Nashville Day/Night

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What Is Not vs. What Should Be

While driving home from writing and recording yesterday afternoon, I heard a story on NPR about author Ann Patchett opening a new bookstore in Nashville called Parnassus. During the interview, she said:

"I think of this as my gift to the city: This is what I want to see in Nashville, and if I want to live in a city with a bookstore, then I'm willing to pay for it."

This embodies the entrepreneurial spirit. It may be easier to just complain about there not being a great bookstore in town, but it's far more rewarding to create one. I believe this is true for any artistic endeavor. Rather than criticizing what is not, let's create what should be. One piece of art is worth one thousand critiques.

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!

The King of Queen

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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!

With A Little Help From My Friends

Thanks to the work of NSAI, there is hope for a brighter tomorrow in the world of publishing. If this act gets passed through Congress, we would be looking at a greater revenue stream and ultimately more publishing deals. Please take a couple minutes to:

1. Find your local representative by clicking HERE.

2. Send them this letter:

Dear (Insert your Congressman's name here):

I am a songwriter/composer writing to encourage you to sponsor and support The Stop Online Piracy Act (H.R. 3261).

Over the past decade, Internet music piracy has decimated the American music industry and wrought particular devastation on the profession of songwriter/composer.  As many as 90% of our country’s professional songwriters and composers are no longer able to earn a full-time royalty income for one simple reason – Internet music piracy.  Royalties have shrunk dramatically and so have the creative opportunities for songwriters and composers.

The legislation will allow removal of rogue websites whose primary activity is based on piracy.  Many of the sites are located in the former Soviet Union and distribute copyrighted material with no compensation whatsoever.  In many instances the sites are simply criminal enterprises which operate with no fear of reprisal.

America is losing tens of billions of dollars each year due to Internet piracy of movies, music and other copyrighted American creations.  This legislation will help reverse a trend that sees billions of copyrighted files (music, movies, television shows and other copyrighted works) being illegally distributed each month.

The bill also increases criminal penalties for individuals who traffic in counterfeit medicine and military goods, which put innocent civilians and American soldiers at risk. And it improves coordination between IP enforcement agencies in the U.S.

(Insert a personal message or example about how piracy has impacted your career or opportunities if you wish.)

We need your help and support.
Sincerely,


NAME
ADDRESS

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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!

Quote of the Day - Bob Morrison

"To be a songwriter in Nashville is to have the heart of a poet and the hide of a rhino."

– Bob Morrison

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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!

Rules, Schmules

There are plenty of rules that can be helpful when writing a song, but only if they are viewed as guidelines. Instead of using the rules as tools to build the skeleton of the song, The strongest lyric will share a lot of these common characteristics.

There is no concrete rule when it comes to songwriting, because you can find a great example that breaks every rule. It’s helpful to understand rules and guidelines as road signs, but it doesn’t mean you have to follow exactly where the map tells you to go. You can take a more scenic route and still end up at the finish line. It's often easiest to take the fastest, most direct route, but the path less traveled should always be a viable option.

A lot of times when I learn something new about songwriting, one of the first emotions that rises to the surface is a sense of lost time...a sort of regret that I may have been doing it "wrong" for so long. But as I mentioned earlier, it's important to view songs more as stepping-stones rather than the other shore (a means to an end rather than the end itself).

“There is no right way to paint...so just paint.” (Nashville's Helen King to her art students)

I would echo that by saying that there's no right way to write songs, so just write.

Keep writing,

Ben

Up Against the Best of Nashville

On the refrigerator at my publisher's office.

When you send your song to a publisher in Nashville, be aware of what you are up against. It's not enough for you to beat out all the other CDs from aspiring songwriters that made it to their desk that day. On any given day, your songs are also up against the work of the best staff songwriters in the world. And somehow your music needs to stand out in a sea of noise.

But usually your competition often isn't who you think it is. It's more like golf. For the most part, it's you against the course. You are up against the craft of songwriting. It's better to learn from than to compete with each other. So let's celebrate and enjoy the process together along the way.

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!

SongbirdCamp.com is Now Live!

I am very, very excited to officially announce the first ever Songbird Camp, happening June 24-27 just outside of Nashville, TN. I am also thrilled that, in addition to other industry professionals, my mentor (and multi-Grammy-award-winning songwriter) Gordon Kennedy will be dropping by at the retreat. We only have 30 spots available, so don't wait! If you are an aspiring songwriter, we want YOU at Songbird Camp.

Please check out the site and forward it on to other songwriters!

Why Nashville is Music City

Here is a great post on The Atlantic website about which cities have the most music in their veins. Nashville is literally off the chart. Read the article here.

And the Grammy Goes To...

Below is an article that I wrote a couple days ago for one of my hometown newspapers in Fort Wayne, Indiana. 

See it on The News-Sentinel's website here.

Tonight, at the 53rd Grammy Awards, I heard the phrase “and the Grammy goes to” 108 times. The day’s events began with the pre-telecast ceremony, where 98 of the awards were given (the televised portion only includes the final 10 most popular awards). We anxiously awaited the categories in which Ricky Skaggs’ album, Mosaic (the album on which I had written eight songs), had been nominated. We were left sitting in our seats when his name wasn’t announced.

It was fascinating to realize that for every one person giving a speech, thanking everyone who has helped along the way, four more people pocket their lists of thank- yous in hopes of another chance, another year. For every five people nominated in a category, thousands more worked day in and day out with hopes of garnering a nod from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

One of my favorite moments of the day was during the pre-telecast ceremony. Gospel legend Mavis Staples, who was sitting only a few seats away from us, won a Grammy for the first time in her career. While the moderators had repeatedly encouraged recipients to pare down their words for time’s sake, I (along with every other person in the room) would have gladly given Staples all the time in the world for her tears of joy and words of genuine thankfulness.

I was also thoroughly entertained by the televised portion, specifically Mumford & Sons’ driving live performance, Miranda Lambert’s “The House That Built Me” (written by Allen Shamblin and Tom Douglas) and the fact that it was Esperanza Spalding, not Justin Bieber, who walked on stage to accept the award for “Best New Artist.”

Overall, my wife and I drove away feeling two things: inspiration and pride. Inspiration because we saw true art performed and celebrated tonight, and pride because so much of that art has its roots in Nashville. I’m looking forward to getting on a plane tomorrow morning, albeit at 7:00 a.m., and getting back to the job I love: writing music. If all goes well, it won’t be too long before I hear my name complete the golden phrase, “and the Grammy goes to.”

Feature in Fringe Magazine!

If you're in Nashville and happen to pick up a the most recent copy of Fringe Magazine, you may see a familiar face. Every issue they feature a songwriter in a section called "Hello, Songwriter," and I couldn't be more honored to have been selected.

(Written by Andrea Bailey Willits; Photographs by Maya Laurent Photography)

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Day jobs can be the death of your dreams. Not for songwriter Ben Cooper. 

Pulling off his green apron, Ben Cooper clocked out of another 4 a.m. shift at the West End Starbucks. As usual, his pockets were full of crinkled receipts where he’d quickly scribbled song titles and ideas between making mochas. He couldn’t wait to get home and sit down at his upright piano; then his real eight-hour workday could begin.

“I was working for the job I wanted, not the one I had,” Cooper says. “So I allowed for a 40-hour songwriting week by working crazy shifts at Starbucks.”

Barista by day, songwriter by night—it was the most exhausting year of Cooper’s life. But in late 2008, the Belmont graduate from Fort Wayne, Ind., inked a publishing deal with Writer’s Den Music Group and quit steaming milk. Two years later, he’s happily doing what he loves and just landed eight cuts on bluegrass artist Ricky Skaggs’ new record, Mosaic...

Read the rest of the interview here, beginning on page 55.

And be sure to check out fringemagazine.com.

Keep writing,

Ben

Songwriting Article in The Tennessean

Last week there was a pretty interesting article about the business of songwriting in Nashville's newspaper, The Tennessean.

Read it here.

Also, I found this video on The Tennessean's website helpful:



Keep writing,

Ben

From the Writing Room to the Studio

I had someone ask me recently, "How does a song get from the writing room to the radio?" Well, the most important step in that process is the song's transition into the studio. In my experience, only about one in every 8-10 songs written makes it from the lower-quality GarageBand version to the full-band studio version.

Here's an example of a song that made the jump from the writing room to the studio:


          "Breakthrough" (Ben Cooper/Jenn Schott) ©2010

          Exhibit A - Writing room version, immediately after finishing the song (Jenn singing):

          Exhibit B - The full-band demo recording (artist Mallory Hope singing):

In the course of three hours (the length of each "session"), a band of musicians will usually record five songs. Broken down, that's a song every 40-45 minutes, at a quality that sounds like something you could hear on the radio. The way this proficiency is accomplished is by having the songs mapped out ahead of time by the session's lead musician (here is an example of a chart written using the Nashville Number System).

When the time comes to begin recording the next song on a session, the players all congregate in the mixing room to hear the songwriters' rough recording (Exhibit A). They follow along on the charted road map, jotting notes along the way. After hearing the song only one time, the players take their places in the soundproofed tracking room and run through the tune. Then after a little banter about who should take the solo and when and where each player should come in, they play through the song for the final pass (Exhibit B). Generally the final demo version of a song is literally only the second time these players have ever attempted the song! After the band's tracking session, a demo singer or artist will come in and overdub the final vocal, and the engineer will mix the songs, sometimes even the same day.

These session players and singers are some of the most talented individuals I have ever been around. I wish I could bring everyone into the studio on days that we are recording, because it is such an amazing process to see. I believe that the most "Nashville" thing that a tourist could ever experience is not walking down Broadway through honky-tonk bars, but rather sitting in a studio while a song comes to life before their ears. And this is an experience that I hope you are all able to have someday soon.

Keep writing,

Ben