain Joys, on January 13, 2023. Billy grew up on a swirling mix of Motown, rock, disco, dance, hip-hop, and pop, …
Writing a long song with Civil Wray
Sparkle. It’s exactly what Civil Wray does on her brand-new single, appropriately entitled “Sparkle”. Civil Wray, the nom de plume of Toronto singer songwriter Andrea de Boer, worked with producer Matt DeMatteo (Danko Jones, Big Wreck, Ashley MacIsaac) in creating an ethereal, dreampop song, that may remind listeners of artists like Fiona Apple, David Bowie, and Tame Impala. It’s a song about …
Happy New Year and some random stuff
For our first episode of 2023, Phil and Neel hung out to talk about a bunch of things on our minds. We talked about: Our upcoming songwriting challenge to write in an unusual mode Peter Gabriel is releasing his first album of original songs since 2002 The Dreamtonics Synthesizer V virtual singer software, and Neel’s …
Songwriting Challenge 2022: The Hosts Revisit their Songs
We welcomed the return of our ex-co-host Michael Proudfoot, joining us to review our updated answers to the 2022 Songwriting Challenge. We talked about: Our new Songwriting Challenge webpage, featuring the original versions of our songs, plus listener song episodes The Song Talk Meetup Mashing up various styles and instruments Reaching out to other songwriters …
Self-Healing Through Hip-hop with Vivek Mehmi
Mississauga-based hip-hop artist Vivek Mehmi talks about his creative process through hardships, beat-making, poetry, and his song Around Your Finger. We talked about: Hip-hop songs structures with verses and hooks Striking a balance between a hook’s catchiness, flow, and message Taking inspiration from the 80s – objectively, the greatest decade ever in music! (Please note, …
Song structure choices with Mike’s Songwriting Challenge
For our second host answer episode for our 2022 Songwriting Challenge, Mike shared his journey with the structure, arrangement, and production of his song. Download the lyrics. We talked about: Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive? Primus to Pay Tribute to Rush on 2022 North American Tour structural weirdness in Mike’s song writing a “tough …