Kenn Crawford, songwriter

28/05/2026

I've been playing since the late 70s and I've yet to have a pick or capo that needed to be tuned but hey, if your guitar picks or capo has that problem, this box will keep them in tune.

16/05/2026

Can you tell which guitar pick has been with me since the early 2000s and which pick is new?

Sorry, it's a trick question... they're both the same age, but because I never drop or lose my pick the "just in case" backups never got used.

I always kept a book of "match picks" in my case (and I kept lost picks I found on stage) for whenever somebody needed a pick... but they never got my main pick.
And all these years later of being covered in sweat, oil, and gunk, ol' faithful is still going strong. :)

22/04/2026

When an idea hits...

I'm a night owl and often don't hit the sack until 4 or 5 am. 2am is an early night to me, but last night I went to bed at 10 o'clock.

At 4am I got up to do the bladder thing... I'm old, we wake up a lot to p*e. It sucks tho when you're standing there and nothing happens. We even start saying things like "C'mon, hurry up. This was you idea so get on with it" as if that actually helps lol

Anyway, on my way back to bed I noticed my writing pad was still on the kitchen table. It's supposed to be next to my bed in case I have a song idea in the middle of the night because we all learned the hard way... you will not remember that awesome song idea in the morning!

As I sat on my bed it hit me... a song idea, not the urge to p*e... 10 minutes later I had the first draft completed.

Two verses, the chorus, and a bridge. And the best part: verse 1 and verse 2 have nothing to do which each other, but they both work seamlessly with the chorus, which means each time you hear the chorus it takes on an entirely new meaning.

I doubt I'll get back to sleep now so I might as well do the Cape Breton thing and put the kettle on for a cup of tea, then type out the lyrics so they're more legible than my 5am scribblings. :)

11/04/2026

In a different group I heard a song that I thought was pretty good. It was about where I grew up (Nova Scotia) and shared it with the group.

But something wasn't quite right so I did some investigating, learned it was AI, and deleted the post. A conversation about AI-generated music followed.

Others shared their thoughts with the majority being against AI music. One person shared a link to a song on YouTube saying there was some great AI music out there. I decided to copy/paste my reply to him below.



This is exactly what I am talking about. Whether or not the quality is good is irrelevant.... People who spent years perfecting their craft are losing out on a share of the attention and royalties because AI-generated music is being uploaded to places like Distrokid - an aggregator specifically used to share the music across multiple platforms (Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, etc etc.)

Last time I checked over 100,000 new tracks are uploaded every single day to Spotify.

Back in the early days before the home recording boom leveled the playing field there was maybe 1,000 songs or so released per day. With the digital revolution that jumped to roughly 10k by the 2000s.
Now it's over 100,000 per day!

Did the whole world suddenly become a musician and start churning out song after song, practically overnight?

No, the gatekeepers were removed which gave everybody equal access and the daily releases jumped significantly in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s... then AI appears on the scene and all of a sudden it jumps to more than 100,000 new uploads every single day.

Artists who worked hard at building their craft went from competing with other musicians (the level playing field) to competing with thousands of non-musician's.

So yeah, while there may be some decemt AI music out there, there's also a ton of slop and utter garbage. Most consumers don't want to filter through all that crap in hopes of finding a great new artist, so they stick to what they know, and that's how AI is stealing the attention (not just royalties) from real musicians... not necessarily by being played more but by scaring people away from looking for new music/artists because of all the crap that's being uploaded.

I'm all for non-musicians using AI when it's done for fun, but when they upload it streaming sites etc and collect royalties, that's crossing the line a don't think they should be allowed to cross.... and sites are starting to catch on and stop AI music while the courts agree and say you cannot copyright AI generated music because you didn't actually create it. A computer did.

Addendum:
Contrary to popular belief due to my stance against AI-generated music, I use AI almost everyday. It helos me finetune my writing and gives me ideas that I then write... and that's the difference between using AI as a tool to HELP YOU versus having AI do it FOR YOU!

What are your thoughts on AI-generated music?

09/04/2026

Last night was another all-nighter reworking my song.

There were a few parts that weren't quite hitting properly so before I started recording I knew I had to fix the lyrics just in case it changed the structure.

It did.

Originally the song was longer. I trimmed it down but while practicing it just before I was going to record I accidentally sang the deleted verse - and I immediately recognized how a key element of the story was missing without that verse.

Putting the verse back in added an extra 16 bars, which is a fair amount for a 94 bpm song, making it well over 4 minutes long.

Longer songs are okay if you can keep the listener engaged for the duration, I just prefer shorter songs whenever possible.

But what do I cut if each section is an integral part of the story?

I took a hard look at verses 3 & 4... each had key phrases that were important so eventually I decided to use the best parts of both and combine them into a single verse.

And then it dawned on me...

The title wasn't in the chorus.

That's not the end of the world but the more you can repeat the title, without it sounding forced or redundant, the better. The title is often found in the chorus because that makes it easier for listeners to remember the name of the song.

My chorus was also half the length of the verses so that gave me some wiggle room to work with.

At first I tried to simply lengthen the chorus but the part I settled on was melodically different, which meant it became a short post-chorus rather than an extended chorus.

By adding the post-chorus, as well as repeating it for the outro, the title went from only being sung twice to being me tiined five times. More importantly, the listener's journey was enhanced with the post-chorus arrangement.

And now that the song is lyrically finished, and the arrangement is solid, I can finally catch some much needed Zzzzz's. I'm getting too old for these all-nighters LOL

The song is called "Can You Hear Her Crying?" and it tells the story of a lady who lives in a small, coal mining town that's mourning the loss of a loved one.

I'll post the lyrics in a day or two - right now it is bed time.

08/04/2026

I spent today working on a new(ish) song without actually touching an instrument or going into my DAW. This is the part that a lot of people tend to skip - The Arrangement.

With pen & paper I mapped out the song using the Nashville Numbering System.
From there I started adding production notes as I visualized the song in my head. And by visualize I mean I heard the parts in my head.

Piece by piece, section by section, I added instrument layers (texture) while removing others to make sure the song always had movement.

Your number #1 job as a music producer is to take your listener on an emotional journey.

If you're a storyteller like I am we have a tendency to let the lyrics do the heavy lifting - the music is usually only there to accompany the words, but there's more to it than that. Much more.

Yes, the lyrics are always the most important part in a story song, but the music has to carry that same emotion so that it supports the lyrical journey.

A great way to do this is to mute your vocals then, while the song is playing in your DAW, jump around the track - if everything sounds like more of the same, that is you can't tell where you're at in the song without hearing the lyrics, you need to go back to the drawing board and create a better arrangement. Create movement and take your listener on that emotional journey.

If you can listen to the song from start to finish and hear where the journey ebbs and flows, where it builds to add tension and releases to let the listener catch their breath, that's an arrangement worthy of your lyrics.

That's all the stuff I usually do in my head (especially when I'm recording other songwriters) but because this was a new-ish song (a rewrite of an old song but one I never recorded before) I didn't want to let the excitement of finally recording it after all these years overshadow building a solid arrangement. I already made that mistake which is why I sat down and started over.

The only time I touched my guitar was to tune it down a full step to see how that would sound next to a rhythm that was played on a guitar tuned the regular way. The answer is it sounds great. :D

In fact I'm going to restring my other acoustic to Nashville Tuning to add a 3rd layer (where it best serves the song) to help create a fuller texture that compliments the different voicings of the regular guitar and the one tuned down a whole step.

I still have to figure out what licks to play on different instruments for the various sections, but now that I have an arrangement mapped out I'll delete the recording I did a few days ago and start from scratch.

Because I originally just recorded it the way I wrote it all those years ago it... well, to be brutally honest... it sounded like 💩

And that right there is why sometimes it's better to sit down with pen and paper and create your arrangement first - you're only as strong as your weakest link. If the foundation is wrong you're fighting an uphill battle.

For now it's break time to grab a bite to eat and chill with a movie... tomorrow I start anew. :)

31/03/2026

One of the things I switched up in my little studio was using a variety of different guitar picks.
For years I only used the gray, Jim Dunlop .60mm picks, but when I got back into recording I started trying different kinds and thicknesses.

My favorite is like a middle-of-the-road pick, but if I want a more percussive rhythm a thinner pick gave me that (great for rhythm tracks that accompany a lead acoustic) whereas a thicker pick had more bite and was better for leads, and was less "scratchy/pick hitting strings sound" when playing a rhythm part.

The wooden picks were a gift and I only started using them recently. They're basically the same as a thicker pick but a slightly more rounded sound.

I have a little of everything now including felt picks and Tortex .60mm picks so depending on what part I'm recording, a simple switch of the pick will help me get a little closer to what I want.

I was told felt picks would be good when I wanted the sound of a bass played with your fingers but without the clicky sound of my nails. I'm recording a new song and will be tracking bass in a few days. I'll update this post on how that goes with felt picks.

I'm still not used to finger picks. I've tried then multiple times over the years and never liked them, but I need to get used to them for playing banjo.

30/03/2026

There's an older Canadian movie called "Harmony Cats" starring Kim Coates and Lisa Brokoff.

He (Kim Coates) was a classical violinist who suddenly found himself out of work when the symphony shut down. The only steady gig he was offered was touring with a country music band as their bass player, much to his dismay because it was 'beneath him' but he needed the money.

In time he started working with the daughter (Lisa Brokoff) making little changes here and there to make the music they were playing better.

One night the old band leader (played by multi-Juno winner, Jim Byrnes) and father to Brokoff's character sits him down and talks about growing up listening to records.
He talked about hearing all the scratches because he played the records so many times the scratches became part of the song.

He went to say that when he got to finally hear his favorite artists play live it was like he could still hear all those little scratches.

He then gives him a stern warning: "Don't go taking the scratches out of my band."

It's a cool little story for the movie and it's fitting, especially these days with a lot of modern music...

Some people are so obsessed with perfection - perfectly clean sound, perfect timing, perfect pitch and so on that they're taking all the scratches (the perfect little imperfections) that made the music sound human in the first place.

My favourite (and not in a good way) is when online producers/trainers tell people they can't just copy & paste the vocal - they have to record it again, then pan them hard left/right.
The reason it has to be recorded again is because it's the little subtle differences in the performances that makes it sound thicker.

And they're right... but then the very first thing they do is pitch correct every note and vocalign every syllable of those double(s) so that they match the lead vocal perfectly.

That makes zero sense... they're editing out the whole point of recording those extra vocals in the first place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Remember....
Don't go taking all the scratches out your music.

18/02/2026

Computer, Studio One DAW, a rack of outboard gear, acoustic guitar, lapsteel, banjo, keyboards, midi controller, microphone, post-it notes everywhere and crumbled paper with half-written songs... that is so me in my happy place. :)

It even added one of my cowboy hats, but there are no Telecasters in the pic. :(

I don't have a lava lamp and I don't drink black coffee, but other than that, lose the wedding ring and that's a pretty damn good. :)

18/01/2026