Songwriting lesson: how to write a bridge
Think of the timeless ballad “Something,” from the Beatles’ Abbey Road, in which George Harrison muses on his lover’s allure over a wistful chord progression in the key of C. He...
Joan Shelley on fishing for songs
The analogy of fishing has been used before. You’re just trying to be there at the right time, when your brain is in the right state for catching new images,...
A good day
His name is Nick. We’ve talked several times before, but he’s always happy to meet me. I explain that my dog died a few months ago, and I introduce him...
The Christmas Kolam
It’s really not beginning to look like Christmas. We’re in that familiar free fall from Thanksgiving to the end of the year, but here in Chennai, India—some eight thousand miles...
Free lesson: how to play bass on your guitar
You see it at just about every jam, whether in the living room or the festival parking lot: the wall of guitars. Almost everyone holds a flattop guitar, and when...
Fingerstyle guitar lesson: pianistic picking
Guitarists often rely on default techniques for accompaniment: strumming, alternating boom-chuck bass/strums, or fingerpicking single-note patterns. You can cover a lot of ground with those techniques, but there’s another way...
Songwriting workshop at Woodstock Invitational guitar festival
I’m thrilled to be returning in October to the Woodstock Invitational, an annual gathering of some of the world’s best guitar makers (including Linda Manzer, builder of my most prized guitar) and more than...
Graham Nash on his songwriting evolution from the Hollies to CSN
I was trained in my time with the Hollies to write two-and-a-half-minute songs to play right before the news. We knew how to make hit records; we knew how to...
Guitar basics lesson: muting
The first job of playing acoustic guitar is to make those strings ring, with a clear and rich tone. The second is to make them stop. Just out in the...
Mary Chapin Carpenter on “song walking”
The way I’ve written songs has never really altered over the years. I sit at my desk or my kitchen table, I write on a yellow legal pad with a pencil...
