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Information about Songwriter

A songwriter is someone who writes the lyrics to songs, the musical composition or melody to songs, or both. That is to say, a songwriter is a lyricist, a composer, or both. The word 'songwriter' is however more commonly used to describe one who writes popular songs than to describe a writer of art songs.

History and background of songwriters

Songwriters may perform the songs they write themselves, or they may write for somebody else to perform. People who sing their own songs are nowadays typically called singer-songwriters, although the tradition of doing this dates back hundreds of years. More recently, the troubadours of the Middle Ages sang their own works, as did the German Minnesingers. There seems to be a hint of the supernatural in talking to songwriters, a spiritual aspect that is called many names, some religious, meta-physical or even super ego writing through the songwriter as a medium.

Most art songwriting is written for somebody other than the composer to perform, although it is known that Franz Schubert often sang his own songs at private parties. In fact most popular songwriters of today enjoy having their work recorded by a variety of artists and hearing different renditions.

Many modern rock and roll bands have one or two songwriters, usually members of the band. Then there are songwriters like Bob Dylan, Gary York, Peter Chelsea Todd Rundgren, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Sir Paul McCartney, Prince and others that write songs then record them playing their own intruments or all the instruments using a process called overdubbing (see multi-track recording). The advantage to being able to play many instruments and operate a studio is one can write the music first then weave the words into the tune, experimenting on the way. Still, many songs or foundations of songs are written with simply the songwriter and one instrument. The guitar and piano are the most popular instruments to use for songwriting because they have chordal as well as melodic capabilities. There are no rules although commercial writers speak of hooks and such required to fit into radio formats but in the 60s and 70s writers broke new ground and forced the radio to make room for them. To become a songwriter it is strongly recommended that one learns music theory and go beyond learning songs from books, the more of the science and physics of tempered tuning one understands the more unique one's creations are able to be, the idea being to always be able to play what you can imagine.

There have been quite a few popular songwriting teams such as the Motown team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Eddie Holland (collectively known as Holland-Dozier-Holland) and the teams of Leiber and Stoller, Lennon and McCartney, Steve Clark and Phil Collen as the "Terror Twins", James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Morrissey and Johnny Marr, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, George and Ira Gershwin, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Ian Brown and John Squire, Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, Koshi Inaba and Tak Matsumoto, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, Guy Fletcher and Doug Flett, Geoff Stephens and Tony Macaulay, Rodgers and Hart, The Bee Gees, Xenomania, the Jackson brothers, Albert Hammond and Mike Hazelwood, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, Ashford & Simpson, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, Pete Doherty and Carl Barat, Don Henley and Glenn Frey,Roger Waters and David Gilmour, Mitch Mamrot and Alec Houston, and the team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis alongside Janet Jackson.

Many songwriters also serve as their own music publishers, while others have outside publishers. Songs in country music are often written by staff writers; songwriters directly employed by music publishers. Legally, songs may only be copied or performed publicly by permission of the authors. The legal power to grant these permissions may be bought, sold or otherwise transferred. This is governed by copyright law. Songwriting and publishing royalties can be a substantial source of income, particularly if a song becomes a hit record.

Songwriters in the popular music genre often also work as record producers, commonly using the professional title Producer-songwriter.

See also

References

  • Rimler, Walter Not Fade Away Pierian Press (1984) ISBN 0-87650-159-5
  • Waterman, J. Douglas, Ed. Song: The World's Best Songwriters on Creating the Music That Moves Us Writer's Digest (2007) ISBN 1-58297-424-1

External links

Resources for Songwriters and Music Publishers

Lyrics

For other uses, see Lyrical.


Lyrics are the words to a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit.
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Musical composition is a phrase used in a number of contexts, the most commonly used being a piece of music. It is also used, however, to refer the structure of a musical piece and to the process of creating or orchestrating a new piece of music.
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melody, also tune, voice, or line, is a series of linear events or a succession, not a simultaneity as in a chord (see harmony). However, this succession must contain change of some kind and be perceived as a single entity (possibly Gestalt) to be called a
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A lyricist is a writer who specializes in song lyrics, usually paid for by a band to write a custom song(s). A singer who writes the lyrics to songs is a singer-lyricist.
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composer is a person who writes music. The term refers particularly to someone who writes music in some type of musical notation, thus allowing others to perform the music. This distinguishes the composer from a musician who improvises or plays a musical instrument.
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Popular music is music belonging to any of a number of musical styles that are accessible to the general public and are disseminated by one or more of the mass media. It stands in contrast to art music[1]
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An art song is a vocal music composition, usually written for one singer with piano accompaniment. By extension, the term "art song" is used to refer to the genre of such songs.
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Singer-songwriter is a term that refers to performers who write, compose, and sing their own material including lyrics, melodies, often providing the sole accompaniment to an entire composition or song.
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A troubadour was a composer and performer of songs during the High Middle Ages in Europe. The tradition began to flourish during the 11th century. The earliest troubadour whose work survives is Guilhem de Peitieus (Guillaume d'Aquitaine or William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, 1071 -
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Middle Ages form the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three "ages": the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Modern Times.
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Minnesang was the tradition of lyric and song writing in Germany which flourished in the 12th century and continued into the 14th century. People who wrote and performed Minnesang are known as Minnesingers (Minnesänger).
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Psychoanalysis

Constructs
Psychosexual development
Psychosocial development
Conscious • Preconscious • Unconscious
Id, ego, and super-ego
Libido • Drive
Transference • Sublimation • Resistance
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Medium may refer to:

Communication

  • Data storage device, any physical material that records or holds recorded information
  • Art medium, materials and techniques used by artists to produce art works

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Franz Peter Schubert (January 31, 1797 – November 19, 1828) was an Austrian composer. He wrote some 600 Lieder, eight completed symphonies, the famous "Unfinished Symphony", liturgical music, operas, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music.
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Rock 'n' Roll (short for Rock and Roll), is a genre of music that evolved in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and quickly spread to the rest of the world. It later spawned the various sub-genres of what is now called simply 'rock music'.
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Gary York is a singer/songwriter record producer studio owner etc living in Tyler Texas. Born in 1951 in San Antonio Texas to an Army family he went on to join the Army and serve a year in Viet Nam. After that while stationed in Germany he joined the growing antiwar movement.
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Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948 in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, U.S.), is an American musician, singer, songwriter and record producer.

Early career

Rundgren began his career in Woody's Truck Stop, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based group based on the model of Paul
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Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen (born September 24, 1949) is an influential American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He has frequently recorded and toured with the E Street Band.
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William Martin "Billy" Joel (born May 9, 1949) is an American singer, pianist, songwriter, composer and musician. He released his first hit song, "Piano Man", in 1973. According to the RIAA, he is the sixth best-selling recording artist in the United States.
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Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who first gained worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles.
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prince, from the Latin root princeps, is used for a member of the highest ranks of the aristocracy or the nobility.

The title is given only to males and has several fundamentally different meanings, of which one is generic to the word, and several types of titles.
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Multitrack recording ('multitracking' or just 'tracking' for short) is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole. This is the most common method of recording popular music.
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The guitar is a musical instrument with ancient roots that is used in a wide variety of musical styles. It typically has six strings, but four, seven, eight, ten, and twelve string guitars also exist.
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piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by striking steel strings with felt hammers that immediately rebound allowing the string to continue vibrating at its resonance frequency.
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chord (from Greek χορδή: gut, string) is three or more different notes that sound simultaneously. Most often, in European-influenced music, chords are tertian sonorities that can be constructed as stacks of thirds relative to some underlying scale.
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melody, also tune, voice, or line, is a series of linear events or a succession, not a simultaneity as in a chord (see harmony). However, this succession must contain change of some kind and be perceived as a single entity (possibly Gestalt) to be called a
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This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject.
Please help recruit one or [ improve this article] yourself. See the talk page for details.
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Motown Records, also known as Tamla-Motown outside of the United States, is a record label originally based out of Detroit, Michigan ("Motor City", hence mo(tor)town), from where it achieved widespread international success.
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Brian Holland (born February 15 1941 in Detroit, Michigan) is an African American songwriter and record producer, best known as a member of Holland-Dozier-Holland. That songwriting and production team that was responsible for much of the Motown sound and numerous hit records by
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Lamont Dozier (born June 16, 1941) is an African American songwriter and record producer. He was born in Detroit, Michigan.

Career

Dozier is best known as a member of Holland-Dozier-Holland, the songwriting and production team that was responsible for much of the Motown
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