Songwriting Apps 
If you're into apps, these won't necessarily make you a better songwriter, but they might be fun and even inspirational!
Evolver.fm has apps for songwriting for just about every platform.
Click HERE to check them out! ILikeSongs Blog Check out Irene's new Blog I Like Songs where you'll find lots of her favourite old and new songs!
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Songwriting News and Views May 17, 2012 Queen of Disco Dead
Queen of Disco Donna Summer has died at the age of 63. The 'She Works Hard for the Money' hitmaker had reportedly been suffering from cancer and passed away in Florida, according to TMZ.com.
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May 15, 2012 Martina McBride Not Afraid of Tough Topics
How did Martina McBride‘s new duet, “Marry Me,” come about? What led the vocal superstar to focus on songwriting in recent years? And does she consider herself, as Sheryl Crow recently called her, a “badass”?
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May 11, 2012 Remembering Irving Berlin
New York - Irving Berlin, the Dean of American Songwriters, was born 124 years ago today, but what if anything do you know about the man who gave the world 'White Christmas' and many other memorable songs?
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May 10, 2012 Carole King's Songwriting Days Over?
NEW YORK, N.Y. - The voice behind dozens of standards like "It's Too Late," ''You've Got a Friend" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" says her music-making days are likely over. Carole King, now a bestselling author, doubts she will ever write another song and suggested that her 2010 "Troubadours Reunion" concert tour with James Taylor would be her last: "It was a good way to go out."
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May 10, 2012 Village People 'Cop' Wins Copyright
LOS ANGELES -- When it comes to compiling a list of the great songwriters of the past 50 years, Victor Willis' name likely wouldn't merit more than an asterisk. Far better known as the cop in the novelty disco act the Village People, Willis is also remembered for a number of drug-related troubles in the early 2000s that nearly up-ended his post-Village People days.
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May 9, 2012 Mother's Day Concert Tribute to Female Songwriters
Here's to the ladies who do far more than lunch.
They're the women who've written music and lyrics for Broadway shows and operettas while largely taking a back seat to male counterparts.
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May 9, 2012 Idaho Songwriters Help Audiences Learn To Listen
Walking up the carpeted stairs to the usually subdued Gamekeeper Lounge on a Tuesday night feels like sneaking backstage at a concert hall. A long row of empty guitar cases line the hallway. Musicians pace up and down the corridor, their guitars slung across their shoulders.
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May 8, 2012 Bacharach and David to Receive Gershwin Prize
Burt Bacharach is calling from the future, but also from the past.
On a hotel telephone across the international date line, the 83-year-old songwriter is on tour in Australia, where it’s tomorrow morning. But he’s happy to zip down memory lane, 55 years back, across Broadway and into the lobby of the Brill Building, the fabled Manhattan song factory where he first crossed paths with Hal David.
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Music Biz ‘N Tech May 2, 2012 What is Apple Hiding from Musicians in iTunes Lawsuit?
A lawsuit between musicians and Universal Music Group may make sealed testimony from the late Steve Jobs about the nature of digital music sales public: Something that Apple is desperately trying to prevent. But why? MORE
May 2, 2012 Major Labels Lose Market Share As Indies Gain
Three of the four major labels lost a slice of their market share in 2011 as the indies gained ground.MORE
May 1, 2012 Digital Song Sales On Fire
Gotye, Justin Bieber and Maroon 5 have stormed the record books in recent weeks, earning three of the top 10 best sales weeks since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking digital downloads in 2003. MORE
April 30, 2012 Judge Dismisses Grammy Lawsuit
A lawsuit filed against the Recording Academy over its decision to trim the Grammy Award categories from 109 to 78 has been dismissed by a judge in New York. MORE
April 26, 2012 Spotify Developing Online Radio
Spotify, the music streaming service, is reportedly developing a U.S. Internet radio service to compete with Pandora, according to a Reuters report. The report claimed the new service would launch before 2013 and would be ad-supported. It also said Spotify has already begun notifying music companies of their plans. MORE
From mi2n
The Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA|AMCOS) has said that it is extremely disappointed with the High Court decision in the iiNet case, which leaves songwriters, composers and music publishers in the unacceptable situation of remaining exposed to illegal online file-sharing. MORE
From Music Week
A German court has ordered YouTube to install filters preventing users from uploading some copyright music videos. The Google-owned site could now face a huge bill over unpaid royalties. MORE
CD Sales Falling - From BBC Newsbeat
CD sales have seen a significant year-on-year drop in the first three months of 2012, according to figures from the BPI and the Official Charts Company. Sales fell 25% from 20.5 million in the first three months of 2011, to 15.3 million this year. MORE
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 Ed Sheeran (Photo credit: Man Alive!) There’s a new evaluation of the song “A Team” by Ed Sheeran up at the I Like Songs blog. If you’ve never heard of Ed Sheeran, there’s a video of him performing the song as well.
Here’s an excerpt:
“This is a series of five lines that rhyme; not perfect rhymes on all occasions, but each two syllables long whether they are one word or two. And on each of those he uses the same two notes, higher than any other note in the song. Now my rule of thumb has always been to only repeat something three times or it starts to feel like too much, but in this case that rule appears to go out the window. It just works.”
Check it out!
IJ
 Songwriters Circle (Photo credit: AndyRobertsPhotos)
Well, I do. I like all kinds of songs, old ones, new ones that I discover through my students…all kinds of ‘em. Which is why I started a blog just about the songs I like. You can find it here.
As a songwriter, I quite often find myself listening to a song with a “critical ear”, which isn’t always a good thing! If the song really appeals to me, however, I notice that this critical ear shuts off. Why is that? It’s because the mind has shut off and the emotions have taken over. I don’t care if there is anything wrong with the song from a critical viewpoint, I just love the song.
When you think about all of the songs you’ve fallen in love with over the years (and yes, it’s like falling in love), you notice that any time you hear them again it almost brings back that initial “rush”, just like seeing an old flame. If you stopped for just a second and listened to it as a songwriter and not just a regular listener, you’d probably notice some flaws in it. There are flaws in just about every song, but when you’re crazy about the song, you push all of that aside, just as you look past the flaws of a person you’re in love with.
So I decided that I’d take a look and listen to all of the songs that I’ve really loved (and the ones I’m learning to love) not so much from a critical viewpoint, although there is some of that, but from a music lover’s perspective. I actually started to write those articles for this blog but realized that I didn’t just want to critique, I wanted to listen and enjoy! And that’s how ILikeSongs was born.
I don’t want to spend all of my time listening to songs with a critical ear any more. I, like the rest of you, fell in love with a whole bunch of songs before I even knew what songwriting was. So if you’re interested, join me on my other blog, won’t you? 
I recently received this email from Joel Patterson (link to his website below), who describes himself as “the enfant terrible of the recording website Gearslutz”. I’ll let you read his email and my response is below:
Hi Irene,
Great site! Glad you’re so willing to help out the neophytes out here.
I’ve got a question, it goes like this: every so often I will hear a familiar phrase in a “new” song, I guess the latest was in the Enrico Iglesias “I Like How It Feels.” This may be an ancient song… I’m not too exposed to the current scene… anyway, he weaves the phrase “ticket to ride” into his lyric.
Or, whoever wrote the song did, is Enrico a talented guy? A front man for a larger organization? Isn’t he descended from Julio Iglesias, some kind of star of a previous era? So many questions, so much I don’t know…
“Ticket to ride” is obviously a quotation from the Beatles‘ tune “Ticket to ride.” I am on the fence between thinking this is a heavy-handed, blatantly obvious, cheesy play, and thinking it’s cool and hip.
If I were to work the phrase “rolling in the deep” into a new, original song, in a way that worked within the song and had a completely different melody from the Adele hit, I’m just wondering how that would strike you, overall? Cheesy? Hip? What’s your take?
Thanks!
Joel Patterson
www.joelpatterson.us
“Hi Joel,
“This is a great question! First of all, I think timing is everything. If you encompassed “rolling in the deep” into a song in the very near future, I would consider it tacky because it would APPEAR to be the use of a phrase in order to draw attention to your own song. You have no idea how many people hit my website using that phrase just because I did a bit of a critique on Adele’s song! So people out there looking for that song lyric, or a discussion or critique of it, would also potentially find any other song containing that lyrical phrase if it was posted on the web.
Continue reading From The Mailbag April ’12
Just wanted to point you to my other Guitar Blog where you’ll find Part 1 of a series on getting out of your strumming rut. This is geared towards those of you who play guitar, of course, and Part 1 goes right back to the basics of strumming itself.
Many of you find yourselves always strumming the same pattern, no matter what the song, and this might inspire you to work at changing that. This post even has some flash animations showing you how to strum so you can play along.
Part 2 will be coming soon, so remember to check back in!
IJ
This is geared mostly towards guitar players, but could still apply in some respects to those of you who write with a keyboard. Are your chord choices and your chord progressions getting boring? You might find yourself always turning to the same chords when you’re sitting down to write…and let’s face it, you can probably only sing in certain keys so those chords work for you.
However, they’re not very inspiring after awhile, are they?
Maybe you need to introduce yourself to some new sounding chords, chords that have different extensions (more about that in a minute), but still work for your voice. There are many, many chords out there, but most of the time we stick to the common chords. It’s not that common chords are bad, but they are what we know. I get an awful lot of visitors to one of my articles entitled “Chord Keys” because people aren’t sure what chords sound good together. In fact, they often use the search terms “what chords sound good together” to find that article!
So if you aren’t sure about chord keys, that’s a good primer. However, beyond that, why not teach yourself some less common chords. Chord “extensions” are simply added harmonic notes that change the sound of a chord. For instance, a basic G chord changed to a Gadd5, gives it a fuller, more majestic (for lack of a better word) sound. A Gadd5 is fretted like this:
Gadd5
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Continue reading Cool Chords
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