Beth Nielsen Chapman They Know the Secret

Making Music & Mud Pies Tom Shapiro Jon Vezner: As a song - ACM & CMA writer he’s Song of the Year enjoyed 13 winner and #1 hits and GRAMMY ® counting, winner for Best Tom is also a Country Song 3 time win - ner of BMI’s Kathy Mattea: Country Sixteen top ten Songwriter hits, Five CMA’s, of the Year Four ACM’s, Two GRAMMY ® award’s and she’s still going strong

Gary Nicholson From BB King to Kenny Greenberg George Jones, Bonnie GRAMMY ® Raitt to Wynonna, winning Producer Waylon Jennings to (Edwin McCain, Neil Diamond, he’s Pam Tillis, Ashley written for them all Cleveland, Joan Baez) and Guitarist (The Indigo Girls, Wynonna, Michael Bolton, Trisha Yearwood). He’s penned hit songs for Amy Grant and SHeDAISY

The Wilkinsons GRAMMY ® nominated family trio with hits Gary Chapman including “Don’t I TV Host, multiple have a Heart”, “26 Dove Award winner cents” and “Jimmy’s and GRAMMY ® got a Girlfriend” nominee

Annie Roboff Deborah Allen Trisha With her signature Yearwood, song, “Baby I Lied”, Martina Deborah Allen has McBride and gone on to make her Faith Hill, to ccording to Nashville tunesmith Beth Nielsen Chapman, one Some of Chapman’s most successful songs were written mark as a remarkable name just a solo and songwriting few, have all Aof the best songwriting techniques is to avoid technique. on inexpensive Yamaha keyboards. “I love how those key - talent enjoyed “I try to stay as much as possible in the unconscious place boards are totally accessible,” she says. “If I’m in a creative huge hits written by where real creativity comes from,” says Chapman, whose songwriting mode, the worst thing for me would be to have to Annie songs have been performed by Faith Hill, Bonnie Raitt, Tanya read a manual to figure out how to make a drum loop work. Tucker, Elton John, Trisha Yearwood, Willie Nelson, Lorrie The song would never get written! But on the Yamaha key - Morgan and many others. “I try to remove my intellect from boards, you just push a button, and you have a basic beat. the process and just get into the childlike joy of creating, like You can just throw them in your car and take them to the stringing beads or making mud pies.” beach.” In fact, the beach is where Chapman and her collabo - Delbert McClinton One of the Planet’s Regardless of whether she’s writing for one of her own rators wrote the Faith Hill mega-hit “This Kiss” on a Yamaha Phil Vasser greatest roadhouse albums or for another artist, Chapman strives for the same battery powered PSR keyboard. ASCAP’s songwriter rockers free-associative approach. “I start by just hitting a chord on “I’ve been using a PSR730,” says Chapman, “but I’m also of the year a guitar or a keyboard,” she says. “The sound of that chord going to get a PSR8000 or 9000. They’re all fantastic writing will subliminally suggest a melody line, which will then suggest tools. Like guitars, they have songs inside them. The songs are a specific vowel sound. Usually I just sing nonsense syllables already perfectly written-some of us are just lucky enough to that fit the vowels I hear, though the final version of the song be in the right place at the right time to download them.” often winds up with the exact vowel sounds I started with. Chapman pauses, then chuckles. “Seeing it that way gets me Eventually I have to tighten the song up and look at it from an off the hook when I’m having a bad writing day. I can just say, intellectual angle, but not until after I’ve let the idea grow ‘I must be standing in the wrong place.’” and mutate and become what it wants to be.”

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