Eight “maybes” for you to write a song about…….and one for me. My journalling app is called ‘Day One’. I’m using it to write most things these days. I have my artist’s site and I have Inside Songwriting. I also have a little known vegan blog called Vegan Scotsman which I occasionally post on. Writing is something I need to be able to do, as and when my...

What are you chained to?   If you were honest with yourself, what if anything, would you say is holding you back from being the truest songwriter you can be today?     If this doesn’t sound like you. Maybe there’s a time in the past when you can recall feeling held back by something or perhaps even somebody?   Sharing some of the details of these...

If I got ALL the hits, ALL the gigs, ALL the praise….. This post includes a question for you to answer, either to share your answer to help others or to help you understand something about yourself, for yourself and on your own. ”Let’s trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let’s lay down our righteousness and just be together” – Ram Dass...

Expect greatness from yourself I started reading Michael Jordan’s biography “The Life”. I’m only a few pages in but I’ve been reading quotations from this book for almost a year now and I can only expect great motivation from picking this up. This morning on instagram [ I’m @karlbroadie by the way ] someone I follow @MWFmotivation posted an awesome photo of Jordan...

I can recall several co-writing sessions whereby I’ve had to compromise despite knowing we were taking the safe option. If it’s already been shared a million times, why do we need to do the same? Is that how we make a difference? Phrasing. Musical and vocal phrasing. Taking risks with the rhythmic delivery of our phrasing, will get us noticed. If we want...

I remembered the triangular, pyramid like milk cartons we used to get delivered to our primary school in Edinburgh. Sometimes, they’d freeze. I remembered going to school many hours too early in the winter time, so that we could make a slide in the snow, in the school playground. I remembered bundling down snow covered slopes near home. Then thawing out at home by...

In The Zone? Or Totally Out Of It? This short interview was filmed by the good people at IXLAT Films right after one of my favourite shows of the year.       Myself and Luke O’Shea had just finished playing to a full house at The Dag Sheep Station as a part of the Hats Off To Country Festival which takes place every July in Tamworth and Nundle,...

Don’t Chuck It We all have our own notepads and scraps of paper and disorganised voice memos and documents and even cassettes and mini discs! We did not have better ideas for songs back then and we do not have better ideas now. The art remains the same, our minds can weave that as they please and “old” ideas should not be considered “old” at all. If you have...

There’s always another song waiting to be written. Explore and quietly examine, in your own way and at your own pace, every detail of every leaf & branch on the tree that grows from your experiences. Your roots are deep and no-one is an exception. Karl Broadie is the author of The Free-Thinking Songwriter...

Songwriters – Memory Keepers We all have memories that stand us still in a single moment. We all have memories that take our minds and our hearts elsewhere, momentarily. Perhaps you are the keeper of a long list of these triggers? They are all invaluable resources for us as songwriters to draw from, reach into, translate, sink into or scrape away at. Next time...