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Welcome to one last summer show for David Criddle and Tony Butterworth your fraudulent home songwriting guru's.

This weeks discussions include

* Giving away your best ideas
* U2's songwriting approach
* Doctor Horrible and Buffy Musical Episodes
* Breaking a slump (write an easy, silly song)

Tony has been listening to: The Whigs, Drive By Truckers, Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zero's, The Submarines and Green Day.

Dave has been listening to U2

This weeks songs

* Sahara - Lochinvar (www.lochinvar.net)
* I've Given Up - Dave Chick
* My Addiction - Marvin Kanarek
* Which - The Rotary Dial

Marvin's video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DOtqDVl ... re=related

* Sahara - Lochinvar (http://www.lochinvar.net)
Wow, I was hooked right from the start. Nice big expansive arena sound to this. Well done.

* I've Given Up - Dave Chick
The Dave Chick intro is a genre unto itself.
Cool production on this, I like all the little added bits on the sides.

* My Addiction - Marvin Kanarek
Another cool one, especially the instrumental. Is that a guitar or a synth? Or both? Reminds me of Simple Minds in a way, but just a little.

* Which - The Rotary Dial
Cool mellow tune to ease us into the Summer break (or is it Summer Slump?)

Great show, enjoy the time off, recharge the batteries, and come roaring back.

Sahara - Lochinvar: Sounds very solid. Not a style I enjoy, but I can understand fans of this music were happy to buy it.

Using lyrics for someone else: Funny, I "never" write lyrics unless I already have a song/melody for them. Not wanting to use your good lyrics for something else could be challenged for two reasons: (a) if they are really good they are worth using in more than one song, and (b) if you could write those 20 lines then you can write 20 more, the important part is to use them.

Trashing the singer's lyrics: This reminds me a recent documentary about Metallica's Enter Sandman. Bob Rock told how Hetfield's original lyrics were really, really dark, basically about crib death, with lines such as "destroy the perfect family" (later turned into "off to Never-never-land"). Ulrich and Rock were convinced that Sandman was going to be a hit and should open the album, so they pushed Hetfield to change it.

I've Given Up - Dave Chick: I've already reviewed it elsewhere, so let me repeat: Excellent!

My Addiction - Marvin Kanarek: Really like. First, it sounded like it would be an instrumental electronica track, already good. The vocals made it more interesting. Very pro-sounding. I would buy the album, if I knew how...

Bass in mix: On the HRS they mentioned using a DI-box to line the bass to both a bass amp and a guitar amp a the same time. I'm experimenting with this idea in Reaper, sending the bass wave to two different channels (using high- and low-pass filters to separate the tracks) with different amp simulators. Getting good results with this.

Glove compartment: This is a classic trick to write a short story. There's a famous Swedish short story (by Strindberg, internationally known for his drama pieces) based on a phone list - this could work for a song too. Also, try writing a letter to someone about something you've seen or experienced, remove the greeting and end phrases and then turn it into song lyrics.

Which - The Rotary Dial: Nice stuff. The mix is very good, everything is clear and has its own space.

Have a really good summer! Looking forward to the next episode in September. (Don't fail us, Tony! )

Albert, good comments but why remove the greeting etc. A song beginning in "Dear Julie" is perfectly good

You can buy Marvin's stuff here http://www.poodiemusic.com/store.php

Sure, you can keep it in, but the idea isn't to present it as a letter. The idea is that if you write a letter to someone your words are directed at someone and you keep a coherent style throughout. Once done, you remove the greeting and end phrases and what is left looks more like a poem or song lyrics (perhaps some structuring is required). Don't fake it, you should really have someone in mind and write about something you have experienced or want to tell him/her.

Why don't you announce a "letter lyrics songs" challenge and let people decide if they want to include greetings, then we could get some examples to compare.

BTW, I think Eminem already proved your point with "Stan".

Thanks

As usual, enjoyed the show. Nice song submissions.

On the topic of nonsense lyrics, seems like I've read multiple accounts of the Beatles doing stuff like that. Examples I recall are Hey Jude; the line "the movement you need is on your shoulder". McCartney was just using it a placeholder and the first time he sang it for Lennon McCartney said he was going to change it, but Lennon convince him to just keep it. I also heard the first line for "Yesterday" was "Scrambled Eggs, oh baby I love your legs". And Harrison had "Something in the way she moves, attracts me like a cauliflower". So why not. I've never done that, but my lyrics suck.

I know what Dave means about the Edge. When I first heard U2 (around the War album, I think) I kind of thought he was gimmicky. I saw them live on Zooropa tour (about 1994 maybe) and was much more impressed - especially how he pulls that stuff off live.

Have a good summer!

I've been down at the shore all week. Just stopped in for wife's dentist appointment. Heading back down now. I'll try to listen to this one when I get back.

As always I enjoyed the show once again, only wishing that this were not the last show for a while.

Each song was out of my league for production style, and so I won't really go into anything about each one.

Lyric writing though has been a fun process for me as of late. I am finding that during slow times I can manage to jot down a few lines at my sales job, and being that I work in a music retail store I can most always have the instrument I need not too far away from me at any given time.

My wife once came up with a great chorus, only to hand me the rest of the lyrics telling me to fix them, and that sparked us to do a lot more collaboration on songs together, though it has been rough finding the time due our work schedules this summer.

As far as basses go... I am guilty of this just as much as the rest I suppose but I have spent thousands trying to get a great guitar sound and most of the time that boils down to the guitar itself. My Martin sounds much fuller than my Guild but my Guild always mics up simpler and with less boom than my Martin, while my Eastman falls right in the middle of both. Electric guitars are the same way sometimes humbuckers just don't sound right in a song that really needs a surfer guitar sound played on a strat. Bass guitars suffer from being owned by guys who would rather play guitar but seem to always feel like they gotta have a bass around for studio work, and playing a gig now and then... Only issue is that most guys have really nice guitars costing 100s off dollars or even thousands of dollars and yet they have a bass picked up in a pawn shop for $50 that they expect to sit in the mix as well as the recording they have of the guy using the Fender American standard jazz bass that has been well set up with new strings... Now I am a big fan of cheap gear and in fact my favorite guitars are actually the ones I paid the least amount of money for... But if you want pro sounding recordings you can expect to sink a little money in at least having that pawn shop bass tricked out at a shop.

Again, not to sound like a gear snob but sometimes there are things that you have to invest in to get the end result you are looking for.

I couldn't pass up the last show of the summer. Quick review:

Wow. Sahara - Lochinvar - big production. Pro quality work here. Nice one.

Dang, that's one heck of a story behind the song.

"Friday, Blooming Friday" - ha. Good one!

Good luck with minor surgery, Dave.

Dave, I just got off vacation and I took all my songbooks full of old songs down to the shore with me with the hope of trying to get more of them banged into shape for live performances. I got exactly nothing done. I just sat and jammed without direction for two weeks.

I think Bono needs to grow his hair a little longer. I hate his short hair and big glasses look. I know that is superficial, but I can't help it.

I've Given Up - Dave Chick - Has a Billy Joel sound. Very well produced. Good song.

I have to admit that I've stopped working on the keys. I know 2010 was to be the "year of the keys," but I found that everything started coming out sounding the same for me.

My Addiction - Marvin Kanarek - Hmm...interesting sound. Not really like anyone in particular. Well done. I like it.

Dang, a pro stops by the HMHS. Cool. No wonder it didn't sound like anyone in particular, Marvin is "someone" in his one right.

Hey, everyone slows down in this business, hobby, craft. I was reading an interview with Don McLean, and he said he is done writing new songs. His goal now is to strip his songs down the the bare essentials and to perform live.

Which - The Rotary Dial - Nice, mellow sound. Reminds of those English bands from the 80's (Morrissey was one of them, I think). A pretty song. I love that build up on the last 1/3 of song. The music in that part feels almost like Led Zep. Cool song.

Sahara - Lochinvar - This some song - like Kashmir from Zep and the production was excellent was it really done at home? - The guitar work and vocals are very impressive.

I can normally pick up a guitar and have something after an hour or so but the lyrics can days or months to come up with. I have wrote upwards of 300 songs but lyrics were always the problem trying to come up with something new that's why I try to write with other people's lyrics - the challenge of writing the music to words I have no input in.

I've Given Up - Dave Chick - Nice song - very quirky

My Addiction - Marvin Kanarek - Strange song - very different

Writers block is frustrating I juststop and leave it alone for a week or so - this generally works.

Which - The Rotary Dial - Nice soft accoustic song - like the gentle backing noises.