What can you say about the exceptionally talented poet, novelist, and prolific singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen.that hasn’t already been said? Well, the Song Talk Radio action team didn’t worry about that. Bruce, Neel, and Phil simply dove into their memories and had a close look at three of his many, many songs. Bruce brought the poetic Bird on …
Read more
To celebrate our 3rd Anniversary, some of our very dedicated listeners stopped by and we talked about their favorite bits from the last year. Even Nicole stopped by – and then we had cake! Some stuff we talked about: Tony Burns Mike Macinnes Nicole Di Donato Tony Burns Episode Blair Packham packs emotional power Writing to …
Read more
Okay, so we couldn’t get Bob to come to the studio for the show. Not surprising considering how the Nobel Prize people can’t find him either. On this show about Bob Dylan we discussed: The new film from Ron Howard – The Beatles, Eight Days a Week How the Beatles wrote songs Should the Nobel Prize …
Read more
Lyricist and librettist Stephen Witkin returned to Song Talk Radio for a highly informative hour on writing for musical theatre. Here are some of the topics we discussed: what is the “book” and the role of the book writer for a musical? collaboration with the muscial’s composer the purpose of the book in relation to …
Read more
Songwriter, composer, and music teacher Frank Horvat joined us to talk about scales, the different kinds and colours of chords, and using chords as a palette for your songwriting. We covered: Intervals (2 notes) and triads (chords with 3 notes) Major and minor triads and their different tonal colours The hardly-ever-used diminished (or seven) chord …
Read more
For our latest theme show, we take a look at some of our favorite Protest Songs and try to figure out what makes an effective one. We looked at River Runs Red by Midnight Oil, Eve of Destruction by P.F. Sloan, and Phil talks about how his band The Parkdale Hookers, went about writing their punk-anthem …
Read more
The ever lovely and talented (and what a voice!) Janice Ho, Song Talk Radio’s very own tweeting songbird, talked about two early collaborations she worked on and what to look out for when collaborating. Download the lyrics for the show. We talked about: Muse Songwriters forum – a great online community to meet other lyricists …
Read more
For this special theme show, each of the hosts presented a song with “unusual” or hard-to-decipher lyrics. We delved into a discussion around understanding the intentions behind and interpreting the songs. Download the lyrics here: Unusual Lyrics Neel’s selection: A Self Called Nowhere by They Might Be Giants Bruce’s selection: McArthur Park by Jimmy Webb (performed by …
Read more