Late to the party.... just got back from watching my daughter's college graduation.

I think what happens is that every so often a new song with a cool sound or lyrical theme grabs the top of the charts and suddenly, everyone wants songs like that and everybody starts writing them.

A good example is the currently hot guy's theme of pickup trucks, hot girls, bonfires, out in the woods, etc.... She think's my tractor's sexy, Country boys & girls getting down on the farm....etc...and now every male artist in N-town has one of these songs on his set list/CD.

Taylor Swift shifted the focus to teen pop, boyfriend troubles, with serious rock guitars......

The thing I'm noticing starting to come out of more old traditional style remade heavy rock.... Band Perry with Chainsaw..... and a few others I've heard but haven't caught the names involved. Dobros and banjo's with a heavy 4 on the floor kicking rhythm behind it....and distorted guitars that Def Leopard would be proud of....

Every year or so a new trend occurs, those who see it early enough and write a super song and have the connections to get it in front of the movers and shakers, has a chance. Wait until the trend is fully developed and recognized and the time delay between writing, the A&R hearing, getting it to the artist, becomes the problem, because if it's yesterday's news, it will be dropped from the project. Lots of good, really good songs get thrown on the cutting room floor.

I had Jason Blume sit down at a songwriter's convention in LA a few years back. I had his full attention for 15 minutes and we quickly listened to 2 songs. His comments were to the effect that, hey, you write good songs,,,, but.... in Nashville there are 20,000 people who all want to be song writers and they are good writers too. Your material, from what I just heard is right there with them.... but that, my friend, is the entire problem. You can not be right there with them.... you have to be better than they are in order to stand out from those 20,000 really good and talented writers who are pounding the sidewalks of Nashville looking for the same hit that you are.

I don't have the time or the money or the ability at this point to just drop every thing and head to n-town and live in my truck for a few months while trying to co-write.....

That kinda puts it into perspective. So, I focus on my writing skills, and melody and lyrics and do what I can, while at the same time trying to run a business and keep my family life happy and it's not easy. Music was at one time how I made a living and I did it full time for a number of years playing live gigs. Now days, it's part time, but a serious part time hobby. I take my writing and I take my recording very seriously but I try not to take myself seriously.

I gave up dying on the sword as the expression goes, over my songs. Comments good and bad... hey neither of them bother me. I write with other people, and try to be honest in that writing.... if I like something, and it's good we keep it, if I write or they write something that isn't good, hey, it goes. It's not good just because I wrote it. I re-write more stuff than I write. Nothing you hear is ever a first draft. Nothing is carved in stone, and everything can be replaced. That's my writing philosophy.

Put that together with seminars and books on songwriting, as well as hanging out on forums which the inhabitants are focused more on the song than the production, and you start to learn something about writing. Are songwriters born that way? Some are, very few are actually..... most are folks like you and me who learned the skills and did the right things and pursued the craft and art of the song for thousands upon thousands of hours.....and suddenly, magically, overnight, they were a huge success by having written "that song"....everyone calls it an overnight success story..... ha!!

If I can write a song that gets cut and somehow makes it into the charts, hey, that's really cool...I'll take that. If I never get a cut, I will still keep writing and playing and composing for as long as I have breath and am able to figure out how to turn on my computer and pick up a guitar and strum a chord. I enjoy it, so what else can I do? I hate sports, I don't play golf, and I can't hunt or fish every day...... so...I guess it's music.

I simply enjoy the pleasure of digging down inside of me to find those words and chords that go together, and when it's happening, it's the biggest and best high in the world. Then to hear the finished product... how can it get any better than that? Yeah I know.... to be nominated by the Country Music Association for song of the year..... That would be cool..

that's my 2 cents for now....

You can find my music at:
www.herbhartley.com
Add nothing that adds nothing to the music.
You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both.

The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.