the AMP Issue 25

"If I don’t practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the  public knows it."  
— Jascha Heifetz 

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In This Issue... [14 pages, approx 20ish minutes to read] You'll Get...

• REMINDS— (Last time...) the Group and the Book 

• RECOMMENDS— (50% Recycled) Berklee Online  

• the 100 GREATEST SINGER SONGWRITERS of All Time— Bert Berns & Bert Russell 

• BACKSTAGE PASS— Stolen Songs, Streaming Fraud and You

• FEATURE— 10,000 Hours of Deliberate Practice 

• PS from PS— Singer Songwriters Are Being Shafted! 

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Here's the playlist 

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• REMINDS— the Group and the Book 

Re-mind, prompt, nudge, nag, a cue. a clue... Whatever! There are two valuable and useful, fun and entertaining Resources New Music Lives™ gives you that not all of you are making use of: the GROUP and the BOOK. So, please. Do. 

the GROUP— the New Music Lives Group on Facebook is our .comUnity— or it will be when more of you go and engage with us and with each other. The group is the AMP that's published every day. News, Resources, Ideas, Turn Ons, Edutainment, Just for Fun, Learning, and more. It's a rich resource— but only if you use it. So... Please... 

And...  

the BOOK— a Singer Songwriter's Story is Paul's work-in-progress book. It's unlike any book you've ever read before. Really. You'll see. It's the story of Reely, a young  Singer Songwriter who calls Paul for help with her career. The latest edition is up for downloading in the FILES section of the New Music Lives Group. AND...  

If you have seen the cover before... Notice the subtle change? AND... 

Hey Jude, Paul is wide open to making the book better, better, better... with your feedback, comments, and suggestions. Readers writing is an idea he loves! So... 

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• RECOMMENDS— (50% Recycled) Berklee Online  

EdNote— With the growth of the AMP there's a bunch of good-to-great stuff newer subscribers missed, so... waste not. We're recycling from past issues. Case in point...  Berklee Online from Issue 12. DO NOT pass by the Free Offer below. It's very good.  And the 50% bit is there's one new piece added here. 

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BERKLEE ONLINE is the continuing education division of Berklee College of Music. "Study Music Online Anywhere, Anytime." With Berklee Online, you can access the renowned curriculum of Berklee College of Music from anywhere in the world, and in your own rhythm. Since 2002, more than 75,000 students from 144 countries have enhanced their creative output and marketability with Berklee Online’s award-winning master’s degree programs, bachelor’s degree majors, certificate programs, and 200+  music courses. Through Berklee Online, you’ll receive unparalleled instruction from music industry professionals and the same faculty members who teach at Berklee’s  Boston campus. 

Tap Berklee Online to learn more...  

• FREE Berklee Songwriting Handbook and MORE 

Tap the title link above to download the 89-page PDF 

Here are the Lessons in the Berklee Songwriting Handbook: 

• Try Destination Songwriting By Andrea Stolpe 

• How to Lay the Foundation of Your Arrangement By Bonnie Hayes and Sarah  Brindell 

• Making Your Melody Work By Jimmy Kachulis 

• The Art of Setting Your Words to Music By Pat Pattison Features • Peter Bell’s Tips for Advertising Music By Berklee Online 

• Writing Songs with Class … Literally! By Talia Smith 

• Bonnie Hayes: ‘Make Sure Your Main Hook is Crucial’ By Pat Healy

• 10 Songwriting Tips from Josh Ritter By Berklee Online 

And just if that ain't enough, hit their YouTube channel and Subscribe. Here's a taste— an all-you-can-eat buffet. 

 • End Writer’s Block: 20 Songwriting Tips from Andrea Stolpe 

In this free songwriting tutorial filmed at the 2016 ASCAP EXPO, Berklee Online instructor Andrea Stolpe offers tips for ending writer’s block. Andrea summarizes the dominant songwriting tools that supersede genre and breaks them down into lyric,  melodic, and harmonic tendencies. Her 20 songwriting tools will help you unite artistry with commercial viability. 

AND... Subscribe. Easy to do. Easy not to do. But only one benefits you.

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• the 100 GREATEST SINGER SONGWRITERS of All Time— Bert Berns & Bert Russell 

Life’s too short not to be a music industry mogul.  

So believed Bert Berns/Russell, co-founder of Bang Records, songwriter of Twist and  Shout, and the man who discovered Van Morrison. His work may tragically have been cut short, but the hits he made have tremendous staying power. 
— Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (2016) 

Bertrand Russell Berns (November 8, 1929 – December 30, 1967), also known as Bert Russell and (occasionally) Russell Byrd, was an American songwriter and record producer of the 1960s. His songwriting credits include Twist and Shout, Piece of My  Heart", Here Comes the Night, Hang on Sloopy, Cry to Me and Everybody Needs  Somebody to Love, and his productions include Baby, Please Don't Go, Brown Eyed  Girl and Under the Boardwalk. 

Born in the Bronx, New York City, Berns contracted rheumatic fever as a child, an illness that damaged his heart and would mark the rest of his life, resulting in his early death. Turning to music, he found enjoyment in the sounds of his African  American and Latinx neighbors. As a young man, Berns danced in mambo nightclubs and made his way to Havana before the Cuban Revolution. 

Shortly after his return from Cuba, Berns began a seven-year run from an obscure Brill  Building songwriter to owner of his own record labels. He signed as a $50/week  (equivalent to $500 in 2022) songwriter with Robert Mellin Music at 1650 Broadway in 1960. His first hit record was A Little Bit of Soap, performed by the Jarmels on Laurie Records in 1961. Berns himself had a short-lived career as a recording artist, and in  1961, under the name "Russell Byrd", Berns scored his only Billboard Hot 100 appearance with his composition, You'd Better Come Home, which peaked at  Number 50. That song would later be recorded by the Isley Brothers and featured as the B-side of their 1962 single Twistin' With Linda. Also in 1962, the Isley Brothers recorded Twist and Shout on Wand Records, written by Berns and Phil Medley. Berns also hit the charts in late 1962 with the Exciters' Tell Him on United Artists, and with Solomon Burke's Cry to Me on Atlantic Records. As an independent producer working with myriad record labels, Berns also made important records with Garnet  Mimms (Cry Baby) and Gene Pitney (If I Didn't Have a Dime (to Play the Jukebox)). 

Berns's early work with Solomon Burke brought him to the attention of Atlantic label chiefs Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler. In 1963, Berns replaced Jerry Leiber and Mike  Stoller as a staff producer at Atlantic, where he wrote and produced hits for Solomon Burke (Everybody Needs Somebody to Love), the Drifters (Under the Boardwalk and  Saturday Night at the Movies), Barbara Lewis (Baby I'm Yours and Make Me Your  Baby), Little Esther Phillips (Hello Walls, written by Willie Nelson), Ben E. King, Wilson Pickett, and LaVern Baker. 

With many of Berns's songs being recorded by British Invasion bands such as the Beatles (Twist and Shout), the Rolling Stones (Cry to Me), and the Animals (Baby Let Me Take You Home), Berns became the first American record producer to travel across the Atlantic to work in London. He went to England three times between 1964 and 1965, where he produced a number of British Decca songs such as Baby Please Don't Go, a traditional blues song recorded by Them, and Here Comes the Night, recorded by Lulu and Them. 

Berns formed his own record label, BANG Records, in 1965. BANG was home to such artists as the McCoys (Hang on Sloopy), the Strangeloves (I Want Candy), Them's ex-lead singer Van Morrison (Brown Eyed Girl), and, most notably, Neil Diamond (Solitary Man and Cherry Cherry, both produced by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich). 

With BANG Records releasing predominantly rock and roll, Berns formed Shout  Records in 1966 as an outlet for his greatest passions of R&B and soul music, recording artists such as Freddie Scott (Are You Lonely for Me Baby) and Erma Franklin (Piece of  My Heart). Piece of My Heart, one of his last songs, was covered shortly thereafter by Big Brother and the Holding Company, which the then unknown Janis Joplin fronted, peaking at #12 on the Billboard Hot 100; the song also charted on both the Hot 100 and the Billboard Hot Rhythm & Blues Singles charts for Franklin's version (in 1967), on the Hot 100 for a medley by Melissa Etheridge and Joss Stone (in 2005), as well as charting at #1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart for Faith Hill's version (in  1994). 

Berns, who had a history of cardiac trouble as a result of his heart being damaged from rheumatic fever contracted during childhood, died in his New York apartment of heart failure on December 30, 1967, aged 38. 

He was inducted as a non-performer and given the Ahmet Ertegun Lifetime  Achievement Award with the 2016 class to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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To visit the MusicThisDay.com website, tap the link: the 100 Greatest Singer  Songwriters of All Time

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• BACKSTAGE PASS— Stolen Songs, Streaming Fraud and You 

We first learned about this bizarre tale from an article in the New York Times: Their  Songs Were Stolen by Phantom Artists. They Couldn’t Get Them Back, is about a duo from D.C., that was forced to take a crash course in streaming fraud, a shadowy realm that costs musicians $2 billion a year. Below is a summary of the article AND steps you can take to play it— and your songs— safely. 

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In an alarming tale of music piracy, the folk duo Bad Dog from Washington, D.C., encountered a sophisticated form of streaming fraud. Their album The Jukebox of Regret, uploaded to SoundCloud, was illegally appropriated. Each track was rebranded with different titles and attributed to fictitious artists across various streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. 

This discovery unfolded when a song was mistakenly identified on Instagram, revealing the extent of the piracy. The band faced challenges in proving ownership due to the theft of their songs' digital fingerprints, complicating their efforts to produce physical CDs. 

Despite their legal expertise— one a practicing lawyer and the other a retired law professor specializing in internet copyright— David Post and Craig Blackwell struggled to navigate the complex landscape of streaming fraud. This case exemplifies the vulnerabilities in the music industry's digital distribution system, where scammers exploit royalty pools, causing significant financial losses for artists. 

Efforts to resolve the issue highlighted challenges in the music industry's response to piracy and raised questions about the effectiveness of current copyright laws in the digital age. The incident sheds light on the ongoing struggles artists face in protecting their creative work in the streaming era. 

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PROTECTING YOUR MUSIC FROM UNAUTHORIZED USE and piracy is a  critical concern for Singer Songwriters in the digital age. Here are some suggestions and recommendations to help protect your work: 

• Copyright Your Music: Register your music with the Copyright Office in your country (e.g., the U.S. Copyright Office). This provides legal proof of your ownership and is essential for enforcing your rights. 

• Use Digital Watermarks and Fingerprints: Employ technologies like digital watermarks or audio fingerprints for your tracks. These can help in identifying and proving ownership of your music, especially in cases of unauthorized uploads or use. 

• Distribute Through Reputable Platforms: Use well-known and reputable distribution channels that have policies and measures in place to combat piracy and protect your rights. 

• Monitor Your Music: Regularly monitor the internet for unauthorized use of your music. Tools like Google Alerts, and services like Content ID on YouTube, can help you track where and how your music is being used online. 

• Utilize Blockchain Technology: Consider using blockchain platforms designed for musicians. These platforms can offer more transparent and secure ways to distribute and monetize your music, with better control over your intellectual property. 

• Educate Yourself about Music Rights: Understand the basics of music rights and royalties. Knowing how your rights work in different scenarios (streaming, live performances, radio play, etc.) can help you better protect and monetize your music. 

• Join a PRO (Performance Rights Organization): Register with a PRO like ASCAP,  BMI, or SESAC. These organizations help Songwriters and composers collect performance royalties, which is crucial, especially if your music is played publicly. 

• Legal Representation: Consider having a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property and music rights. They can provide advice specific to your situation and assist in taking legal action if necessary. 

• Keep Records: Maintain detailed records of your music creation process, including drafts, recordings, and publication dates. These can be vital in proving ownership. 

• Be Cautious with Contracts and Agreements: Read and understand any contracts or agreements before signing, especially those that pertain to the rights and royalties of your music. 

• Engage with Your Community: Build a strong, engaged fan base. A supportive community can be a powerful deterrent against piracy and can also help in identifying and reporting misuse of your work. 

By taking these steps, Singer Songwriters can better protect their music from unauthorized use and ensure they receive the recognition and compensation they deserve for their creations.

in partnership with Your Morning Coffee and Jay Gilbert

• FEATURE— 10,000 Hours of Deliberate Practice 

The "10,000-hour rule" popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers, suggests that it takes approximately 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to achieve mastery in any field. The essence of this perspective is that talent alone isn't enough to become highly skilled; instead... 

Dedicated, focused DELIBERATE PRACTICE over a significant amount of time is the key. 

This concept originated from the work of psychologist K. Anders Ericsson, who studied the practice habits of experts in various fields. Ericsson's research found that top performers had practiced for about 10,000 hours before becoming experts, though he emphasized the quality and effectiveness of practice, not just the quantity. 

It's important to note that subsequent research and critiques have pointed out that the  "10,000-hour rule" is an oversimplification. The number of hours required for mastery can vary greatly depending on the field of endeavor and individual differences. That said, the fact is... 

The #1 Key for every Top Performer in any field is... DELIBERATE PRACTICE. 

The recent top-over media attention given Taylor Swift's romance with Kansas City Chief's NFL All-Star tight end, Travis Kelce allows us the possibility of illustrating this idea for Singer Songwriters with a Pro Football example. So... 

The Inspiring Story of Jerry Rice's Work Ethic  

Excerpt from Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. By Geoff Colvin 

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As every football fan knows, Jerry Rice was the greatest pass receiver in NFL history,  and some football authorities believe he may have been the greatest player at any position. Ever. His utter dominance is hard to believe in a league where the competition is so intense and conducted at such a high level. For example, the records he holds for total receptions, total touchdown receptions, and total receiving yards are greater than the second-place totals not by 5 percent or 10 percent, which would be impressive, but by about 50 percent. 

It's always dangerous to suggest that any record will never be broken, but breaking Rice's records will be a particular challenge because he was an iron man. He played twenty seasons at a position that is notoriously perilous, and he played in almost every game of every season except one, 1997, when he was out for fourteen weeks because of an injury and returned sooner than his doctors advised. For some future player to perform at such an extremely high standard for so many years in a physically brutal game is obviously not impossible, but history suggests that it is unlikely. 

What Made Rice So Good? 

With regard to most players, that kind of question usually guarantees an argument among sports fans, but in Rice's case, the answer is completely non-controversial. Everyone in the football world seems to agree that Rice was the greatest because... 

He worked harder in practice and in the off-season than anyone else. In team workouts he was famous for his hustle; while many receivers would trot back to the quarterback after catching a pass, Rice would sprint to the end zone after each reception. He would typically continue practicing long after the rest of the team had gone home. Most remarkable were his six-days-a-week off-season workouts, which he conducted entirely on his own. Mornings were devoted to cardiovascular work, running a hilly five-mile trail; he would reportedly run ten forty-meter wind sprints up the steepest part. In the afternoons he did equally strenuous weight training. These workouts became legendary as the most demanding in the league, and other players would sometimes join Rice just to see what it was like. Some of them got sick before the day was over. 

Occasionally someone would write to the 49ers' trainer asking for the details of  Rice's workout, but the trainer never released the information out of fear that people would hurt themselves trying to duplicate it. 

The lesson that's easiest to draw from Jerry Rice's story is that hard work makes all the difference. Yet we know— from research and from just looking around us— that hard work often doesn't lead to extraordinary performance. We also know that even after an excellent college career, Rice did not possess outstanding speed, a quality that coaches generally consider mandatory in a great receiver. So there must be something else lurking in Rice's story. 

There is. Note several relevant points: 

He spent very little time playing football. 

Of all the work Rice did to make himself a great player, practically none of it was playing football games. His independent off-season workouts consisted of conditioning,  and his team workouts were classroom study, reviewing of game films, conditioning,  and lots of work with other players on specific plays. But the 49ers and eventually the other teams for which Rice played almost never ran full-contact scrimmages because they didn't want to risk injuring players. That means that of the total time Rice spent actually playing the game for which he became famous, nearly all of it was in the weekly games themselves. 

How large a part of his football-related work was that? Let's estimate very conservatively that over the course of a year, Rice averaged 20 hours a week working on football; the work is demanding and even the most dedicated player can sustain only a  limited amount. There is evidence that Rice probably averaged much more than that, but let's play it safe. That's about 1,000 hours a year, or 20,000 hours over his pro career. He played 303 career NFL games— the most ever by a wide receiver— and if we assume the offense had the ball half the time on average, that's about 150 hours of playing time as measured by the game clock; this may be overstated since Rice wasn't on the field for every play. The conclusion we reach is that one of the greatest-ever football players devoted less than 1 percent of his football-related work to playing games. 

Of course, it's true that all NFL players devote most of their work-related time to non-game activities, and that fact is significant. These people, doing their work at its highest level and subject to continuous, unsparing evaluation, don't set up weekday football games for practice; they spend almost all their time on other activities, a fact that we should remember. In the case of Rice, one of the greatest players, the ratio was even more extreme. 

He designed his practice to work on his specific needs. 

Rice didn't need to do everything well, just certain things. He had to run precise patterns; he had to evade the defenders, sometimes two or three, who were assigned to cover him; he had to out jump them to catch the ball and out-muscle them when they tried to strip it away; then he had to outrun tacklers. So... he focused his practice work on exactly those requirements. Not being the fastest receiver in the league turned out not to matter. He became famous for the precision of his patterns. His weight training gave him tremendous strength. His trail running gave him control so he could change directions suddenly without signaling his move. The uphill wind sprints gave him explosive acceleration. Most of all, his endurance training— not something that a speed-focused athlete would normally concentrate on— gave him a giant advantage in the fourth quarter, when his opponents were tired and weak, and he seemed as fresh as he was in the first minute. Time and again, that's when he put the game away. 

Rice and his coaches understood exactly what he needed in order to be dominant. They focused on those things and not on other goals that might have seemed generally desirable, like speed. 

While supported by others, he did much of the work on his own. The football season lasts less than half the year. A team sport requires that the players work together a great deal, yet most of Rice's work was in the off-season. He had the important advice of coaches and trainers, but he did most of his football-related work by himself.

It wasn't fun. 

There's nothing enjoyable about running to the point of exhaustion or lifting weights to the point of muscle failure. But these were centrally important activities. He defied the conventional limits of age. 

The average NFL player leaves the league in his twenties; playing at age thirty-five is an unusual achievement. The widely accepted view is that even if a player avoids injury,  deterioration of the body is inevitable, and a player in his late thirties can no longer prevail when facing an opponent fifteen years younger. The few players who have remained starters into their forties have overwhelmingly been quarterbacks, who don't block and don't run much on most plays, or kickers and punters, who are in for only a  few plays per game and are rarely even touched by the opponents. Wide receivers, who run like hell on most plays and frequently get crushed by tacklers, aren't supposed to last twenty seasons or play until age forty-two. None but Rice has ever done so.
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So... that's football. Singer Songwriting is different. Of course. Please look. Closely. What opportunities for DELIBERATE PRACTICE are there for you to become the very best you can be?

Help us spread the word about the AMP.  

There's one BIG reason we give it away Free. No strings.  

Because... Our Mission & Purpose is to 'Put Success In Your Singer Songwriter  Career.' We know cost can be a barrier for aspiring creative artists to get the knowledge, resources, and inspiration they need to succeed. So... the AMP is free.  

If you're a TrueFan... You enjoy the AMP... MMMMM... Benefit from what's in each issue... And you're willing and able to spread the word with and for us... PLEASE. And  THANK YOU!  

Send your friends, family, band members, roadies, and strangers this link: New Music Lives FREE. They'll get the AMP. the Book. the Group. No charge. No strings.  

We're a word-of-mouth-movement because: It's Time... for a Change. Big Time. Past  Time. We're asking you to help us make that happen.  

• PS from PS— Singer Songwriters Are Being Shafted! 

I'm an advocate for Singer Songwriters. I am passionate about your success. So it pisses me off when I see that venues have started to block artists from collecting emails from attendees. This is WRONG! And it's another reason for building your own list of Fans and TrueFans. YOUR OWN LIST, where you have control of YOUR Data... YOUR  Future. 

You must own your own list and use it as a resource to create a greater connection between you and your fans. DO NOT overlook this. Your future depends on it. When you have a database of your fans you can sell tickets, and merch, send them new releases, a newsletter, and pics of your partner, pets, and kids. You can Connect and Engage with them  And Enroll them in supporting you. It's your power tool. 

Okay, I hear you say, 'How can I start to build a list?' Start simple. At every show make sure you have someone getting all attendees to add their email addresses to a sign-up sheet. If you can, have them do it electronically. Use a QR code for them to scan. Yeah, we're getting techy. We can help. We'll soon be launching a way for you to do this seamlessly, so you can build that all-important list without worrying about the tech. Coming soon. 

If you are not a performing Singer Songwriter right now, you need to add a way on your website for fans to get on your list and have a way to reach back out to them. A way for them to connect with you. Two-way communication flow is your power play. Remember, they want to help you, but you need to show you care about them FIRST.  

A simple tip: When you meet someone, mention your music, get their email address or a card or their phone/text number. Then send them something. "Thank you. Great meeting you" is a perfect start. (Think: When was the last time that happened to you? Memorable. Big!) Then send a track of something cool. Have them feel connected. Cared about. A sense of belonging. How about setting yourself the challenge of getting out 5 emails a day to the people you've met? It's surprising how fast your list can grow— especially when you send a message and ask them to share your music with their friends. 

Your future is in your list. Start Simple. It works. And we're working on making it even more simple for you. Stay tuned. We're peddling as fast as we can...

Thank You our True Fans for reading the AMP. Give us your feedback.  

And PLEASE, if you've got any Singer Songwriter friends, pass the AMP on, because... It’s Time... for a Change. Big Time. Past Time…