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Have any questions about the music business? It doesn’t matter if you’re a novice or if you’re experienced in songwriting or performing…you will find this an essential event to attend. (Not to mention, the shmooze factor is at its best!)

SONGPOSIUM (Nashville Songwriters Assn. Internat’l)
NASHVILLE, Tennessee

September 25-29, 2006 (Mon-Fri)

John Braheny and JoAnn Braheny will be coming from Los Angeles to Nashville to teach three classes each at this incredible workshop marathon featuring songwriting and music business classes.

John’s classes:
Thurs. 9/28 at 9 a.m. – Pitching Songs to the TV/Film Market
Thurs. 9/28 at 11 a.m. – Taking Care of Business
Fri. 9/29 at 11 a.m. – Principles of Writing for Radio

JoAnn’s classes:
Thurs. 9/28 at 2 p.m. – Meet the Monsters in Your Head (Make Nice with Your Inner Critic)
Fri. 9/29 at 4 p.m. – Building Your Creative Team

From the NSAI web site:
At the heart of Songposium Week, you’ll find an awesome array of classes taught by some of the top songwriting teachers in the nation. Faculty from music meccas such as New York, Austin and Los Angeles are coming to Nashville to join their Music City counterparts.

Together, they’ll share their expertise with present and future hit songwriters through a wide variety of classes (over 100 in all!) covering topics such as lyric structure, melody structure, demos and studios, co-writing, music publishing, the Nashville Number System, guitar instruction, vocal instruction and more.

There’s something for everyone at every level! Songposium classes will be held on at nine different venues on Music Row, giving the attendees a taste of “Music Row.” See photos from last year’s Songposium.

You may sign up for the whole week (different packages), or individual classes ($40 each).
Pricing info, registration instructions, click NashvilleSongwriters.com
or Register for Songposium by calling (800) 321-6008.

Info about Private Consultations in Nashville with John Braheny ($100hr) will be available during Songposium week as well. To make an appointment in advance, please email john@johnbraheny.com.

Been meaning to tell you sooner…but if you’re in the San Franicsco Bay area, and you’re a songwriter, then, you must know about this weekend’s…

…26th Annual West Coast Songwriters Conference…

It’s Friday night, Saturday and Sunday – September 8, 9 & 10, 2006
Foothill College, Los Altos Hills (40 miles south of San Francisco, 15 miles north of San Jose) 12345 El Monte Road.

Gobs of classes, workshops, opportunities to have music business professionals hear your songs, and hear you play “live” as well.

Yes, John Braheny will teach a lyric writing class, and JoAnn Braheny will moderate a panel on “socially conscious” songs … and we will both be doing “one-on-ones” listening sessions.

This is one of our favorite events…try to make it if you can.

I caught this today on The Splendid Table, a weekly Nat’l Public Radio show “for people who love to eat.”

What a cool idea…

Music to Grill By – From Bob Duskis

Bob Duskis, co-founder of Six Degrees Records, is a music guy who cooks. Here are some tunes he plays when he’s grilling, partying and cleaning up!

Music for Grilling: Robert Plant. Track: Shine It All Around. CD: Mighty Rearranger. Label: Sanctuary.

Music for Partying: Celso Fonseca. Track: O No Para Tras. CD: Rive Gauche Rio. Label: Six Degrees.

Music for Cleaning Up: Jamie Lidell. Track: Multiply. CD: Multiply. Label: WARP Records.

Find others at his web site www.sixdegreesrecords.com. Bob’s weekly Internet radio broadcast, Six Degrees Traveler, can be heard through Apple i-Tunes radio section under the “eclectic” or “electronica” categories or at www.live365.com/sixdegrees.

Enjoy!

Gotta love it when it’s this simple.

CLICK and DRIP on the blank screen. To change colors, just click your mouse:
JacksonPollock.org.

To find out more about this influential American painter:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock

Writers come in all flavors…some of us can sit down (or stand up, like Ernest Hemmingway and Virginia Woolf did) to write and the words just flow for hours and hours. Their bugaboo is more about re-writing, editing, etc..

Other writers search for a swift boot to dislodge their right-brain. So, if you’re one of those, looking for a quick jump-start, here you go…

“The editors of Writer’s Digest have prepared 52 Writing Prompts–idea joggers and brain starters–to get your writing going. This presents you a new prompt each week. Enjoy, and may these exercises spur you on to even better writing.” – from the site.

Also, from Writer’s Digest books (for songwriters too):
The Writer’s Book of Matches – 1,001 Prompts to Ignite Your Fiction

You’re going to enjoy this one!

Weird Al Yankovic’s latest target: the mighty record biz itself. The lead single from his new album, Straight Outta Lynwood, throws down a tongue-in-cheek dare to his global fan base: “Don’t Download This Song.”

The accompanying online push for the track, available for free download from his home page and from his MySpace http://www.myspace.com/weirdal space, comes with an animated music video that details, in over-blown and outrageous fashion, the dire consequences that can come from illegal downloading.

The satire is on par with anything he’s done before, but the jabs at the “R-I-double-A” and infamous anti-piracy advocates like Metallica’s Lars Ulrich are wonderfully brutal.

Get the tune and watch the video at, inevitably,
http://www.dontdownloadthissong.com.

I thought you might like to see this from Time magazine.

25 Sites We Can’t Live Without.

It’s true: Craig’s List, Amazon, Google, NetFlix, The Onion, Smoking
Gun, Zappo (or on my list, YourMusic.com)…really, there was no life
before the Internet. — contributed by John Gabree.

Enjoy!

Next time you post your child’s artwork on the refrigerator … look closer!
To an educated eye, the genius in brilliant artists is apparent even in those early years…

A Washington, D.C., exhibit and a new book focus on the truly early work of artists like Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee and Winslow Homer: They look at the drawings and paintings these artists created when they were children…[compared with their later work.]

See the article and artwork on NPR’s (Nat’l Public Radio) site,
When We Were Young: Art That’s Not Child’s Play

The exhibit runs through September 10, 2006, at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C.,

“… features 30 contemporary children’s drawings alongside childhood drawings by Klee and Picasso juxtaposed with their mature work. By bringing these works together, When We Were Young seeks to re-examine conventional notions of what it means to be artistically gifted and shed new light on the relationship of drawing to creative thinking in children.”

The book is entitled, When We Were Young: New Perspectives on the Art of the Child. The author is Jonathan Fineberg.

PSBC Director, Lauren Adams, just announced this fabulous week-long event is going to happen again … the celebrated Performing Songwriters Boot Camp.

However, this time it will be held at the Teton Teepee Lodge, 470 W. Alta Rd., in Alta, Wyoming … one hour’s drive from Jackson, Wyoming, nestled at the base of the exquisite Grand Tetons Mountains.

The Teton Teepee is a comfortable family-oriented ski lodge with a large fireplace in the center of the lodge, an outdoor hot tub, big screen TV, ping pong, etc. Lodging there for the boot camp is “dormitory style.” (Just imagine you’re back in the bunkhouse again!)

DATES: AUGUST 6 thru 13, 2006.
Sign-up Deadline is SOOOON!

Los Angeles-based songwriting teacher/consultant, John Braheny, (and author of the best-selling book, “The Craft and Business of Songwriting”), will get down into the finer details of building a song from the ground up (including re-writing), and how to benefit most from it, once you’ve got it nailed down tight … plus you’ll have time to do some co-writing too.

Also, from Los Angeles, vocal-coach-extraordinaire, Steven Memel will provide all you’ll need to improve and perfect your voice and performing skills.

And I will be there as well to lead you through some new exercises to stimulate (and help you maintain) your creative process.

A great opportunity to get into the beauty of the Old West…meet some fellow songwriters and spend a week tuning up your skills!

SPECIAL: Lauren Adams will produce a one-song demo of each attendee’s original song at the new state-of-the-art Idaho Film and Television Institute located in Driggs, Idaho, just across the state line from where we’ll be staying.

To sign up: See how to audition (online) with your applications procedure.

Accommodations, excellent meals, and the boot camp are all included in the registration fee.

Contact: Lauren Adams, lauren@laurenadams.com

For details, go to Performing Songwriters Boot Camp.

See our previous (2003) Boot Camp Photos.

ohn Braheny and I are back from the Great Northwest (to Shaw Island, Washington State, and Vancouver, British Columbia, and Hornby Island, British Columbia – Canada) where we participated in three seminar/workshop/retreats for songwriters. Glorious!

As we traveled, we listened to a fantastic book on CD, The World is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman. It hit the best seller charts right away in 2005 when it was published, but we're just getting around to it…the subtitle is “A brief history of the 21st century.”

If you are interested in how the Internet grew the way it did, and how it is affecting business and culture, worldwide … i.e., why you are now able to market your own CD or DVD on the Web … this is the book for you. An explorer's pleasure-trip, for sure:
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