Intro To Songwriting

Welcome. My name is Steven Wagenheim. I know I'm not exactly a household name in the world of music, but I've been writing songs since 1977...over 30 years. I've had 2 songs published, "And The Angels Sing" and "Hell I'm In Hell"...two very different tunes. From 2003 through most of 2008, I took a break from writing to work on my Internet business...which is doing nicely. In October of 2008, I began writing again. I got myself a brand new recording studio (I do all my own recording) and got right back into it. It was wonderful.

I've written over 700 songs in my 30 plus years, which comes out to over 20 songs a year. I am now working on my 2nd CD since October...each one with 16 songs, so I'm really picking up the pace.

But enough about me. You want to learn how to write songs, whether it be just for the fun of it or for the purpose of making a living at it. Depending on how serious you are about your craft will determine how well you end up writing. Truth is, no amount of training in the world is going to turn you into a great song writer if the desire is not there...which is why I took 5 whole years off. I just got tired of the whole thing. As a result, my writing was getting stale and dull.

Okay, so where do you start? Well, that's going to depend on how far along you are in your training and/or development of talent. Everybody is going to have a certain knack, or lack thereof, for writing. Some people can sit down at a piano or pick up a guitar and start cranking out the most amazing tunes. Others will struggle for months or even years and never write anything that is even close to being tolerated by human ears. If this sounds discouraging, it's not meant to be. It's meant to show you that songwriting is an art that is as much felt as it is learned. Sure, I can teach you basic chord progressions and techniques, but ultimately, it's YOUR talent that's going to turn you into a songwriter.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be going over some basics and advanced stuff that will get you started and hopefully cranking out some decent tunes. I haven't written my own book, which I should do, but if you're in a hurry to get a decent online instruction, there is a good book that I can recommend that's out now. It will at least do until I get my own written, which I hope to do sometime later this year or in 2010.

In the meantime, you can check out this resource at:

http://www.stevewagenheim.com/songwriting.php

I'll catch you in a few days or so with some really great songwriting tips. Oh, and I'll also be posting some of my tunes so you can hear what I've cranked out of late.

To YOUR Songwriting Success,

Steven Wagenheim