Bullets over Brentwood

• I learned a new slang songwriting term tonight, but I’m not going to tell you what it is. Let’s see if I accidentally use it when we’re speaking.

• ESPN tonight was reporting the score to the Farleigh-Dickinson University game, and it occurred to me… every time I hear that name, I think of the school as only somewhat Dickinson.

• I went to a workshop tonight that I’ve been thinking about attending for years, but have waited to start until tonight. The bulk of the five hours was spent critiquing each other's songs. I brought my song (don’t want to print the title) about songs that cause the singer to miss a particular person. Bearing in mind that everything in music is about opinions, here are the various comments that were written by the members of this group about the chorus to that song:

- “NO” [in reference to the second and fourth lines]
- “Beautiful!”
- “Should stay down. Don’t go too high. [in reference to the end of the fourth and fifth lines]
- “Why are you hiding?”
- “Nice!”
- “Take the first subphrase and repeat it three times.”
- “Good hook.”
- “Doesn’t work for the non-musician.” [in reference to the word “measure”]

Which is why you listen, and then decide what advice you will take and what you will put in file 13.

• A really cool site if you like music for tv news broadcasts. Not terribly cool if you don’t.

• I am heading to Athens on Friday afternoon, and will basically be around until Tuesday afternoon. Now you know where to find me if you want.