I was thrilled to be asked to return as host of the 2021 OMA Awards at the Biltmore Theatre in Oshawa, and was honoured to win the 2021 OMA for Songwriter of the Year award. If you missed the big show, you can catch the replay here on YouTube.
Planks and Marietta, was also nominated for Durham Song of the Year, and can be found on my new EP I Will Stand, out now!
So grateful for all of the support the kind folks at Eat North have shown to all of the new music so far! Check out the write up and save the playlist on Spotify to enjoy homegrown talent in the comfort of your home!
“Produced by Hill Kourkoutis, the ballad commands your attention from the get-go and leaves you hypnotized by Joy’s vocals paired with a cinematic and dramatic sound.” – Eat North
When Alan Cross gives you a list of 5 Songs You Must Hear This Week, you listen! Well… ‘Blink’ was one of those songs this week. And it’s going to take me a YEAR to recover from this one. (see the full list)
Incredibly astounding to believe that “Blink” was welcomed with open arms to American Songwriter, and included in their Daily Discovery column. I will be forever grateful for all who believed in this song and helped it into being.
One more sleep till “Blink” is available worldwide on all streaming platforms! In the meantime a HUGE thank you to Americana UK for the lovely review and the exclusive premiere of the song and video!
This is the unreleased demo video for ‘Blink’. Guitar and vocals were recorded in a dorm room circa 2015, and producer Allister Bradley took those tracks away and worked his magic on them.
Fast forward to 2018 – I’d never made a music video before, and thought it might be fun to give it a go with the demo recording, and videographer Luke Camozzi. We shot two different versions in a friend’s Heritage home in downtown Uxbridge, and this version was done in one seamless take at the end of a long shoot day! If you haven’t seen the original demo video you can check it out here.
The official release of ‘Blink’ is coming 04.29.21 on all streaming services along with a rad new music video. Can’t wait to share!
For a song with a central storyline around life changing in an instant, ‘Blink’ sure took a long time to be fully realized. I first put pen to paper after a period of writer’s block, and willed it into existence after giving myself permission to write a song that sucked. That song (about losing a dirty sock in the the dryer) cleared the cobwebs for what was to become ‘Blink’.
Once the first draft was in decent shape I brought it into a writing session with songwriter James Linderman, where we discovered the walking baseline that grounds the song. Next up… the demo.
Blink will be released on all streaming platforms April 29! Presave here: https://show.co/TVjBs4o
As of June 14th, through July 15th my single “New Ending” from the new “I’ll Be Around” EP can be found streaming on the SOCAN website.
“New Ending” is also available for purchase on iTunes and other online retailers worldwide!
SOCAN (the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) is a not-for-profit organization that represents the Canadian performing rights of millions of Canadian and international music creators and publishers. SOCAN is proud to play a leading role in supporting the long-term success of its more than 100,000 Canadian members, as well as the Canadian music industry.
Lesson 4: Making It Move (Yes, i’m catching up.)
Another round of awesome video lectures from Pat Pattison’s online Songwriting course produced a valuable lesson in the role music plays in creating motion, and how motion supports e-motion. As songwriters, our job is to marry the meaning of language (the clever words we write) to the emotion of music (the feelings we are trying to evoke), enhancing both so that we Preserve the natural shape of language.
Rhythm in the lyric is created by arranging stressed and unstressed syllables. Prosody (there’s that word again) is enhanced when the syllabic rhythm of the lyric matches the melodic rhythm to support the emotion of each lyrical phase. Simple right? Well, maybe after a little practice!
I love the masterclass series of videos Pat included in this week lessons. I came across them a few years ago on youtube, and found them to be a great tool in thinking about the performance of our songs, and ensuring they support the intended lyric. I highly recommend you add them to your video library!
This weeks assignment was to map out the syllabic rhythm of the verse and chorus we created last week, and set it to music, speaking or singing the appropriate stresses and match it with the corresponding melody.
Here is my assignment set to music:
I’m quite happy with the way it turned out, and it was very interesting using the map of my stressed and unstressed lyrics (as i wrote them first) and building the melody from there. then i sketched it out again in my notebook to make sure my stresses were falling in line with the melody, and tweaked here and there until it was all working together. I suppose it might not always go in this order for every song, but it really worked for me in this case! I could see the huge potential for using this technique in my songwriting moving forward… (get it? moving.. forward hehee)
once again hear are the lyrics:
stable verse
– – – / – – / – – / /
She had me calling her name from the first glance
– – – / – – / – – / /
She had me stealing a kiss at the first chance
– – – / – – / – – / / –
She had me counting the days till our next hello
– – – / – – / – – – / /
She had me spending my pay till I was flat broke
unstable chorus
– – – / // – – / / – / – – /
She said the currency of love trades a million to one
– – / // – – / – / / / –
In the currency of love you might break even
/ – / – – / – – / – – /
Spend your nickels, your quarters, your pennies, your dimes
– – / – – / – / – /
If you’re lucky in love you might do fine
– – / // – – /
That’s the currency of love
I’m a little behind on keeping you up to date with my progress and learnings from Pat Pattison’s Online course on Songwriting. It’s been pretty eye-opening taking this course amongst a huge community of songwriters (63,000 if you can believe it!) to say the least, and i’ve learned so much already.
This week was all about rhyme schemes and rhyme types. There are six rhyme types (perfect, family, additive, subtractive, assonance, and consonance), that much like line lengths, have a role in supporting stable and unstable ideas, and create varying degrees of resolution. Yes, everything has a purpose grasshopper.
Pat says: Rhyme schemes, can also help create a feeling. They can be symmetrical, like aabb (e.g., win/spin/turn/learn) or abab (e.g., win/turn/spin/learn), creating stability. Or, they can be asymmetrical, like abba (e.g., win/turn/learn/spin) or xaaa (e.g., win/turn/learn/yearn), creating levels of instability. All by themselves. So your choice of rhyme scheme makes a difference. Ask, “Is this verse’s idea stable or unstable?” and construct your rhyme scheme accordingly.
So taking this into consideration along with our lessons online length from last week our assignment was to create a stable verse leading into an unstable chorus. This was my submission.
The song title was one i’ve had in my hook book for a while, with no clear idea of where it would go. But with a little pressure and an assignment to do, i was able to start the journey. I’m still thinking there is an opportunity to extend the two main ideas in my current verse to another verse (ie: verse 1: all about first glance/ first kiss, verse 2: being flat broke).
No time to record it to music with Canadian Music Week going on here in Toronto. Not sure how i managed to fit it all in, very ambitious, but it was well worth it! So many great artists performing nightly, and a packed house for Songwriters Summit. Already looking forward to next year! I’ll leave you with a few pics from the experience.
Did i mention that i’m also gearing up for the release of my first EP in May! Ya…. its a bit busy around here.
