Music Publishing & Songwriting

Had quite an interesting visit to Amsterdam last week, where I was part of the first ever Dutch Writers Camp. The event was sponsored by Holland’s collection society BUMA STEMRA (the equivalent of our ASCAP/BMI/SESAC and Harry Fox Agency) and brought together an all-star group of international songwriters, ten contest winners from across Holland, and a couple of assorted special guests, which included yours truly. The songwriters participating in the camp were treated to an incredible master class from Ralph Murphy, the great guru of songwriting, and then paired off to write in alternating groups over the next two days. The result was an explosion of creative energy, a fascinating mix of cultures and working styles, assorted moments of euphoria, panic, insight, and a few emotional meltdowns, and alot of new friendships– as well as ten great new songs, all written and recorded in about two and a half days. No, everyone didn’t just hang out all day in the Amsterdam coffee shops. We worked!

As one of the American writers, Shane Alexander, put it, this was the songwriting “trenches”, with time pressure, competitive spirit, and a wild melange of musical and cultural influences adding a whole new set of challenges to the craft of creating a song. For the writers themselves, it was an exhausting and exhilarating week. For the special guests like myself, who had the luxury of observation rather than direct participation, it was a fascinating look at the creative process. In light of that, I thought I’d share two experiences from my stay in Amsterdam. Consider them souvenirs of my trip…

It’s funny how sometimes you have to go all the way across the globe to meet someone that’s been your neighbor all the time. Ralph Murphy and I are not literally neighbors–he’s a resident of Nashville (via Canada passing thru New York by way of London) and I’m a New Yorker. But we’ve certainly covered alot of the same territory. Both of us at various times have been songwriters, music publishers, and A&R managers, and both of us spend a great deal of time writing, talking, and thinking about the craft of songwriting. So to find ourselves at the Dutch Writers Camp together was a pleasure. For me, it was also an invaluable education.

If you’re serious about songwriting on a professional level, you can’t find a better teacher than Ralph Murphy. Currently ASCAP’s Vice-President of International and Domestic Membership, Ralph is a legendary songwriter and publisher with more than twenty Number One hits. But Ralph is not merely a gifted songwriter, he is both a student and a professor of the craft.

Ralph is a student in the sense that he has studied, and continues to study the science of the hit song from every angle– watching the chart action on new releases, spotting trends, and analyzing the reasons for a song’s success or failure. If you want to discover the rules and realities of creating commercially successful songs, you should start by checking out Ralph Murphy’s Laws of Songwriting at:

http://www.murphyslawsofsongwriting.com.

The truth is, most people who take the romantic view of songwriting, as a mysterious vocation built primarily on intuitive talent and luck, simply haven’t bothered to study it much. Ralph is the ultimate scientist, breaking down the factors that lead to success, one element at a time.

Even better though, Ralph is also a professor– someone who delights in sharing what he’s learned with songwriters at every level of the business. He’s an instructor for the Nashville Songwriters Association (NSAI) International Song Camps, and he leads his songwriting master classes at venues around the world. To hear him lecture at the Dutch Writers Camp, and watch him bring together an audience that ranged from veteran writers with numerous hits under their belts to developing writers across all different genres, was a real eye-opener, even for someone who has been working with songs and songwriters for more than twenty years. If you’re ready to challenge yourself to go from writing good songs to writing hits, make the investment and sign up for one of Ralph Murphy’s classes. It’s a lifetime’s worth of songwriting knowledge condensed into a couple of very entertaining hours.

Speaking of very entertaining hours, the other Amsterdam experience I wanted to share was my trip to the Vincent van Gogh Museum. Living in New York, I have ample opportunity to check out quite a few great museums, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney and many others. But I’ve never had a museum visit quite like my trip to the Van Gogh.

What makes the Van Gogh museum so unique is that it is centered solely on the creative life of one person. Where most museums are “greatest hit” packages, with the masterpieces of one artist after another, the Van Gogh is a “career retrospective”, with paintings from each period of Van Gogh’s development, interspersed with personal letters between he and his brother Theo. The result is not only a remarkable collection of paintings, but a fantastic and deeply moving portrait of an artist’s development and all the challenges that brings. Seeing the museum while I was also a part of the Dutch Writers Camp prompted me to consider the parallels between a painter like Van Gogh and all of us who write songs and make records. Here’s three quick observations to keep in mind as you examine your own creative development:

1. Where you are now is not where you are going.

To see the paintings done early in Van Gogh’s career is to see a shadow of what was to come. Some of the paintings are very beautiful in their own right, and they have certain characteristics that would become part of Van Gogh’s unique style. Yet they look very little like what we have come to think of as a Van Gogh. They are dark, restrained, and a little somber– very much influenced by Dutch masters like Rembrandt, and reflective of Van Gogh’s Dutch upbringing. There are masterpieces among those early paintings. But they are not the pictures that would ultimately define Van Gogh’s legacy.

In the creative whirlwind, it can be easy to forget that wherever you are, you are not at the end point in your artistic development. No matter how good they may be, the songs you’re writing today are not the songs you’ll be making five years from now. So don’t get too depressed (if you’re struggling creatively) or too proud (if you’re having success). It’s impossible to know just where the work you do today will ultimately rank in your overall career. All you can do is to try to do the best job possible on each song, and to keep moving ahead in your development. Which leads me to…

2. Where you’re going will be depend upon your willingness to challenge yourself with new opportunities, and by the people with whom you choose to surround yourself.

By far, the most dramatic moment in the Van Gogh museum is to see the metamorphosis that takes place when Van Gogh’s dark, moody early work suddenly gives way to the wild explosions of color that most of us recognize as the classic “Van Gogh” style. What happened? How did he so quickly go from a gifted but conservative artist to the ground-breaking innovator that became an art world icon? The short answer is: he moved to Paris.

It was only when Van Gogh moved to Paris that he came under the influence of the other French Impressionist painters that were popular at the time. The new methods of painting that he saw, the friendships with people like Gauguin, the challenge of surviving and competing in what was the artistic center of the world, all combined to push Van Gogh out of his earlier comfort zone and to help him re-invent his style. It was only with the influences of other people that he was able to truly find himself and his own unique way of painting.

The truth is, moving to Paris must have been very traumatic for Van Gogh. He hated cities, lived an almost reclusive lifestyle, and disliked much of the social-climbing that has always been part of the art world. Nevertheless, he knew that he needed to make the move in order to become a part of the larger artistic community. In the same way, your artistic development will be determined by your willingness to put yourself in new situations, with new people, with the pressure to create new and different kinds of music. Whether it’s moving to a city that is a music center, attending a writers camp in Europe, scheduling a writing trip to Nashville or LA, attending a Ralph Murray master class or taking a Berkleemusic course, you have to be willing to face the competition and challenges of a new creative environment. No one creates in a vacuum. You will not find your own unique style by working in isolation. You’ll find it by being part of a community.

3. Ultimately, it’s not about where you are, or where you’re going. It’s all about the journey.

By the time you reach the end of the Van Gogh museum, you’ve seen dozens of renowned works of art. But what sticks with you is not any single painting, but rather the story itself– the progression of one man’s creative journey, full of exhilarating breakthroughs and career detours and emotional challenges and tragic moments. So it is with great musical artists like Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, or Prince. Even beyond any single great song, what makes their careers significant is the journey itself, as they were constantly pushing ahead, experimenting, moving from one style to another, and capturing the changing times within the context of their own changing lives. In the end, the story of the journey touches us more even than the one singular work of art.

When faced with the pressures of surviving in this difficult business, it’s easy to take for granted the everyday experiences of a life in music. As someone who has been doing this for far too many years, I know that the one thing that sticks with you in the end is not the songs themselves, but the people you meet when writing and recording them, the places you go, and the experiences you have. That’s the best part of the show– so don’t miss it. I had a great time in Amsterdam, met a fantastic group of creative people, learned a lot and brought home some good souvenirs. That’s the kind of journey you don’t forget.