Songwriting Magazine Podcast: ‘Help!’

We’ve roped in friend of the magazine, songwriter, tutor, musician, and thoroughly decent human James Linderman to tackle your questions…

When it comes to songwriting, we all need a little help from time to time. Never fear, songwriting coach James Linderman has stepped out from behind our help desk to answer your questions.

A teacher of guitar, piano and music theory, as well as composition and songwriting, James was also an academic ambassador to Berklee College of Music for 14 years and taught songwriting for film and film composition at the Canada Film Centre. He’s been writing technique pieces for us for a long time and always finds a way to distil his vast knowledge into tips that can be easily implemented in your own writing.

That’s why we thought he’d be the perfect guest for this episode in which we get to field your questions. In this bumper edition, we ask James to lay bare any easily eradicated songwriting mistakes, get him to flesh out the concept of “show don’t tell,” helps us to up our chord game and answer several other questions.

Sat in his studio, surrounded by a wall of guitars and several keyboards, we’re delighted to have the chance to pick the brain of such an experienced and talented songwriting teacher. We’re confident that you’ll take away as much as we did from this episode and will be applying many of James’s tips to your next batch of songs.

Do you have a question for James, Aaron, or Duncan? Send it to podcast@songwritingmagazine.co.uk (Opens in a new window)

If you’d like to get in touch with James directly then he’s on jameslinderman@rogers.com (Opens in a new window)

Members can listen to this episode of the podcast using the audio player below, or via Spotify (Opens in a new window)