SONGWRITERS HOME We provide tips in the following areas:
Once you have written a song, you own the copyrights of it. This means
that nobody is allowed to record and release your song without your prior
consent and without paying you money. There are two ways to establish your
copyright: by recording your song or by writing it down. To prove that
you have established copyrights on a unique piece of art, you can register
your copyright with Uncle Sam. (Or to be more precise with the US Government
Copyright Office or your local Inland Revenue organization).
Another – cheaper –way to prove that you have created your work before
somebody else copied it, is to send the recording or the sheet music of
your song to your self by regular mail. Once you’ve received your own sending,
you don’t open the envelope but stick it in some far away drawer. This
way the date of the post stamp will be the proof that you already had this
song before somebody else did.
Songservice.com strongly recommends songwriters with professional ambitions
to also take the next step, which is registering the copyrights of your
song with an official copyright organization. This way you don’t only file
the proof of owning the copyright at a certain date, but you also have
somebody taking care of collecting money from the exploitation of your
song.
A listing of copyright organizations per country is published by BMI
on their website. Check out:
http://www.bmi.com/library/brochures/copyrightlinks.asp
Songservice.com provides copyright services. We can assist you in registering
your songs and collecting the associated revenues. Also we can assist you
in the more complicated stuff: clearing samples used, collecting international
copyrights, etc. Should you be interested in receiving more information
about these services, please contact us at: copyrights@songservice.com.
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Lyric writing
People have written many, many books on the subject of lyric writing. We will not copy these books here.
We just want to list a few quotes for you to think about:
“Grasp the subject. The words will follow”
Cato the Elder (234-149 BC)
“The poet is the priest of the invisible”
Wallace Stevens, 1957
“Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal”
T.S. Eliot, 1920
“As long as our language is inadequate, our vision remains fomless”
Adrienne Rich, 1980
“True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those move easiest
who have learned to dance”
Alexander Pope
‘The Craft of Lyric Writing’ by Sheila Davies.
Click here to purchase this book on
Gently, sweetly, row by row;
Let the verse the subject fit
Little subject, little wit”
Henry Carey (1687-1744)
Make sure you record your songs in the best possible ways before submitting
them to Songservice.com. The quality of your recording is not depending
on the price of you recording equipment. While reviewing the songs that
have been submitted to Songservice.com we noticed that some very obvious
things are often overlooked. Just a few simple things to keep in mind:
- Make sure you and all your fellow musicians really know the song before you start recording.
- Live your lyrics when you sing them
- Experiment with the positioning of your microphone
- Be careful with using effects
- Pay some attention to the placement of the monitor speakers in your (home) studio. Are you sure your speakers are in phase?
- Listen to your final recording on a different stereo. Does it still sound okay?
- Tune your instruments properly. Use an electronic tuning device!
- Get somebody to sing your songs for you if you can’t sing all that well
- Avoid coughs, sneezes and awful sounds like that to appear on your recording
Dealing with Rejection
Unless you’re a masochist, rejection is not nice. However, for songwriters
it’s a daily fact of life. You got to live with it and just keep going.
In an interview with Music Connection (June 2000) Peri Pastor (frontman
of Poem and TSO2) worded it like this:
“You don’t cut your dick off when a girl breaks your heart, nor should
a musician throw his gear away. You get up, reinvent yourself and look
for the next best possibility”
To make an MP3 file we recommend using MusicMatch
Jukebox. This program allows you to convert to MP3 files from WAV’s
or directly from an Audio CD.
Use the best possible sampling rate. However, for submission with Songservice.com
your MP3s may not be larger than 7MB. Therefore, it might be necessary
to convert your files to the 128 kbs format.
Here are some tips for recording your music onto you computer:
- Close all other windows programs while recording
- Reboot your computer before you start recording (especially when you don’t have a lot of internal memory or RAM)
- Always first create a WAV file and then convert it to MP3. Eventhough MusicMatch (and other programs) can record directly to MP3 you should not be temted to do so. By recording directly to MP3 your computer will have to compress more quickly and might not make the best decisions in compressing, which may lead to a lesser sound quality.
- Get rid of awful ‘pop’ sounds in your digital recording, for instance by using the shareware program Popfix. You can download Popfix from www.newfreeware.com.
Tips from You
We are very interested in learning more about your best practices. Please
send us your tips at tips@songservice.com,
and we will publish them on our website.