How to keep your songs from all sounding the same.

How to keep your songs from all sounding the same.

What if you have to write several uniquely different songs in a short period of time? How do you keep them from all sounding too similar? How do you create contrast from one song to the next? Ellen Tift talks about various songwriting techniques to keep things interesting.

Does Tidal actually pay more than Spotify to artists for digital distribution?

Tidal is the new digital music platform on the scene, owned by a hand full of A list music artists, and their claim was that since it was artist owned, they were going to pay artist better than the other platforms. Due to the turn around time on receiving payments for music streams, I'm just now seeing the numbers on what the actual payout rate is.  First, let's see what's been posted about Tidal...

"Year of the Groove" juicy details, credits, liner notes & more!

We just completed our "Year of the Groove", where we put out one music release a month for a year, starting July 19, 2014. Let's look back at the last 12 months and see what it all amounted to. We'll tell who did what, what we spent money on, what we spent time on, and what we have to show for it.

The Story Behind "Make Me Free"

This month's release is the final installment in our Year of the Groove [where we've put out one electronic music release a month for a year,] and what a year it has been!  As much as I'm tempted to launch into a recap of the Year of the Groove, that is for another blog post. Today is all about this month's maxi single "Make Me Free". Giddyup!

Dear Vera Wang, Find New Models Please! #SupermodelAstronaut @VeraWangGang

I was waiting to see something on YouTube and this Vera Wang advertisement came up. For a few seconds, I was mindlessly waiting for the "skip ad" button to pop up, and then my brain got hijacked at the alarming selection of models they used in this ad. I couldn't stop watching, but not because of the beautiful dresses. You watch the video above and tell me what you see.  Go ahead, I'll wait...

The Story Behind "Human" - Dedicated to Nichole Nordeman

I'm excited to tell the story behind this song because the past two months' singles had much different inceptions than this release.  Instead of writing to someone else's target given for a pitch opportunity and having to crank it out in a couple of days, this song came to be through the more artistic and organically inspired path.  I simply wrote it because I wanted to. It was something on my heart, the melody just "came to me" as the muse whispered it in my ear, and I documented what was forming in my head as I went about my days.  I'm going to break it down into the various facets and talk about the reasons and creative process.