SONGWRITER TIPS and INFORMATION

SONGWRITER TIPS and INFORMATION

Monthly "Songs in Progress" Workshop

West Valley “SONGS in PROGRESS” workshops:

The 2nd Tuesday of every month
7 to 9pm, at 8607 N. 59th Avenue in Glendale (south of Olive, north of Northern)
Hosted by Gavan Wieser. 623-934-8681 or punkfolker@aol.com

East Valley “SONGS in PROGRESS” workshops are no longer happening. If anyone starts an east valley songwriters groups such as this please inform this site so we can promote it.

The 2nd Tuesday Songs In Progress Workshop in the West Valley are going strong. Why not visit and put in your two cents worth on songs being discussed. Maybe you’ll help someone with your brilliant observation on how they could improve their song! And maybe someone will do the same for you! Bring a song if you want some feedback on it. It can be on CD, cassette, played live, or a lyric only, partial or complete. It makes sense to get some feedback on your song BEFORE spending a lot of money in the studio on your demo and maybe you’ll meet a great co-writer there!

Contact Gavan Wieser punkfolker@aol.com for more details on these workshops.

Songwriters Challenge

In this songwriters event, the songwriters are all given the same song title and in 30 days or less must write and present their song at a public songwriters gathering. Our next event will take place on December 1st with the song title for the event being declared on November 1st. At our first event we had a great turnout and local media coverage of the event. See this page for details: Songwriters Challenge If you are a songwriter and want a challenge it is a very fun event. It is very interesting to see all the different directions that songwriters go with the same title. If you would like to participate and get on the email list with all the details of the event, send an email to Chris at chris@azopenmic.com with the header "songwriters challenge".

One Song One Week

I met Erik Hendel at Paul Raia's birthday party. We got to talking music, open mics and songwriting and he told me about this cool thing he has going called 1song1week where people write and record one song a week for a weekly podcast. Yeah...sounds semi-nerdy/hi-tech but what a cool motivator to get you to write songs. I wil soon be participating in this cool little project of his. Here is the link to the myspace of his that has all the details: Song A Week

Listen. Create. Participate.
Presenting the musical Podcast experiment known as Song-a-Week (or just SAW), managed and maintained by your friends at Haiku Rd.

But what is it exactly?
SAW is a loose collective of artists, each writing and recording a new original song EVERY WEEK throughout 2007. This year-long, non-profit, original independent music experiment introduces these songs into the world every Monday evening via a Podcast.

Songwriters, here are some events and items of interest to YOU!

Check out www.thesongboard.com a new site for songwriters to get feedback as well as locate collaborators. It's a new site that connects songwriters all over the country for projects which is a cool idea.
If you are not a member already, check out the Arizona Songwriters Association at www.azsongwriters.com and consider joining. It is a great way to get to know local songwriters and they have many events they sponsor including bringing in publishers looking for music. You can contact Jon Iger about this at azsongwriters@cox.net
If you want to know a guy who has jumped into the local music scene in a big way in the past couple of years, get to know Bill Ludlow of Dirty Goat Productions. He runs open mics, does booking at a couple venues, sets up karaoke nights and is a good connection if you are looking for places to get heard. He's a good dude and been around the open mic scene for quite a few years. He also books original bands one night a week and they actually get paid!

Bill Ludlow can be reached at 480-529-2575 or write him at BL8forwk@aol.com or go to his myspace at:
www.myspace.com/openmicattjs and soon to be coming www.dirtygoat.com