Douglas Dodgson

@gablefox and I made up a few of our own awards last night.

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Best Director Who Is Not Nominated 

Nominees: 
Wes Anderson for “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” 
Drew Barrymore for “Whip It!” 
Spike Jonze for “Where the Wild Things Are” 
David Yeates for “Half-Blood Prince” 
Jane Campion for “Bright Star” 
Todd Phillips for “The Hangover” 
Sam Mendes for “Away We Go”

Winner: 
Jane Campion for “Bright Star” 

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Cinematography Which Is Not Nominated 

Nominees: 
“Where the Wild Things Are” 
“The Hangover” 
“Bright Star” 

Winner: 
“Where the Wild Things Are” 

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Best Soundtrack (score, original songs and placed songs all together) 

Nominees: 
Where the Wild Things Are 
Whip It 
Away We Go 
Nine 
The Princess and the Frog 

Winner: 
“Where the Wild Things Are” 

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Best Actors Who Are Not Nominated 

Nominees: 
Robert Downey Jr. in “Sherlock Holmes” 
Jude Law in “Sherlock Holmes” 
Brad Pitt in “Inglourious Basterds” 
Aziz Ansari in “Funny People” 
Zach Galifianakis in “The Hangover” 
Johnny Depp in “Public Enemies” 

Winner: 
Johnny Depp in “Public Enemies” 

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Best Couple: 

Nominees: 
Zachary Quinto & Chris Pine in “Star Trek” 
Robert Downey Jr. & Jude Law in “Sherlock Holmes” 
George Clooney & Vera Farmiga in “Up in the Air” 
George Clooney & Anna Kendrick in “Up in the Air” 
Bradley Cooper & Zach Galifianakis in “The Hangover” 
John Krasinski & Maya Rudolph in “Away We Go” 
Alia Shawkat & Ellen Page in “Whip It!” 
Johnny Depp & Marion Cotillard in “Public Enemies” 

Winner: 
John Krasinski & Maya Rudolph in “Away We Go” 

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Best Actresses Who Are Not Nominated: 

Nominees: 
Melanie Laurent in “Inglourious Basterds” 
Emma Watson in “Half-Blood Prince” 
Marion Cotillard in “Nine” and “Public Enemies” 
Abbie Cornish in “Bright Star” 
Amy Adams in “Night at the Museum” 
Julie Christie in “New York, I love You” 
Diane Kruger in “Inglourious Basterds” 
Megan Fox in “Jennifer’s Body” 

Winner: 
Melanie Laurent in “Inglourious Basterds” 

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Actor or Actress Who Made A Big Impression Even Though They Only Appeared In Just One Scene: 

Nominees: 
German soldier who gets the “King Kong” card in the tavern game in “Inglourious Basterds” 
Jim Gaffigan in “Away We Go” 
Crying old man fired over the Internet in “Up in the Air” 
Melanie Lynsky in “Away We Go”   
Jonah Hill in “Night At The Museum 2” 

Winner: 
Crying man in “Up in the Air” 

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Voice performance: 


Nominees: 
Paul Dano in “Where the Wild Things Are” 
Eric Anderson in “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” 
Jason Schwartzman in “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” 
Owen Wilson in “The Fantastic Mr. Fox” 
Teri Hatcher in “Coraline” 

Winner: 
Teri Hatcher in “Coraline” 

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Worst Actors (funny or unfunny): 

Nominees: 
Juliette Lewis in “Whip It” 
Sigourney Weaver in “Avatar” 
Giovanni Ribisi in “Avatar” 
Landon Pigg in “Whip It!” 
The guy who played Nite Owl 
Malin Akerman in “Watchmen” 
“Mika” in “Paranormal Activity” 
Stephen Lang in “Avatar” 

Winner: 
Juliette Lewis in “Whip It!” 

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Best Picture that is Not Nominated: 

Nominees: 
Coraline 
Whip It! 
A Christmas Carol 
Where the Wild Things Are 
Away We Go 
Princess and the Frog 
Watchmen 
Public Enemies 
Jennifer’s Body 
New York, I Love You 

Winner: 
Away We Go 

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Bleakest Picture of Human Condition: 

Nominees: 
Watchmen 
Couples Retreat 
The Hangover 
He’s Just Not That Into You 
Bruno 

Winner: 
“Bruno” 

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Line of the Year: 

Nominees: 
“I saw the new Harry Potter. Hermione’s got herself some big old t******s” - Jonah Hill in “Funny People” 
“I mean, she’s actually evil. Not high school evil.” - Amanda Seyfried in “Jennifer’s Body” 
“We’re the three best friends that anyone could have, we’re the three best friends that anyone could have..” - Zach Galifianakis in “The Hangover” 
“Anybody who ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now. And it’s because they sat there that they were able to do it” - George Clooney and Anna Kendrick in “Up in the Air” 
“Do you know how hard it is to make it as an indie band these days? There are so many of us, and we’re all so cute and it’s like if you don’t get on Letterman or some retarded soundtrack, you’re screwed, okay? Satan is our only hope.” - Adam Brody in “Jennifer’s Body” 
“Burt, are we f***-ups?” - Maya Rudolph in “Away We Go.” 

Winner: 
“We’re the three best friends that anyone could have, we’re the three best friends that anyone could have..” - Zach Galifianakis in “The Hangover”

For what it’s worth, these are chosen based on (a) my opinions on what great songwriting/album conceiving is; (b) albums I listened to over and over, feel warm thinking about, and/or contain most of my favorite songs of the decade.

I did this in a sort of “poor man’s flickchart” method, and I’m sure I’ll be back in the near days/weeks to adjust it.

Send me your lists! douglasdodgson at gmail dot com.

1. Belle and Sebastian, Dear Catastrophe Waitress
2. The White Stripes, Elephant
3. Stephen Malkmus, Face the Truth
4. The White Stripes, White Blood Cells
5. Joanna Newsom, Ys
6. The Strokes, Room on Fire
7. Weezer, Maladroit
8. Weezer, Green Album
9. Kanye West, 808s and Heartbreak
10. Kanye West, The College Dropout

11. Eminem, the Eminem Show
12. The Strokes, Is This It
13. Fountains of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers
14. M.I.A., Kala
15. Bjork, Vespertine
16. Brian Wilson, Smile
17. Radiohead, Kid A
18. Bright Eyes, LIFTED
19. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois
20. Joanna Newsom, The Milk-Eyed Mender

bryanmckay:

An idea for something I’d love to see but do not have the programming chops to create: a Google Maps hack that will give walking directions for not the shortest but the greenest route to a destination. Where are the most tree-lined streets? Can I cut through a park on the way there? I don’t need to get there fast, I want to get there in the prettiest way possible.

Be your own baby, be your own boss…
Be your own pet and you’re never alone

-Art Circus 

I’ve been posting a lot less than I’d like because I’ve been working almost nonstop. Oh work is busy, but not that busy. I’ve been working in my after-hours to become my own patron.

This article by Malcolm Gladwell has been ringing around in my head since reading it a few months ago. It’s about people who create their best work as they get older, which in the arts is actually almost all of the greats. Somehow there’s a widespread perception that if you’re not getting press by 30 or 35 at the latest, you should give up, but an actual survey of art or literature shows that that has never been the case, even a little bit.

But how do you go on creating work for years when it’s not generating income? It needs time, and you don’t have it.

If I remember right, Wallace Stevens worked a full day for decades and then went home and wrote at night. Write for five years and publish a book, I guess. So that’s one option.

The other model is the one most classic artists fall under, that of the struggling artist who has one or more patrons. It’s very inspiring to think of Van Gogh creating masterworks that were only recognized after his death, but the simple matter is without Theodore making a ton of cash and sending a lot of it to Van Gogh, we would not have a single one of those paintings.

Gladwell writes about Cezanne:

“Finally, there was Cézanne’s father, the banker Louis-Auguste. From the time Cézanne first left Aix, at the age of twenty-two, Louis-Auguste paid his bills, even when Cézanne gave every indication of being nothing more than a failed dilettante. But for Zola, Cézanne would have remained an unhappy banker’s son in Provence; but for Pissarro, he would never have learned how to paint; but for Vollard (at the urging of Pissarro, Renoir, Degas, and Monet), his canvases would have rotted away in some attic; and, but for his father, Cézanne’s long apprenticeship would have been a financial impossibility. That is an extraordinary list of patrons. The first three—Zola, Pissarro, and Vollard—would have been famous even if Cézanne never existed, and the fourth was an unusually gifted entrepreneur who left Cézanne four hundred thousand francs when he died. Cézanne didn’t just have help. He had a dream team in his corner.

This is the final lesson of the late bloomer: his or her success is highly contingent on the efforts of others.”

While my family is rich with ideas and love, and my parents have helped me from losing my apartment on two occasions in the last decade when my spending on art supplies and music equipment overtook my common sense, I don’t have anyone in my life who could help me financially to get the time I need to create at the volume I’d like. 

So, an experiment: can I be my own patron? Can I alternate periods of doing whatever I can to get as much money as I can scrape together, with periods of just doing my day job and then going home to create? Perhaps there is someone who can leave the house at 8, get home at 7, do the laundry, dishes, housework, pay the bills, do the taxes, go to the birthday parties and create something meaningful before 10:30, but I’m not that person. And because I’m not is not a good enough reason not to try to do what I love.

So, how can I be my own patron?  I have a couple ideas:

1. Try to find a way to get SOMETHING for everything I create. If I sell a painting for $1, it’s $1 more than I had when the painting was in my closet. That’s one song to analyze from iTunes, or maybe a drawing pencil. Ten of them is enough for new guitar strings.

2. Sell everything I don’t need on ebay. For years I’ve held on to many things, due to some issue with losing things and endings. But the possibility to do some creative work actually IS enough to encourage me to sell that book of Francis Bacon paintings that local museums and the internet have rendered unnecessary to me. 

3. Find ways to make more money through my primary income, which is graphic design. This is where I’ve been spending my time. They’ve announced that there will be no raises at work this year, and I have been making presentations about getting promoted for over 12 months now. So that’s not the direction to look. What I’ve been doing is entering design contests, mainly at a site called 99 designs. It’s pretty maddening, this is not the way design should be done. And a quick survey of the best designers on there and how many contests they’ve entered vs. how many they’ve won shows that the best designers end up working for about $5 an hour. But it’s a bit more palatable to me than working at McDonald’s after work for three months to try and save up some money. For one thing, I can do it at home with my wife, instead of leaving her to go somewhere.

4. Keep my eyes open for ways to find micro-patrons. In the design world, it’s standard that if a big project requires new equipment, the client pays for it and you keep it. I wonder if there’s a way to make this work: someone pays for a set of art supplies, and I create something for them and keep the supplies. Someone buys me a microphone to record a song for them, and I keep the mic. Someone takes care of going to the dry cleaners for me one day just because they’d like me to have some time to work. I had a site up with my music for a year and a paypal “tip” jar, and after many many downloads and no tips, I decided that was dumb. Not sure how to find or engage these “micro-patrons.”

So, there I am. So far, #3 has been the most fruitful, I won a design contest for $250 and bought a drum machine I need for my “the cyber punk” project mentioned earlier on this blog. So I can start on that. Of course, I’ve also done all the work to lose ten other design contests, but hey - I can start working on the beats for the album. I just have to find the time.

Last year around this time I was introduced to Threadless, a site where you submit T-shirt designs. If your design is selected, you win $2,000 cash and $500 in whatever of their shirts you want. I was immediately inspired, and since I’ve worked as a graphic designer professionally for 10 years, I thought I might have a good shot. 

Here was my main mistake: I looked at all the shirts and decided what I would rather see instead of what was winning, and submitted those ideas. As you may expect, they were all rated poorly. It was as if I walked into France and decided they would all enjoy my English. I submitted a ton of designs, and they all went nowhere. Bad scores, bad comments, exiting scoring early because the scores were so low.

As I look at a large list of tools I need to buy now to start recording songs again (I had to sell a lot of equipment during a financial emergency last year), Threadless came back to my mind. If I could succeed there, I could have a bigger return on investment than most of the other projects I want to start on (including istockphoto). It would actually be a much bigger return on investment than my hourly job. In looking for ways to “become my own patron,” in order to get tools and time to try doing more of what I love, this seems like a useful opportunity.

So, how to marry what I’d like to do with what has a chance of being selected? I decided today to analyze the recent winners for patterns to see if there were parameters that community liked, and if I would be inspired to work within them.

I also looked at mine that had failed as well as others on the site that scored poorly, to look for patterns there. Here are the results:

Winners

90% have a narrative (story) element
83% are visually complex
83% are on a colored tee
81% contain a visual pun
81% have a “surprise”
76% are cartoon or have a cartoon as part (25% of those are anime influenced)
76% are vector
64% contain a cliche
62% have an animal/animals
57% have action or violence
55% are in a fictional place/world
50% have a bird or flight (!)
47% have something from pop culture in them
47% have monsters
45% contain fictional creatures that already exist
43% contain original fictional creatures
43% have an abstract pattern as part
33% have humans
31% have a scientific element
28% have a weapon

Losers

73% do not have a pun
73% have black line art
47% have humans
40% are simple designs
37% have words on them
36% are on a white tee shirt
33% have original fictional creatures (this one is a wash)
30% have an abstract pattern as part (so this one is a wash)
27% have a “fashion” element
27% have implied or shown nudity or sex
26% are not a cartoon
only 37% have a “surprise”
only 20% have a bird

So, beyond what that community likes and it doesn’t, there’s simply the matter of the hundreds of submissions for every shirt that’s printed. The site is FAR from a sure thing, and I won’t put my eggs all in the Threadless basket. But if I come up with ideas that relate to the things they like, I’ll submit them in an effort to get the money needed to help myself advance in my creative endeavors. I’ll post here if anything happens with this.

I’ve read a lot about songwriting. I’ve talked to a lot of other writers. I’ve watched documentaries. There are a milion pieces of advice and working methods. I was thinking recently about what lessons I’ve learned that have actually helped me, and that’s this list.

23 Songwriting tips I’ve actually found useful

1. A song, unlike most other writing, can exist without a lyric conclusion or point
(figured out on my own)

This is a weird one, and I wonder if most writers have to go through it. When I initially began writing in earnest 15 years ago, I saw a song as a vehicle for a message. Usually I would think of the message first and then try to write a song. Other times I would develop a story and then try to find the moral. This kind of song isn’t bad (no kind is), but generally only appeals to one group of people: people that already agree with your point.  A recent example of really good writing in this style is Sufjan Stevens’ “John Wayne Gacy, Jr,” which does not end with the end of the telling of the story, but has this meta-comment and “application” by Sufjan at the end, for you to agree or disagree with. People who agree with it think it’s awesome.  It did not resonate with me personally.

It would seem likely that this idea comes from pretty recent “protest music”, since many of the oldest folk songs available have no message, and everyone talks about protest music being all about messages. But if you actually listen to “The Times They Are A’Changing” or “Blowin’ in the Wind” or “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?,” None of them make a point. They all leave it to the listener to draw a conclusion.

But it goes even further than that: “Blowin In the Wind” is similar to Crash Test Dummies’ “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm,” in that there’s not even a logical point for the song to end.

It took me a long time to see that it this kind of elliptical writing was a component of many songs I love, and that I could try it. The songs aren’t nonsense – not at all — but they aren’t making a point, and they don’t reach a conclusion. Realizing this directly influenced my writing of “Tired of Broken Hearts,” “Matthew Peter Judas and John,” “All My Dreams are Nightmares,” “When Is a House Not a House?” and “Cold War.” Thinking about it I can see it influenced other songs from that time, such as “Square Sunglasses,” though I wasn’t consciously thinking about it with that one, I had absorbed it.

This is something a song can do that almost nothing else, maybe poetry, can do. The play and movie “Doubt” have no end and no message, but your brain insists on filling that in. But in the context of a song, an incomplete flow of meaningful words can be very fulfilling.

2. Alternate short and long notes
(learned over and over, first pointed out to me by friend and bandmate Rick Gutierrez

I was working on the song “The Ballad of Marty McFly” and played some pieces of it for Rick. I had a chorus that had the same vocal rhythm as the verses, because I wanted a very uptempo feel to the song. He suggested the verse and chorus were too similar, so I started re-singing it over and over and came out with a melody line that was half as fast (holding notes twice as long) for the chorus, which we both immediately knew was “it” and to this day stands as the thing the most people are instantly attracted to in my songs. Every time I feel like one of my songs is meandering, it’s because of a long string of notes that are the same length.

3. Analyze songs
(thought of when reading Alan Pollack’s series on the Beatles’ songs, then became aware it was everywhere)

I think this may actually be more fruitful for writers than learning to read music is. As someone who loves songs, I assumed I knew what I liked and why. But start actually writing things down, and you’ll realize:

(a) “Stacy’s Mom” brilliantly uses the lyrics from the chorus with a much “flatter” melody at the beginning of the song to (1) introduce the theme of the song before a long verse lyric, and (2) make the chorus sound even bigger when using the same words with the big melody later;

(b) all anthems- from “Hey Jude” to “You Give Love a Bad Name” to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to “Last Nite” to “Pork and Beans” - are all between 100 and 120 BPM. And you probably have to get above 130 BPM for people to want to dance;

(c) Every song on The Strokes first album talks about lying and telling the truth,and there are body parts and fluids and diseases all over “In Utero” (which also features a preponderance of self-criticism and deprecation);

(d)  Most of the songs on “Pinkerton” are played in the same key, years before the Raveonettes did that too, and are played with all guitars tuned down a half step, which changes the sonics significantly;

(e) The verse-to-chorus move of “Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds” changes from 3/4 to 4/4 AND from minor to major (!).;

(f) “Hey Ya!” breaks one of the most basic, traditional rules of songwriting by having every section of the song last the same number of bars.

Every one of those facts is both inspiring and instructive. Who knows how many more are out there?

4. Asymmetry
(first heard of it in the Robbie Fulks song “Fountains of Wayne Hotline,” recently heard it expanded on in the “Soul of Songwriting” podcast.)

Consider this:

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you

Now this:

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Bono
Happy birthday to you

Now this:

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Bono
Happy birthday to you
May you have many many more

Now this:

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Bono
Happy birthday to you
Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!

See? Asymmetry is awesome!

5. Consider using melody and chord changes to color or emphasize the meaning of a word or phrase
(learned from Beatles songwriting article previously mentioned in this blog)

Think of the melody and words of “Penny Lane”: “…and in his pocket is a portrait of the queen…” See how the song opens up, becomes more intimate, nuanced on “queen”? Paul’s going to start describing behaviors instead of sights. What if the melody had gone up? Or faster? Or the band had stayed on the same chord?

6. Create a word or phrase
(figured out on my own)

I wrote about this recently here. I’d like to know what percentage of “classic” songs do and do not do this. My guess is it would be heavy on the side of doing this. When a word or phrase instantly makes people think of one thing - and that’s your song - you’ve done something big.

7. Do something with the melody to highlight the title or hook

(learned from Brian Wilson book mentioned earlier on this blog)

This is related to both #2 and #4. It’s always a good idea to use every element of the song to lock down on the key word/phrase/title. Listeners love it.

8. Find some way to learn to rewrite
(learned along the way, now hear it everywhere)

When you’re done writing a song, some kind of door to it closes in your brain. Rewriting takes skills in personal psychology, creative process, AND actual writing. It takes a lot to see the problems, to see the ways to make something even better, and to know when to leave something alone because it’s right.

Some books make it sound like you can never have too much rewriting; that’s not true. You need to find a way to articulate the “rules” of a song, so you can know when the song is done and stop before you kill it.

One major skill? Patience. Leave a song alone for a while. When it’s done you can’t wait to put it out for people, but every day that passes is a day you get a better understanding of what the song is and what needs fixing, if anything.

9. Have a good idea first
(discovered by myself, echoed by Rivers Cuomo in the liner notes for “Alone 2”)

I LOVE a lot of songs that don’t do this. Hardly any Strokes songs do. But when a song has something big at the back of it, a phrase, a theme, a topic, etc, that’s compelling, it pushes the song right past people’s ears into their minds.

10. How to use jamming
(figured out with my band)

I always disliked jamming. It has none of the tension and release that I love songs for. On accident my band and I figured out how to use it productively for me, which is: jam and record it, then listen back for things that inspire a song. This is how I began writing “Square Sunglasses.” I now “jam” with the tape on even when I’m alone to see what comes out, such as how I wrote “Cold War.”

Now that I think of it, I know that is how Trent Reznor wrote “Hurt” – by playing around with “record” on, and then listening back for things that were good.

11. Keep writing
(figured out on my own)

I don’t know if this is true for everything in life, but absolutely nothing inspires good writing like doing good writing. Songs feed off each other.

12. Key changes, time signature changes and tempo changes are awesome
(figured out on my own)

This is something I never even recognized as a listener. I only knew of key changes as the “step up” at the end of a song when Whitney was really going to reach for the high notes. And somehow these ideas are not used that much in rock any more, but they are always instant killers.

Think of when “Take Me Out” slows down – or when “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” breaks into the chorus – or the refrain “…Strawberry fields forever,” which breaks into the 4/4 rhythm of the song like we’re being taken aside to be told a secret.

I haven’t figured out how to write with key changes yet. It’s really hard. But I have been having some success (and fun) with tempo and time signature changes, such as in “Square Sunglasses.”

13. Let the lyrics inform the music and vice versa
(figured out on my own)

Usually words will suggest a melody to me. But sometimes if I get a first verse done and start making up a second verse while playing it, I will unintentionally introduce all kinds of interesting melodic and rhythmic variations. I realized this after several years of singing “The Ballad of Marty McFly,” which was written with the process I just described.

14. Look for good words first
(figured out on my own)

If you can fill a sheet with interesting, unusual words and phrases that sound great to you, the song will write itself. I don’t mean lyrics, just words. They’ll inspire tone, key, tempo, line length, etc. and will make your song memorable. As I understand, Thom Yorke pulled the lyrics to “Morning Bell” on strips of paper out of a hat. But what were those words? “null encounter,” “release me,” “cut the kids in half” – how could you write anything different than “Morning Bell”? What if the words were “oh well,” “you light my days,” and “I feel so sad since you left”?

15. Plan

This relates to #16 below. As you learn more about music and writing, the parameters open up so much that it can be impossible to figure out how to start. But there are things you could figure out in advance before you start singing/writing, if you’d just look at them.

There are keys where my voice can hit these notes and sound this way, and keys where they can hit those notes and sound that way. There are tempos and rhythms that carry information right in them. If a song has a conceptual time limit and a tempo, then the sections have to be only so long  or you have to cut sections. If you’ve got your list of words (#14) you want to use, a key, a tempo or two, and an idea of the time, you’ve got something you can really start sprinting with.

16. Restrict yourself
(learned by reading “The White Stripes: Sweethearts of the Blues”)

Jack White is all about restrictions. I should be clear: restrictions feel terrible. I don’t know why they work. They make writing less fun. But they produce more songs, and much better songs. If I have to settle for 75% fun writing to have 100% love for the song at the end, I’ll take it.

17. Sometimes a good title is all you need to start

Back to “Kid A,” Radiohead reported they had lists of song titles up that were not finished. How can you title a song that’s not written? Well, what if those titles are:

Kid A
Treefingers
In Limbo
Idioteque
Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box
Pyramid Song
Hunting Bears

?

Wouldn’t you be inspired about how to write those? And wouldn’t you write different songs than if the list said:

BB Good
Burnin Up
Lovebug
Can’t Have You
Sorry

Or

It’s Time to Party
Party Hard
Girls Own Love
Ready to Die
Don’t Stop Living in the Red

?

18. Try alternate tuning
(learned from an interview 10+ years ago with Pavement that I can’t identify)

A lot of writers are afraid to learn about writing, because they are afraid it will take away the freshness of their writing. I am one of these writers. But the benefits of learning how many ways you can make a song awesome are too many to skip out on. So how to get back that freshness? Start cranking those tuning pegs. Your ear will try to find it’s way in a way it hasn’t since your first month on your instrument. And it’ll all be guided by the knowledge you now have of how to take what your ears are hearing and make it great. Some folks have trouble with this, because you can’t be changing tunings all the time in concert. I say figuring out how to deal with that is well worth it. When you learn of all the songs that have been written with alternate tunings – “Start Me Up,” “All Apologies,” “A Case of You,” “Cinnamon Girl,” “Seven Nation Army,” “Yellow” – you won’t be able to resist it.

19. Use specific images
(written in every songwriting book I’ve ever read)

This is a funny one. Feelings that feel overwhelmingly strong from the writer’s side of the song can somehow skip the listener’s imagination.

But “Wednesday morning at 5 o’clock as the day begins, silently closing her bedroom door, leaving the note that she hoped would say more”? “His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, there’s vomit on his sweater already – mom’s spaghetti,” and “Sonny Liston rubbed some Tiger Balm into his glove”? Who can resist picturing/feeling those?

20. Write about what you know

(baked into Human DNA)

This is such cliched advice for writers it’s silly to repeat, but I don’t mean NOT to write what you DON’T know, which I’m all for too. I just mean don’t forget to write about what only you know as well. Who else, when Sublime was writing, was singing “We took this trip to Garden Grove” or “I don’t practice Santeria”? No one.

21. Write for a band if you’re in a band, for two singers if there are two, for solo acoustic guitar if it’s just you
(figured out on my own, despite everyone)

One of the biggest lies of all time about writing is that “a really great song will sound awesome if you play it on a single acoustic guitar”.

I don’t know where this comes from, but certainly “Minuet in G”, “Tainted Love,” “Age of Consent,” “B.O.B.” and “Everything in It’s Right Place” will NOT sound better on an acoustic guitar. And they kick the butt of a lot of songs I wrote on the acoustic guitar and then others tried to figure out how to pile on to.

If you write alone on an acoustic guitar, you’ll fill up the chord changes and vocals to a degree that will make your band sound like everyone is playing too much at once. But of you write a song for orchestra and then sit down to play it on the guitar alone, it’ll lose so much.

22. Write in your head
(learned from an interview where Rivers Cuomo said Billie Jean Armstrong wrote all of “Dookie” that way)

One of two things will happen: you’ll write things you’d never write on your instrument, or you’ll write the same thing over and over. But it’s worth trying it to see if option A happens.

23. You can’t write in pieces, you can’t write all the time
(figured out on my own)

A few years ago I took a week off to write. I wrote more good stuff in that week, which was filled with complications, than in a year of writing after work. I wish it wasn’t like this, but it is. Songwriting takes the ability to focus. You can still write fun songs in your spare time, but it takes time to write something you’ll want to keep singing. Not necessarily all the time you have, just the time it takes. How to make this work with a full time job? Well, uh, that’s what I’m trying to figure out.