{ Lick That Riff! }

Can I introduce you please to a lump of cheddar cheese? Knit one! Pearl one! Drop one! Curl one! Yes, these are in fact lyrics to a song that very nearly reached number one in the UK charts back in 1998. They are from the England World Cup song, Vindaloo by Fat Les. Granted, it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but when you look at some of the biggest songs ever written, you start to see some of the lyrics were extremely obscure and weird. And when you look deeper into it you can find that most of the obscurest lyrics were written around[...]

Songs have been around since the dawn of man, with old folk songs in many ancient civilizations. With a song comes a songwriter and with this comes the art and skill of songwriting. It is always hard to find a definition of songwriting with many varied opinions as to what it is. I would say that songwriting is the ability to construct lyrics that go together with music to construct a song. While a few other people believe that a songwriter can be someone who just writes lyrics, or someone who just composes music, I believe this is a wrong[...]

Alright everyone, hope you had a brilliant weekend. I'm currently skint so no outings to the pub for me :-( Bad Times. Anyway, as I write this I can already feel that the choice of guitar hero isn't going to go down to well. His band. The Darkness had only one truly successful album, their debut, and they got a lot of stick for prancing around in leotards. But I assure you, if you listen to the music, especially from the album Permission To Land you will find some outstanding guitar playing for a debut album. This weeks Guitar Hero is[...]

Christmas is near now, can't wait! Have you all been writing songs? Hope so. We  now move onto part four of the Beginners Guide to Songwriting. This one is mainly going to be about the lyrical side of things, so take note. Lets Crack on with it: Vocal Melody Good solos can reinforce and underline the vocal melody (Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit) or take the place of words altogether when the intensity is peaking, as heard in Eric Clapton's awesome Layla. And sometimes a solo can come in like a stranger and end up in the heart[...]

Wow! Nearly the weekend again! ;-) Good times! How are you all? Good? Anyway, now on to part three of the Beginners Guide to Songwriting, and we're now moving onto four topics; Arranging, Middle Eight, The Riff :-P, The Solo. So without further ado lets crack on with it. Arranging Now for a bit of arranging. Are you going to take the traditional verse, chorus, middle eight route? Or try for something a bit more modal? There's nothing wrong with the traditional route - it's and all-time design classic. But, you see, there's the rub.[...]