[00:01] sitting around a nice warm fire. The sun is setting. You're surrounded by friends because you're the songwriter in the index of songs you know how to play, what you're really doing is asking
[00:15] yourself this simple question. Which songs are going to sound great with just guitar and voice? Which songs with all the layers of production removed, stripped back to the bare bones, will still sound great? And this is the
[00:28] camping trip, but you're actually at home working on a new song, the campfire test is an imaginary scenario that we songwriters can run to analyze the structure of our song and put some of the key elements under a bright
[00:43] something really important, which is to separate songwriting from production. Now, in certain genres and in certain styles of music making, production and songwriting go hand in hand. But there are other times when we really need to
[00:57] separately. And when we do this, when we separate production from songwriting, we can then ask a series of really valuable questions about the songwriting process. Is this song in the best form? Are the chords well chosen and appropriate? Is
[01:12] the melody captivating and memorable? Are the lyrics impactful and really Are the lyrics impactful and really saying what I want them to say?