The Beatles - "In My Life"

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10,000 Hours

10,000 hours. That's how long Malcom Gladwell says in his recent book, Outliers: The Story of Success, it takes for someone to master a craft.

The Beatles did it performing live in Germany before they reached world fame. Bill Gates did it in a computer lab while he was in high school. And you can do it too.

Broken down, 10,000 hours is roughly 2,000 co-writes (considering the traditional co-write time of five hours, about 10:30am to 3:30pm). Let's be honest. It takes years to become an expert co-writer. But the cool thing is, a lesser-experienced co-writer can write a better song on any given day than an expert co-writer. Basically, an amateur can hit the bull's eye on a lucky shot, but an expert will have better aim and more control over where their arrow lands. And the more control over where the arrow goes, the more fun the creative process becomes.

Keep writing (and aiming at the bull's eye),

Ben

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Would you or someone you know like to go on a songwriting retreat with industry professionals? Visit SongbirdCamp.com for more details!

New Solo Discovered on "Here Comes the Sun"

It's not often you get to hear anything new from The Beatles, so this is definitely a treat!
 



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Would you or someone you know like to go on a songwriting retreat with industry professionals? Visit SongbirdCamp.com for more details!

Engineer Geoff Emerick on Lyrics

In Emerick's recent book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles he makes this observation:

"For some reason, I never used to listen to lyrics all that closely. Perhaps it was because of my taste for opera and classical music that the vocal always seemed like just another instrument to me. I was attracted to it solely for the way it fit in with the backing, not for the words that were being sung. Lyrics simply never sold me on a particular song--it was the overall sound that did."

I think it's sometimes easy to get too worked up about what the lyric says that how the message is said gets lost.

Keep writing,

Ben

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Would you or someone you know like to go on a songwriting retreat with industry professionals? Visit SongbirdCamp.com for more details!