songwritingstrategies.com

An excerpt from Chapter 7 of Songwriting Strategies, “Melody/Harmony Connections,” will be featured in the “Woodshed” column of the Fall 2014 issue of Berklee Today, a forum for music and musicians published by Berklee College of Music that goes out to 53,000 readers worldwide. The article, “Composing Independent Melodies,” includes some of the “contrapuntal” ways of understanding interactions of vocal melody and chords in songs outlined in the book. Thanks to Berklee Today editor Mark Small, for his keen eye in pulling out a small slice that conveys some central ideas in the book, suitable for Berklee Today’s musically informed readership. The issue is due out the first week of October.

Over the past couple of years I’ve taken part in Sally Taylor's Consenses Project, a grand-scale collaborative game of artistic telephone:

Visit the Consenses Website

Over 100 artists from all over the world, in all media, styles and disciplines, were involved in multiple threads of translations and adaptations. The project aims to "increase cross border cultural understanding through large scale art projects that serve to promote and achieve peace (i.e. "consensus") among communities worldwide." A worthy goal, especially in these troubled times!

Consenses launches its premier exhibit this summer (for 3 days only) on Martha’s Vineyard Island, off the coast of Massachusetts. Come to the exhibit and saturate your senses in this. I’ll be co-leading a workshop with Scarlet Keys, and I’d love to see you there! Artists such as Jimmy Buffett, Jennifer Nettles, John Forte, James Taylor & Carly Simon (Sally’s folks) have participated and will be featured. There will be tons of performances and excitement. An event not to be missed!

I’ve enlisted two of my favorite golden-voiced Berklee student songwriters to be the “Voices of the Book.”

Eric Leva, who just graduated in Spring ‘14, describes himself as an “indie pop artist-songwriter with a background in virtuosic classical piano, and a coffee expert.”

Hadley Kennary, who graduated Berklee in Spring '14, is a pop/folk singer-songwriter whose songs stay true to her love of infectious melodies, cleverly crafted lyrics, and her inspirational surroundings.

We’ve been hard at work preparing audio files to accompany all the examples and exercises in the book. When they’re ready we’ll post them as a downloadable zip file of MP3s at 360Songwriting.com.

We recognize some readers are more comfortable than others with formal music notation. In addition, I introduce some non-standard notations in the book, such as Nashville chord charts, some notations for rhythmic settings of lyrics, and so forth. I wanted to make it as easy as possible to follow along with the book, for all readers.