{"id":1510,"date":"2013-04-26T09:48:45","date_gmt":"2013-04-26T17:48:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/?p=1510"},"modified":"2020-05-02T13:03:03","modified_gmt":"2020-05-02T20:03:03","slug":"ralph-murphys-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/ralph-murphys-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Ralph Murphy&#8217;s Law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Songwriting veteran, <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Ralph Murphy (musician)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.murphyslawsofsongwriting.com\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage noopener noreferrer\">Ralph Murphy<\/a>, recently gave a few eager songwriters some writing tips at his recent talk during <a title=\"Billboard Article\" href=\"http:\/\/www.billboard.com\/biz\/articles\/news\/indies\/1559086\/ascap-expo-ralph-murphys-laws-of-songwriting\">ASCAP&#8217;s Expo<\/a>\u00a0in Hollywood.\u00a0Here they are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<ul>\n<li>The importance of writing for women: &#8220;Women physically buy 50% of all records made &#8212; and make men buy the other 50%,&#8221; joked Murphy.<\/li>\n<li>Seeking feedback from unbiased listeners: &#8220;Your friends and family are your worst critics because they love everything you do. Forget you even have a family.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>The power of pronouns: &#8220;You&#8221; is a trigger word that really pulls in the audience and makes the song relatable to them.&#8221; Murphy cited Zac Brown Band&#8217;s &#8220;Keep Me In Mind,&#8221; for example. &#8220;The first line is: &#8216;How come all the pretty girls like you are taken baby?'&#8221; Murphy highlighted the strategic use of &#8216;you&#8217; and &#8216;pretty.&#8217; &#8220;It isn&#8217;t rocket science you know!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Ease of singing: &#8220;All the first songs you grew up loving as a child were easy to sing.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t leave things unexplained: &#8220;If you start out a song with &#8216;Driving through Oklahoma,&#8217; you better address why you are in Oklahoma. Don&#8217;t say you have a loaded gun in the car and then never tell the listener what you do with it.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Rhyme scheme as a tool: &#8220;Don&#8217;t change your chord till you change your thought. Avoid contrived rhymes.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Expectations: Establish the premise of the song early on and fulfill the listener&#8217;s expectations. Make the song believable and write for the singer. Don&#8217;t write a song about children, for example if the artist you are pitching it to doesn&#8217;t have kids. It won&#8217;t be believable when they sing it.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Before heading out to do a signing of his &#8220;Murphy&#8217;s Law of Songwriting&#8221; book, Murphy bestowed his &#8220;best bets for going forward&#8221; upon the crowd, divulging the recipes that would give his students the best chance of selling a hit:<\/li>\n<li>Pop song: 100 bpm or more featuring a woman as the artist; an 8 second intro; use the pronoun &#8216;you&#8217; within 20 seconds of the start of the song; hit the bridge middle 8 between 2 minutes and 2 minutes 30 seconds; average 7 repetitions of the title; create some expectations and fill that expectation in the title.<\/li>\n<li>Country: 100bpm or less for a male artist; 14-second intro; uses the pronoun &#8216;you&#8217; within the first 20 seconds of the intro; has a bridge middle 8 between 2 minutes and 2 minutes 30 seconds; has 7 repetitions of title; creates an expectation, fulfills it in 60 seconds.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Certainly some things to think about, even if you don&#8217;t believe in &#8220;rules&#8221;!<\/p>\n<p><em>IJ<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"zemanta-pixie\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;\"><a class=\"zemanta-pixie-a\" title=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" href=\"http:\/\/www.zemanta.com\/?px\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"zemanta-pixie-img\" style=\"border: none; float: right;\" src=\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/zemified_e.png?x-id=6d93b1af-fcf0-4730-8562-5dcf6f9eaf0d\" alt=\"Enhanced by Zemanta\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Songwriting veteran, Ralph Murphy, recently gave a few eager songwriters some writing tips at his recent talk during ASCAP&#8217;s Expo\u00a0in Hollywood.\u00a0Here they are: The importance of writing for women: &#8220;Women physically buy 50% of all records made &#8212; and make men buy the other 50%,&#8221; joked Murphy. Seeking feedback from unbiased listeners: &#8220;Your friends and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-tips"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prwoq-om","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1510"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2021,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1510\/revisions\/2021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irenejackson.com\/songblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}