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    The Songwriter's Guide to Mastering Co-Writing: Real Pros Sharing Real Techniques
    The Songwriter's Guide to Mastering Co-Writing: Real Pros Sharing Real Techniques
    The Songwriter's Guide to Mastering Co-Writing: Real Pros Sharing Real Techniques
    Ebook137 pages2 hours

    The Songwriter's Guide to Mastering Co-Writing: Real Pros Sharing Real Techniques

    By Marty Dodson, Clay Mills and Bill O'hanlon

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    About this ebook

    The essential guide for any songwriter wanting to learn how to collaborate effectively and work with other writers to improve their craft. Written by two hit songwriters and a best selling author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateDec 19, 2018
    ISBN9781543958324
    The Songwriter's Guide to Mastering Co-Writing: Real Pros Sharing Real Techniques

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      Book preview

      The Songwriter's Guide to Mastering Co-Writing - Marty Dodson

      The Songwriter’s Guide to Mastering Co-Writing:

      Real Pros Sharing Real Techniques

      Copyright © 2019 by Marty Dodson, Clay Mills, and Bill O’Hanlon

      All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

      ISBN: 978-1-54395-831-7 (Print)

      ISBN: 978-1-54395-832-4 (eBook)

      Dedication

      Marty dedicates this book to Kim Williams and Ron Harbin who taught him to co-write.

      To Candy, with whom he is co-writing an amazing love story.

      To his children who keep him striving to be a better man each day.

      To Elliott, the first grandchild. He has Pop’s heart.

      Clay dedicates this book to Mac McAnally and Dan Fogleberg, for the inspiration to pursue this crazy dream called songwriting.

      To Karen, whose true heart continues to show me all love can be.

      To my son Garrett, for the countless proud Papa moments.

      Bill dedicates this book (his 37th!) to all his co-writers, from whom he has learned so much.

      To Helen, who is my biggest songwriting supporter. You’re a keeper.

      To Mango, our loving cat, who usually hears first demos of my songs and has witnessed many co-writing sessions.

      To Nick and Zack Hexum, my songwriting stepsons, who have inspired me with their songwriting and musical success. Nick’s group, 311, has gone so far. I am proud to have been his guitar teacher when he was starting out.

      Contents

      Chapter 1: Why Co-Write?

      Chapter 2: Finding Co-Writers

      Chapter 3: Finding Your Thing: Discovering What You Do Best In a Co-Write

      Chapter 4: Winning In Every Session: How To Come Out of Each Co-Write With The Best Possible Song

      Chapter 5: Co-Writing Etiquette and Co-Writing No-Nos

      Chapter 6: Finding Your Best Co-Writers

      Chapter 7: Amateur vs. Pro Songwriters

      Chapter 8: Writing With An Artist, With Bands, and With Track Creators

      Chapter 9: Tech and Tools for Co-Writing

      Chapter 10: Record Keeping

      Chapter 1

      Why Co-Write?

      Writing a song in collaboration with others is called co-writing. This book is the first we know of to devote itself entirely to teaching you how to successfully co-write songs.

      Some co-writing is done with a songwriting team in which one of the songwriting partners handles the melody/chords and the other handles the words/lyrics. Famous examples of this kind of co-writing team are: Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and Rodgers and Hammerstein.

      In other songwriting teams, both writers contribute to the music and the words. Think of Lennon and McCartney, Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Lieber and Stoller, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, and Isaac Hayes and David Porter.

      There are modern pop hit factories in which a hit songwriter/producer works with various writers and artists to co-write songs. Most famous of this kind of co-writing team is one led by Max Martin. This team has co-written with Katy Perry, Pink, Adam Levine of Maroon 5, Taylor Swift, The Weeknd, Justin Timberlake, and many others.

      In Nashville, the hub of country music songwriting, most professionals co-write regularly. Here songwriters often co-write with recording artists or a shifting group of their professional songwriting peers.

      Who we are and why you should listen to us

      There are three of us co-writing this book. We are co-writing the book for many of the same reasons we co-write songs.

      We’ll talk about why we co-write and why we recommend that you co-write in the latter part of this chapter, but first, we’ll introduce ourselves.

      Clay Mills is a Nashville-based, multi-platinum, Grammy-nominated songwriter/producer, penning #1 hits for Darius Rucker (Don’t Think I Don’t Think About It), Diamond Rio (Beautiful Mess), and Kimberley Locke (Fall). Along the way, he collected Grammy nominations for Beautiful Mess and Trisha Yearwood’s Heaven Heartache and the Power of Love.

      Clay has had over 125 songs recorded by artists such as Lady Antebellum, Trisha Yearwood, Clay Walker, Reba McEntire, Easton Corbin, Baby Face, Little Big Town, Andy Griggs, and many others. Clay’s most recent hits include Darius Rucker’s History In The Making and I Got Nothing.

      Marty Dodson is a songwriter from Nashville, Tennessee. He’s written thousands of songs before and since becoming a professional songwriter and earning his living from songwriting.

      He has written six #1 songs and has had more than 125 songs recorded by other artists including Joe Cocker, Carrie Underwood, Rascal Flatts, Kenny Chesney, Billy Currington, The Plain White T’s, The Oak Ridge Boys, Don Williams, Johnny Reid, Billy Ray Cyrus, Diamond Rio, Buddy Jewell, Lonestar, Billy Ray Cyrus, John Michael Montgomery, The Oak Ridge Boys, Ricochet, Craig Morgan, Tracy Lawrence, Saving Jane, Big and Rich, and most recently, Blake Shelton. Marty co-wrote the K-Pop song, Bounce, which knocked PSY out of #1 in South Korea and won Song of the Year honors for South Korea and all of Asia.

      Marty and Clay also co-founded SongTown USA, an online, worldwide community of aspiring songwriters they teach and mentor. Some of these SongTown songwriters have gone on to have their songs recorded and some have gotten music publishing deals.

      Bill is an aspiring professional songwriter who came across Marty and Clay and learned how to co-write successfully from them. Because Bill has written or co-written 36 previous books (including one called Do One Thing Different that got him on Oprah and one with Marty called Song Building), we decided to join forces to write this book.

      Bill brings writing and publishing expertise as well as playing the role of student/learner for the reader, making sure everything is clear for beginning as well as intermediate songwriters.

      And that leads us to the reasons for co-writing both songs and books.

      Benefits of Co-Writing

      Different and complementary strengths

      Just as each of us brings different strengths and abilities to writing this book, song co-writers bring different strengths and specializations to the song-creation process.

      The most obvious specializations are, as we mentioned above, melodies and words. But there are other strengths and abilities people might bring to a song co-writing session as well.

      One person may be great at coming up with song ideas or titles.

      Another may be good at finding a unique angle to come at that song idea or title.

      Some people can come up with and play really cool chords or start playing a rhythm that inspires the other songwriter(s) in the room.

      Others are great at editing the melody, or words, or song structure during or after the co-write.

      Some writers are great cheerleaders who react to and encourage great ideas, lyrics or melodies when they show up in a writing room.

      There are even successful co-writers whose specialty is building the right room. They are masters at finding people with complementary skills and helping those people maximize their talents.

      These days, another common role in co-writing is the track person. A track person someone, male or female, creates a bed of recorded music with bass, drums, keyboards, guitar or other instruments and co-writers write what is called the topline. A topline is simply lyrics and melody over a musical or chordal bed.

      It’s important to note that the topline is also the only copyrightable part of the song. Without a melody (with or without lyrics), you don’t have a song according to the copyright office.

      After trying to learn to do everything well at the beginning of his co-writing days, Marty eventually figured out he was best at coming up with song ideas/titles and writing lyrics.

      Over time he developed a reputation for these things, and accomplished songwriters who weren’t as good at those aspects of songwriting started asking him to co-write.

      Of course, Marty occasionally does different things in sessions. He might have an idea for tweaking a melody from time to time, but he finds that specializing in lyrics and ideas helps him collaborate well with others who are world class in their particular area of songwriting. Still, sometimes he finds himself in the position of driving the melody train in a co-write. Some songs with his melodies have been recorded, but he spends the majority of his time playing to his

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