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

What Goes Online: Revolver Edition

As you may have heard Revolver is 50 years old this year. I know. Awesome. And kind of depressing too.

Revolver remains my favourite Beatles album largely for the breathtaking scope. Here's some interesting articles.

Ultimate Rock answers Five Big ‘Revolver’ Questions

I was surprised the see the consensus on which song they'd cut (it wasn't Yellow Submarine) and the best cover (Earth Wind & Fire’s Got to Get You Into My Life) and I think this is spot on

Exactly what is it that makes Revolver so great? 

Along with Rubber Soul, this is the time in their career where Paul and John are equals. For the first few years, it was Lennon’s group, and, beginning with Sgt. Pepper, McCartney started to take over. But for a couple of albums, they were on the same level.

Guitar World breaks down the tech side

Ray Davies reviews Revolver in 1966 (and doesn't rate it)

Vanilla blogs on the downside of Revolver

My review of Revolver. How The Beatles Reimagined Rock 'N' Roll

And the LA Times proposes it might just be something in the water. Pet Sounds, Blonde On Blonde, Freak Out - 1966 was a great year for music.



Would you like to receive exclusive bonus Beatles Songwriting Tips? Join the mailing list right here!

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

What Goes Online Jun 2016

Just a few updates and links...

BSA Podcast ep 4 is live! Right Now! Join the mailing list to get the exclusive download link. And please remember you need to click on the confirmation email to er ... confirm.

I've just updated the post on The Band Who Needed No Introduction (about introductions)

And if you haven't watched Conan O'Brien interviewing Beatles scholar Mark Lewisohn I strongly recommend checking it out.

I was honoured to have my rap track My Ride (download the song here) featured on a recent episode of the NUSIC New Music Podcast (ep 127). Download the podcast here.

I also got to throw in my 2 cents on a songwriting roundtable with heavy hitters like Gary Ewer, Ari Herstand and Kevin Thomas over at the One Minute Song website run by friend of BSA Lee Pat. Read the post here

On Wednesday I'll be reprinting an interview I did for the Creative Gibberish blog, touching heavily on the subject in 'inspiration'. You can find that over at MattBlick.com along with some of my new demos and videos of former pupils in action.



Would you like to receive exclusive bonus Beatles Songwriting Tips? Join the mailing list right here!

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

What Goes Online - April 1 2012

Henrique Fogli was kind enough to interview me for his Creative Insights blog on the subject of creativity and whaddyaknow - The Beatles came up! You can read it here.


I've never been convinced by some of the great 'Hard Day's Night mystery chord' conspiracy theories in the past, but this video has won me over.

Thanks to 22 Words

There's nothing more guaranteed to generate loads of comments than a post called Five Songs Where The Beatles...Well...Sucked and Something Else went there. For the record I'd call it 1 great, 2 good, 1 OK and 1 lousy song, but that doesn't have the same ring. Can you guess which is which?

On the back of the news that Abbey Road was the best selling album of vinyl album of 2011, Ultimate Classic Rock conducted a poll of Best Beatle Album. The poll seems to be a weird mashup of UK and US releases but here's the results

Abbey Road 26.69%

The Beatles (The White Album) 17.17%

Revolver 16.22%

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band 15.53%

Rubber Soul 13.88%

A Hard Day's Night 3.46%

Let It Be 3.03%

Magical Mystery Tour 2.42%

Meet The Beatles! 1.6%

What do you think?

Lastly, if you're into fab gear (there's a joke in there somewhere...) then you might like the site at The Canteen 

What Goes Online

Here's an interesting post about Pablo Fanque (late of Pablo Fanque's fair)

Want to listen to every Beatles song but you're rushed for time? This bizarre mashup is for you! All Together Now - Everything the Beatles ever did. I dare you to listen right through (and the comments are funny anyway!)

I found another great quote from Dave Grohl about the Beatles influence on his career - so I've updated that post

Coming Soon: Two Of Us