This is a video interview at the 2010 TAXI Road Rally with hit songwriter and songwriting coach Jai Josefs, author of Transforming The Tune – Secrets of Musical Rewriting. Jai is also the author of Writing Music for Hit Songs, the definitive text on modern music writing endorsed by hit writers including Diane Warren. Jai’ songs have been used in TV shows on every major network and over a dozen major motion pictures with such stars as Harrison Ford, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, and Billy Bob Thornton. Learn more about Jai Josefs at www.jaijomusic.com.

This is the first in our “Back to Basics” series of songwriting tips videos and covers the importance of your mindset as a songwriter. Hopefully this video will help you get motivated to expect the muse, make room for it, and work your craft. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Acoustic guitar can be a challenging instrument to record and mix, especially in the home recording studio. Every music producer and engineer has their own preference for microphone placement, mic choice, and mixing technique. Getting the right acoustic guitar sound recording take loads of set up time. In this video/screencast, I’ll show you how to mic an acoustic guitar for a clear and full-bodied recording and set up your tracks in Pro Tools 8.

This screencast tutorial will show you how to run instruments from Reason 4.0 on individual tracks in Pro Tools 8. The way we do this is to use the built in Pro Tools plugin, Rewire. Rewire allows you to map the channels in the Reason interface with your tracks in Pro Tools. This is a true killer combination for music production. Using Reason with Pro Tools gives you the utmost flexibility to create, mix, and master your songs beautifully.