What Goes Online - Jul 2019

My new album is finally out on all digital platforms! 

Fifty Five Stories Down is a 12 song collection sung live in an abandoned Police Station with only a baritone electric guitar for accompaniment. Personal and political, intimate and irreverent, boneheaded and beautifully-crafted, you can buy or stream it wherever you do those kind of things (I like Bandcamp).

And if you're a Spotifier please follow me and add my music to any playlists you have lying about the place.

Podcasts

I recently had the honour of being a guest on the Musicality Podcast talking about (what else?) songwriting as part of 'Beatles Week'. Download it here or stream it below. Be sure to check out some of the other guests too.

My buddy Lee Pat has a cool video that I'd recommend - digging deep into the line cliches of Something - he's found a few more than me!

More on line cliches? Check out the descending root, descending flat 7th, and the ascending 5th (aka James Bond). Oh, and I've updated the Circle of Fifths playlist page too.

Live Chat

The legendary Mark Lewisohn is on tour! I've booked my tickets - how about you?

Long time friend of the site Famous Patrick paid me a visit from Minneapolis via Berlin. As well as viewing the 'holy city' he had to come and check out "where the Beatles played the Odeon in '63". Nice having you Pat!

Join the mailing list to get the free, exclusive, Beatles Songwriting Academy podcast!

70+ Songwriting Tips From The Beatles
The Be-Atletudes
About Beatles Songwriting Academy
Music by Matt Blick

What Goes Online Mar 2018

What have I been up to this year? Well you can always check in on my 'now' page but here's the savedyouaclick version ...

RE:BEATLED

I've been composing/arranging the mother of all Beatles mashups for Inspire Youth Arts for the ReBeatled Project with a mixed ensemble of young singer/songwriters, multi-instrumentalists and members of the Able Orchestra. You can hear and see the results here

And here

And the massed jam on Come Together

NEW ALBUM

I've also been prepping my new album with producer Dan Wright (The Most Ugly Child) which I hope to start soon.

If you can't wait I also have Home Truths a free album of demos ranging from instrumentals, political songs, love songs, style parodies to a song about York, a love song for my wife, a song called Biscuit that’s not about biscuits and lots more. Silly & serious, light-hearted and heartfelt, There’s also chord sheet pdfs for most songs and even a few pages of guitar TAB. Download it here or here.

LINKS

Landr were kind enough to link to a BSA post in 10 Ridiculous Songwriting Tips That Actually Work.

Temporary Bad Boys Podcast featured a song I co-wrote with the late great Hoopshank here. (Head Temporary Bad Boy Balance Lost produced and co-wrote my rap single My Ride).

BEATLES LINKS

Sick of the sound of me and just want to get back to the Beatles? Check out these stellar episodes of the Something About The Beatles Podcast -

Something About Middle 8's
Something About Ringo
Something About Skiffle (with Billy Bragg)

Join the mailing list to get the free, exclusive, Beatles Songwriting Academy podcast!

70+ Songwriting Tips From The Beatles
The Be-Atletudes
About Beatles Songwriting Academy
Music by Matt Blick

What Goes Online (Sep 2016)

I'm very pleased to announce my new EP Everything In The World Is Fighting Everything In The Sky will be released via Bandcamp iTunes and all on Nov 1st. Dean Jackson had the world premiere of my track Me And The Devil on his BBC Introducing show and you can stream it for the next 30 days here. I'm on around 1:33:30. You can read the blog post on what Charles Dickens and Tori Amos have to teach songwriters mentioned here

Speaking of streaming I want to recommend the Compleatly Beatles podcast. One mammoth episode per album (Revolver is 2 hours plus) humorous and informative. Find it on iTunes

Some great general Beatles writing: John Medd on discovering the Beatles and Martin Fitzgerald's introduction to the Help album

And in a more technical post Aaron Krerowicz looks at the way Paul McCartney extends melody lines in I Will.

Neil McCormick in The Telegraph imagines a Beatles 'Worst Of' album called (appropriately) 'Misery'

And Billboard interviews Donovan

In 1966, your album Sunshine Superman came out, as did Revolver, Pet Sounds, and Blonde on Blonde. What was going on that year creatively that we have these albums that 50 years later still resonate? 

Three things came together: There was the invasion of pop culture, with what they called folk music. Folk music ... invaded pop culture with meaningful lyrics. That meant protest, that meant civil rights, that meant explorations of the levels of consciousness. The second thing was ... the bohemian invasion of bohemian ideas, and that was self-change and responsibility for the future ... And the third element was we were really good. In 1966 we proved to everybody that the engineers, the producers, the songwriters and the fans were ready for something extraordinary and that’s what happened. The '60s burst wide open in '66 into full colour!

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70+ Songwriting Tips From The Beatles
The BeAtletudes
About Beatles Songwriting Academy
Let's Build An Airport EP

A Letter From Matt

Dear Reader,

There are some exciting days ahead here at Beatles Songwriting Academy. As well as working on some new Tickets To Write posts I'm putting the finishing touches to the first BSA Podcast!

The first episode will feature behind the scenes bonus stuff on the White Album, highlight one of George Martin's best arrangements, answer some BSA readers questions and discover one place where Lennon and McCartney plagiarised themselves!

I'm planning to make the podcast a regular feature and, like the rest of the site, it will be free - but it will only be available to readers who sign up to my mailing list.

Why?

Well I've had mixed results sharing audio and video posts online. Though educational examples 'should' be protected under fair use Apple's lawyers obviously didn't get that memo. Secondly, I'm always looking for ways to connect with my readers and a good old fashioned mailing list is still one of the best. I will not spam you, you'll get one email a month tops, Beatles songwriting related, and fingers crossed most of 'em will have a link to an exclusive podcast attached.

So are you on board?

Sign up here.

And why not say 'hi' in the comments if you have a minute? Tell me how long you've been reading Beatles Songwriting Academy and what your favourite Beatles album is.

All the best

Matt

(PS I've been here since 2009 and it's still Revolver)

New Beatles Podcasts

I've recently come across two Beatles podcast you might want to check out. First AlphaBeatical is going through every Beatles song “from 12 to Y”. The roundtable format podcast is more of a fans-eye view but fun and interesting all the same. As they've just done A Taste Of Honey you don't have too much to catch up on. And unlike BSA they're covering Anthology deep cuts too.

Next up, Otis Gibbs' excellent 'Thanks For Giving A Damn', a 'life on the road' storytelling project had a cool episode on Paul McCartney's stay in Nashville in 1974. You can download it or listen here.

Beatles Cover Story - May Contain Turkeys

The wonderful radio show/podcast Coverville celebrates Thanksgiving with a double length Beatles covers episode and wouldn't you know it the 7th one is up. I haven't had time to listen to it, but there's normally a good blend of weird, terrible and fantastic covers.

Download the snappily titled 7th annual thanksgiving double-shot Beatles cover story right now!

And if you've got another six hours to kill here's all the previous episodes.

No 6 - Shawn Colvin, Tyler Hilton, Tommy Emmanuel, Temptations and many more

No 5 - Souxie & the Banshees, Ozzy Osbourne, Nancy Sinatra and many more

No 4 - Jamie Cullen, Bernadette Peters & Johnny Cash & McCartney covering Harrison and many more

No 3 - Dar Williams, The Bees, Bela Fleck, Godhead and many more

No 2 - Paul Weller, Chemical Brothers, Da Vinci’s Notebook and many more

No 1 - Aimee Mann & Michael Penn, Vanessa Mae, Jeff Beck, John Entwhistle & Jools Holland and more