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Will Hodgkinson's "Melodic Adventure"
In music journalist Will Hodgkinson's first memoir he attempted to teach himself to play guitar in just six months. He chronicled his musical crash course in the book Guitar Man. Now he's back, with a sequel called Song Man that charts his quest to write and record a single song. Along the way, he gets some help from some very famous songwriters. He joins us to share his adventure.
Will Hodgkinson's MySpace page
Amazon.com: Song Man: A Melodic Adventure, Or, My Single-minded Approach to Songwriting
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Ray Davies' last name is actually pronounced "davis" with a tiny amount of zzz on that final consonant.
Lyrics in pop music seem very undervalued these days. No, these are not the days of Noel Coward or even Lieber and Stoller, but even beyond that:
I saw Billy Joel talking about some great political protest lyric of his. I like Billy Joel, but didn't recognize the lyric. Then they played it, in the song's context.
The lyric was totally obscured by the sheer mad loudness of drums, horns, guitar, etc.
I'm not against these things, but if you have something to say--let us hear it, calm down the rest of the instumentation just a bit!
His song "Bad Part of Town" reminds me a little of discordant post-punk, like The Fall. Not a bad job!
Maybe he should write for Scotland's Really Terrible Orchestra.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/opinion/09mccallsmith.html
Will's voice on "bad part of town" actually sounds a bit like Julian Schnabel's on his record from the late '90s! anyone agree?
I think the really big point--it would depress me if someone could just study real hard for a few months and write a great song right off the bat--is to challenge yourself, learn new things and have fun.
AND to write a book about it is just icing on the cake.
Wow! His first song sounds just like the Beatles.
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