About the Ballad

By Marc-Alan Barnette

To: My brother's and sisters in writing
Re: Effectiveness on the music scene

Marc-Alan Barnette here from Nashvegas, with a few words to make your writing, pitching and performing experience more effective. Those of you who know me and have participated in my workshops, tours or shows in Nashville, have heard my diatribes on the phenomenon of ballads in today's songwriters market. Many of you have experienced this first hand and many of you are still to experience it so…I hope you can take what I say to heart and take if for what it is - from the heart and personal experience.

As many of you know, ballads constitute about 70% of what writers write and represent about 7% of what is cut. Many of you are primarily ballad writers and I certainly empathize with you. I have written ballads and actually have gotten one cut…nine times! But the realities of life for almost all of us is that mid- and up-tempo songs rule the day in getting us publisher time, prospective co-writers, and better pitches. Not to mention keeping the attention of an audience.

So, as you are thinking about your songs, remember these things when you are considering what to pitch. With the millions of ballads on the streets today it makes it difficult for you to stand out from the crowd. When you write them, they need to be powerful, with a BIG chorus.

For fun, I have done some research and came across some trivia that I found interesting:

• Many ballad singers and writers have disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle.

• Ballads have caused many of the breaks ups of current marriages, playing a part in one out of 5 divorces.

• Ballads preceded the San Francisco fire, the Chicago fire and several midget wrestling matches in lower Romania in the third Century.

• It was rumored that Vlad Tepe's, aka, Vlad the Impaler and the model for Count Dracula, was a big fan of ballads, and had them played at many of his dinners.

• Ballads are a cause of one fifth of all audience-related accidents when they hit their head while falling asleep…particularly after an entire show of continuous ballads.

• Ballads were played on the deck of the Titanic as the ship sank into the Atlantic.

These are but a few of the examples of the damage that ballads have caused throughout history.

Seriously though, I’m just advising you to think before you play. You want to capture the audience’s attention and stand out from the crowd. I’m not suggesting eliminating ballads, they are part of who we are. They just aren’t typically the best way to initiate attention.

Remember: Friends don't let friends play ballads. Just kidding…almost.

Photo: Kris Kristofferson