Ethan Griggs’ song “Laurel” is one of April’s featured songs on COMBO’s website!
Each month COMBO features songs from mostly Colorado Songwriters on its website. These songs are gleaned by COMBO’s Board Member and Secretary Mark King from many sources including the internet but mostly from entries into COMBO’s annual Songwriting Contest.
This month’s songs include:
● Clodia Songs, by Thomas Hines;
● Just the Way It Ends, by Terry DeBell;
● Tonight’s the Night by Scott McDermott;
● Laurel by Ethan Griggs; and
● My Beautiful Friend by Casey Wayne Smith.
Mark deserves a lot of credit for helping out unsigned songwriters by spending a lot of time listening to songs, uploading them, and featuring them. If you have a song that you would like to be featured on COMBO’s website, send him an MP3 to Mark@coloradomusic.org, along with a little information on the song. And if you haven’t entered it into our Songwriting Contest, please do so. Information under “Songwriters’ Corner” on the COMBO website.
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COMBO’s 5th Annual Songwriting Contest Starts May 1st
The Colorado Music Business Organization announces their Fifth Annual Songwriting Contest! Do you have a song you have written and ten ($10) dollars that may help YOU out and definitely will help COMBO? Read on because this contest is for YOU!! Per previous years, there will be NO CA$H prizes for the high-scoring songs – just the opportunity for your song to be heard! Winning songs will be submitted to *real music business companies*.
Contest staff will put the Top Scoring songs on a compilation CD and hand deliver to publishers, record companies, music supervisors, and others – that have agreed beforehand to accept them – along with a cover letter telling a little about COMBO, along with lyric sheets for each of the songs. Winners will also receive one copy of the compilation CD for their use.
No “Songwriting” judges – just people who love music and are connected to the business of music. The panel will be made up of a variety of people who are music professionals in some area of the Music Industry but who do not write songs. This helps to eliminate possible plagiarism. Names of the judging panel are confidential and will not be shared so that the judges can not contact each other to get opinions.
The songs will be presented for judging “anonymously” – the judges will not know the name(s) of the songwriters or even the name of the song. Song submissions will be presented to the judges as a number (i.e. Song #113). Email confirmation of accepted entries will have our song registration number FYI. Please make sure that Meta Data is not included on your entry.
No “bad” words! Failure to follow this RULE will disqualify your song. If you wrote your song with a “must have” naughty word, please mute the word on the mp3 track and write “bleep” on the lyric sheet (we will only accept songs for the contest that are “Radio Friendly”).
Examples of judging criteria will consist of (but not be limited to) – Do the lyrics ‘hit you in the heart’? Does the melody bring out some emotion such as: passion, solitude, love, excitement, danger? Do the lyrics express a ‘new thought’ or have a really catchy phrase?
Please submit Songs with Lyric Sheets as attachments to songcontest@coloradomusic.org in MP3 format so that contest staff may forward to each judge to listen to from the privacy of their own homes. Instrumentals are welcomed. Movies, television shows, and commercials LOVE instrumentals! Also, make sure that the WRITER(S) of the song(s) are listed – not the people who played on the recording (i.e., see our Lyrics section where the real names of the guys in U2 are listed as the writers, not pseudonyms). Any songs submitted should have been registered for copyright before sending them to COMBO.
The Top Scoring 18-20 songs will get a slot on the compilation CD to be given out as mentioned above. We will not have categories but we do reserve the right to only use two songs from any one writer or group of writers on the CD. We have passed these CDs out to “real” record companies, publishing companies, Music Supervisors, magazine and newspaper reviewers, and several radio stations – both terra and net, all in an effort to get YOUR song heard by people who might be interested in helping you to get it “sold”.
Once you have submitted your song(s) and lyric sheet(s), please mail your $10 payment for each song to COMBO, P.O. Box 18186, Denver, CO 80218. Currently paid COMBO members will be able to enter one song at no charge; paid band members may submit two songs at no charge.
The contest will DEFINITELY END ON AUGUST 1st in order to get the Compilation CDs ready to pass out at the Durango Songwriters Expo in Broomfield at the end of September. This will allow the judges to listen to last-minute entries, the COMBO staff the time to tally the scores, to get the songs mastered, and the CD to be replicated by COMBO’s great supporter CODA-Inc. If you want your CDs fast, accurate, and affordable, CODA in Aurora, CO is the way to go! You can even pick them up yourself if you are in a hurry!
BTW, the Durango Songwriters Expo throws in a “scholarship” to the Expo in Broomfield. Every entrant (individual names) is put into “the hat” and a name is drawn out to win that entry! Last year’s winner of the DSE Entry was Amanda Harras. Previous winners were Gary Dean Smith, Steve Law, and Robert Hojoboom – all of whom were able to take advantage of that win!
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