Blaze a trail

It's hot here today, because I'm blazing a trail. 

If you're a songwriter who's serious about developing your chops, you know that you can either:
1) Imitate other songwriters hit songs
2) Blaze your own trail and let others catch up with you

Guess what...you can do both. Study the best songs you can find - disassemble and then reassemble them. That's what learning craft is all about.

Just make sure you don't get "songwriters constipation" and start thinking you should only be writing a certain way, to a certain formula.

It's true that that you have to be courageous to tell it like it is and be who you are. Putting yourself out there can be frightening, but when you're writing from the heart, you ARE being courageous (the word is derived from the Anglo-French word "coer", which means heart).

No matter how much you may want to be somebody else, you have a unique constitution and there's never been another person like you on this earth. Celebrate your singularity today by writing a song that's YOUR song. And stop trying to fit into a round hole if you're a square peg!

Songwriters Playground offers additional workshops for marketing your songs

Hi there fellow songwriters and creatifs:

Thank you all for believing in the Playground. You're using the book in record numbers, and I hope this means your songwriting and creative chops are growing every day by leaps and bounds.  If this is so (and if you've read my book, you know there's a correlation between "doing" the workbook and getting greater output) then you'll want to know at some point about the other workshops I give for the business part of songwriting. NEVER  EVER  think about business and how to market your songs when you are writing. Only after you've generated a few songwriting birdies you want to gently nudge out of the nest --- that's when it's appropriate to consider a strategy for giving them to the world.

In order to help songwriters, performers and composers develop creative and business skills, I will be available for 2 other workshops.  The 'Reel' Deal on Getting Songs Placed in Film and Television, and the Mind Your Own Business Seminars are happening again after a hiatus of 15 years!  These workshops last anywhere from 2-15 hours and are held at various venues throughout the world. For more information, you can email me at bjordan@soapsongs.com. 

Ciao,

Attention all Songwriting Associations! Songwriters Playground Video available!

Hi folks:

As you know, it's been impossible for me to conduct Songwriters Playground workshops in the last few years due to my crazy schedule. Please feel free to drop me a note if you're using the Songwriters Playground book in your own workshops and would like some supplementary exercises (to add to the ones at the back of the book) as I had so many more exercises than I was able to include in the book.

I can also send you a video that I allowed to be shot (the one and only videotaping of a LIVE Songwriters Playground event) several years ago. It would help bring alive the magical vibe of the workshops that the book is based on.

Just send me an email at:  bjordan@soapsongs.com

Here's looking at you, kids!

Songwriters Playground is available in paperback or in Kindle format

As that beautiful song lyric said so simply, "AT LAST"
I am proud to announce that my book Songwriters Playground is available in Kindle format (as well as paperback) at Amazon, and you don't have to pay a fortune for it!

http://goo.gl/totgq

The reason it's available now for such a reasonable price is that a well-known songwriter friend of mine, Barbara Kessler, alerted me to something I didn't know.

Babara only knew me as a songwriter and music publisher, not as an author. She called me one day and said '"Do you know who the Barbara L. Jordan who wrote the book SONGWRITERS PLAYGROUND is?  I really like the book, and when I read the introduction again, I realized it was possible it's you...give me a call, please."

I sheepishly called her back and admitted to being the author of this once obscure title. It had originally been published by Mel Bay Publishing, but when the rights reverted to me, I decided to just let sleeping dogs lie. I wasn't about to put it out there myself.

UNTIL...Barbara told me she payed around $80 for the book because it was only available through resellers who jacked up the price unfairly. Gee, I could have given her a free copy if she'd known it was me who authored it and just asked me!  I went on Amazon (it had been ages since I even thought of the book) and saw that the average price for the book through resellers was about $60 bucks. Ridiculous!!! I'll publish the damned thing myself, I said. And I did - through Amazon's On-Demand Publishing operation.

As soon as I got the text to them, zap - the book was reborn.

It's like I had a baby a long time ago, gave it up for adoption, and got it back as an adult. Then I  ignored it until it ran away from home...I didn't care, but it came back to me anyway. How much more abuse can one give a child? I had to embrace this kiddo eventually, which I did, and I'm so glad I did!

I didn't appreciate how wonderful a book it was until I started seeing it take off - and so many people seem to have wanted to let me know how much it's changed their creative lives.

I may even start doing the Songwriters Playground workshops again  (these were of course the reason I put the workshops into book form) -- so stay tuned.

Barbara