But what do we mean by “musicianship?”

What’s the difference between someone who can ‘play a bit of guitar’ and someone who can confidently describe themselves as a musician? What is it exactly that a ‘musician’ can do that a mere ‘guitar player’ can’t?

Let’s take this a radical step further and cut out all thoughts of technique. This isn’t to say technique isn’t important. Far from it! But for the sake of this article let’s look at “musicianship” as a mindset. Better than that, let’s think of the “musicianship” as a point in our lifelong musical journey. We start as a “want-to-be guitar player” and then progress to “guitar player.” “Musician” will be a point further along our road.

Personally I have pinned it down to three specific main skills that have to be mastered to earn your ‘I am a musician’ badge.

These are:

• The ability to improvise music
• The ability to compose music and
• The ability to transcribe music

I consider these skills to interact in a similar way to the three sides of a triangle. If you increase the length of one side of a triangle it forces the length of the adjacent side to increase.

It works like this: if you improve your improvising skill, your ability to compose automatically improves (composing is really just improvising done more slowly!) The insight gained from composing or improvising goes a long way to improving your listening and music analysis skills, which in turn enhance your ability to transcribe music, such as working out a song from a recording you’re listening to so you can write it down on paper in either notation or tablature. Transcribing is really reverse-engineered composing!

The more music you transcribe, the better your understanding of how music works. This newly gained understanding then feeds back into your ability to improvise and compose.

The interesting thing about each of these skills is that they all have a slightly high entry price. Left to their own devices, guitarists seldom teach themselves to improvise without help from a teacher or another musician. Composing music is seen by most as something akin to a black art and, again, few people start composing entirely under their own steam. Demonstrating the ability to instantly transcribe music is even more likely to get you burnt at the stake – I have literally seen students’ jaws drop when witnessing this skill in action.

So if you are teaching yourself to play guitar and want to work towards mastering the subject I recommend starting with improvising. It’s not necessarily the easiest one of the three for everyone, but I think it is slightly more accessible than either composing or transcribing. It’s also more fun!

What’s the best way to learn to improvise? Well, there are several approaches and, to be honest, each approach has its advantages and disadvantages.

The simplest approach is just to start. Play along to a song and use your ears to hear which notes seem to go with it and which ones don’t. This is a very direct approach, but I have to say that most people find it to difficult to get a satisfying result early on and so, for them, I’d recommend approach number two.

The second approach is to learn scale patterns. The most easily applied scales are the minor and major pentatonic scales and their derivatives: the blues and country scales. Drilling scale patterns may seem laborious, but it is a most effective shortcut to finding the right notes to play.

To play Rock ‘n Roll style lead or Jazz, you need to progress to improvising directly over chords. This can be done using the chord shapes themselves (Django Reinhardt, Eddie Cochran and Mark Knopfler are all ace exponents of this approach) or by learning arpeggio patterns (check out Charlie Christian’s jazz style or Joe Walsh on his Hotel California solo).

Improvising directly over chords is, in my view, much harder and takes lots of practice, but ultimately produces a much richer result. If you can, team up with another guitarist and take it in turns to play lead and rhythm. The next best thing is to use backing tracks.

Once your fingers are up to speed (and that can take a while), the most important thing is careful listening. You have to simultaneously listen to three things: (1) The rhythm section, (2) your own playing and, (3) the combined effect of both those things!

The final step is to learn to appreciate the subtle effects of timing. The rhythmic element of great lead guitar is often underestimated. If you listen to B.B. King and Peter Green you can really appreciate what can be achieved with only a few notes but a divine sense of timing!

Once you feel you’re getting the hang of improvising have a go at composing. Record yourself playing a simple chord sequence then play it back, and using your improvising skills, work out a great tune to go with it. If you have the right kit to do multi-track recording you can then record yourself playing the tune and listen appreciatively to the playback! Like improvising, your composing skills will develop with practice and will benefit from swapping ideas with fellow guitar players and other musicians as well.

Finally, have a crack at transcribing. Listen to a song and work out in this order:

1. What key it’s in.
2. What notes the bass is playing under the chord changes.
3. What the chords are.
4. What the melody is.
5. Any lead lines, keyboard or horn parts.

If you have studied any amount of music theory you will find that will help greatly in narrowing down the likely chords and notes used. If you struggle with music theory (and in that case, welcome to one of the largest clubs on earth!) you will find transcribing harder, but if you stick at it you will gradually gain an intuitive understanding of how chords and notes work together in keys to form music. You will then find the theory making a lot more sense.

So use the Magic Triangle of Improvising, Composing and Transcribing to work your way up from being ‘a bit of a guitar player’ to being a fully competent Musician and above all enjoy the process!

About the author:

Nick Minnion runs TeachGuitar.com, a website designed to support guitar players who want to make a living teaching guitar. Visit teachguitar.com for loads of free resources to help you get into teaching guitar and also probably the biggest global forum for active guitar teachers.www.teachguitar.com

• What are some popular and often used chord progressions?
• How do I come up with good chord progressions for my songs?
• How do I write a chord progression using power chords?
• What should I write first – the words or the music?
• What are some easy ways to expand my musical horizons?
• Where does inspiration come from?
• How do I share songwriting credits?
• Why should I protect my songs?
• What is the best way to get a demo heard?
• How can I make it?
• Am I too old to make it?

What are some popular and often used chord progressions?

Musically, songs consist of chord progressions. This is not a universal truth, but a fairly convenient generalization. The Talking Heads’ song Houses in Motion, for example, consists solely of an Em7 chord, but if you simply sit and strum an Em7, I can pretty much guarantee that what you’re playing will not sound remotely like the song. What makes this particular song work are the various riffs and rhythm patterns (vocal as well as instrumental) that the band members are tossing about – it’s almost like a game of catch. Again, you will always be able to find exceptions to any generalization in music and music theory.

But the generalizations will help you immensely if (a) you know them and (b) you can recognize them. This is where your practice with interval recognition can pay big dividends.

In order to help us out, I’m going to set out a few of our primary and secondary chord charts for the five major keys guitarists tend to play (bonus points for noticing that we’re using the given scale’s minor seventh and the root of the VII chord!):

You can read more about popular chord progressions in Unearthing The Structure.

How do I come up with good chord progressions for my songs?

What makes a chord transition “good?” Why are some transitions almost automatic, for lack of a better word? Why is C to G pleasant to the ear while C to Eb minor is worse than fingernails on chalk?

You may find this hard to believe, but a lot of the “science” behind harmony is mere convention. As I’ve stated before, the “theory” in music theory is simply the examination of what has gone on before. Therefore, much of what is a “good” chord transition is the result of centuries of familiarity. If you had been raised on some planet where, oh I don’t know, the augmented fourth was considered good form then it would not seem as jarring an interval as it does to most earthlings.

Add to this the notion that our harmonic conditioning undoubtedly springs from singing. Think about it, people had voices long before they had instruments. When our ancestors first began singing together, what made them feel certain notes went well together and some brought down the wrath of the gods? I can imagine two cave people coaching each other … “No, no Thag. If Og sings the root, you must chant the sixth, okay?”

Be that as it may, we have inherited quite a few guidelines as to what chords work well together. The following is a chart taught to first year theory students. And as always, I must implore you to remember that this is not a be all and end all guide. Chord changes that people may have found harsh in the past might now be the “in thing.” Progressions that we perhaps find trite will possible rule the radio tomorrow (it’s an incredibly easy thing to change “stale” into “style”).

Anyway, here goes. In a major key, the general rule of thumb regarding chord progression would be as follows:

Okay, note yet again that I am ignoring the seventh chord position. Don’t worry. It’s coming up next time.

Now, these charts are all fine and dandy, but I prefer to see things in terms of actual day to day use rather than all the Roman numeral stuff. Let’s look at the keys of C major and G major, shall we?

Some of you will no doubt notice two things about these charts: first that they pretty much confirm the things that A-J Charron has written in A Simple Song. Secondly, that these progression charts will also help cut out a lot of the guesswork when you’re trying to figure out a song on your own! You can find more on this topic in the article “A” Before “E” (Except After “C”).

How do I write a chord progression using power chords?

Okay, first let’s look at two things. Power chords, as we know, are simply the root and its fifth. By this definition, they are neither major nor minor. An E power chord (or E5), for example, is E and B. Now the major pentatonic scale is the root, 2nd, 3rd, 5th and 6th of the scale. So an E pentatonic scale is E, F#, G#, B and C#. Are you with me so far?

Looking at this scale, I can make out four power chords. Check it out:

E – E and B
F# – F# and C#
B – B and F#
C# – C# and G#

So I could write out a chord progression using combinations of these chords. And depending on the order I use I could come up with very different sounds. Check these out (and remember we’re only using power chords):

1. E, B, C#, F#, B
2. E, F#, B, E
3. C#, F#, B, E
4. F#, E, B, C#, F#

And these are just a few ideas. Now, if you wanted to you could also throw other chords into the mix. An A power chord would work because it’s just A and E and you already have two thirds of an A major chord in your scale (C# and E). You also have two thirds of the G#m chord (G# and B) so a G# power chord would fit in nicely, too.

Now here’s the fun thing – look at what we’ve “cleared” to use (again, all power chords):

E, F#, G#, A, B, C#

That’s almost the entire E major scale! We could also, depending on what your solo sounds like, try to throw a D power chord (NOT D#!!!!!) since we have two thirds of the D major chord. So now we have the following power chords at our disposal:

E, F#, G#, A, B, C#, D

In other words, when we have a solo using the E major pentatonic scale, we can use power chords using any of the notes from this scale, which is the E mixolydian (or A major, if you will).

How will it sound? Well, that really depends on the solo. The trick is to try to match the power chords to the natural resting points in your solo. Even though you can use all these power chords, it’s a good idea to keep the progression pretty simple in order to give the solo ample space and breathing room.

What should I write first – the words or the music?

Always keep in mind that the music has as much to say about the song as the lyrics do. So the music and words should be saying the same thing. If they don’t, people will notice this immediately.

Personally, I tend to start with the music. But not all the time. I usually begin by playing around with chords or individual notes or a bit of both until I stumble on to something that reflects the way I’m feeling. Then I use it as a starting point and work around that.

As I (unfortunately) do not have any formal training, I rely on 18 years of experience to know what should or should not come after. (Again, I refer you to David Hodge’s columns.) But there’s more to it than that. Depending on your style of music, it’s often possible to go in a direction that has nothing to do with what you’ve started with. I write Progressive Rock, so it’s almost expected.

Once I have my starting point, I play it and listen to it and “hear” what it’s telling me. The words eventually come. I never try to force them out. It’s almost as if the song were already written and you were learning it. Or remembering it. Almost.

With some words and some music, you should know soon enough how you want to structure the song. It’s hard to say how I decide this, but I rely, again on the emotions conveyed, and on the complexity of the music. If it carries a lot of weight, I might decide not to put in a chorus and let a more complex musical pattern carry the song at those points. When I do use a chorus I often go with different words each time. I believe this is only due to the fact that I’m long-winded.

Always keep in mind that the music has as much to say about the song as the lyrics do. So the music and words should be saying the same thing. If they don’t, people will notice this immediately.

If you’ve written all of the music first, then you can sit down and concentrate on the words. If you’ve finished the lyrics and they’re wrong for the music, start over. Keep the lyrics, though, you may want to use them, or part of them later on. I’ve recently written one starting with the music, completely arranged, and had to write three different sets of lyrics. And I’m still not entirely happy with what I have.

You will find more pointers along these lines in So You Want to be a Song Writer?

What are some easy ways to expand my musical horizons?

Your favorite songs don’t excite you anymore. In fact, you get bored playing the same stuff over and over. Even playing before people is more a chore than an enjoyment. Everything you write sounds the same. To quote B.B. King, “The thrill is gone.” It’s ironic that, in spite of the fact that the guitar is such a versatile instrument, so many guitarists find themselves stuck in a rut.

There are lots of easy and practically effortless things that anyone can do to stretch his or her musical mind. Some are obvious, but the obvious things are usually the last things one thinks about.

There are several lessons and topics on Guitar Noise that will help you bring that spark back to your playing, writing and performing. For some ideas on inspiration check out some of the following articles:

• Breaking Out Of The Box
• Common Sensei
• On Gifts and Giving
• If I Only Had…
• Thanks (Giving and Getting)

We at Guitar Noise want to remind people of why we run this site and, much more importantly, why we play music in the first place. In the past many readers have shared their thoughts and stories with us, and we’ve collected them on the The Joy of Music page. These inspirational stories constantly remind us what music is all about.

Where does inspiration come from?

How many times have you heard artists say that no one can explain where inspiration comes from? They probably think this makes them look like they have some special powers. The reality is that inspiration comes from carrying an emotion, a feeling in your subconscious and needing to exorcise it. For some people, venting an emotion requires breaking dishes. For others it’s crying. I’ve even once seen someone exorcise an emotion by twisting her head all the way around! Others, still, have some other way of doing it. For us, it’s through songwriting. The inspiration comes from the fact that we need to vent our emotions and, usually, don’t even know that we have emotions to vent.

There are many articles on Guitar Noise dealing with inspiration. Here are a few:

• So you want to be a song writer?
• Now that you’re a songwriter…
• The Art Of The Muse: A songwriter’s guide to inspiration
• Let It Flow

For new lessons on this topic check out our songwriting page.

How do I share songwriting credits?

When writing with other people or bringing songs into a band context, there are several ways of sharing the credit.

Usually, credits are split 50-50 between music and lyrics. If you compose the music by yourself, but write the lyrics with someone else, you should get 75% of the credit of the song (50% for the music and 25% for the lyrics). The best thing to do is to come to an understanding before you write the songs. It’s not always possible, but it can cause a lot of problems in the long run if you don’t. I’ve seen the case of a band on the verge of signing a record deal. The guitarist was solely credited for the prominent track on the album although the lyrics and part of the music had been redone by the singer. During the negotiations stage, the guitarist “lent” the song to another rising singer. This caused such a feud between the guitarist and the singer that the band broke up instead of signing a contract. It wasn’t too smart of the guitarist to do this, if you ask me. But that situation could have been avoided from the start.

You can always come to other agreements, as long as everyone is happy. If you look at most of the Beatles songs, you’ll see “written by Lennon-McCartney”. The truth is that they co-wrote only about five percent of those songs. Lennon wrote about 15% by himself and McCartney wrote all the others by himself. They had agreed, from the start, to put both there names on all of their songs regardless of who wrote them in order to simplify matters and to put the good of the band ahead of everything else. It worked fine for them, they never had any disagreements over this.

The first thing you want to do is familiarize yourself with your country’s copyright law. You don’t need to study it for hours or learn it by heart, just get the gist of it. Then you’ll want to look up other organizations that are in place to help songwriters.

Check out the articles Copyright (Not the Right to Copy), Copyrights Revisited and Copyright Protection.

For new lessons on this topic keep an eye on our copyright for songwriters page.

This answer can be edited and improved by you on the Guitar Noise Wiki. Go to Songwriting credits and select edit to make improvements.

Why should I protect my songs?

There are only a limited amount of notes and chords. Nothing you can think of has never been done.

So, maybe this song you just wrote will be written by somebody else tomorrow. I’ve seen it happen to myself. A song I never protected came out a couple of years later by somebody else. The lyrics are different, but tell a very similar story (the melody is appropriate for this theme, so it’s not very surprising). Musically, it’s almost identical. Enough so that if I recorded it, I would be sued, even though I did write it before they did. I would also lose because I didn’t protect the song at the time and cannot prove that I wrote it first.

Of course, even if I had protected it, I could not sue them either, because there is no way they could have heard my song as I never performed it for anyone.

Some people steal songs. It’s unfortunate, but some people are dishonest. Others will steal a song without realizing it. Take the case of George Harrison. On his first solo album was a song that’s become a classic: My Sweet Lord. However, that song was plagiarized from a sixties song called He’s so fine. In court, Harrison admitted to stealing it, but without realizing he did it. I won’t go in to the details of the case as it’s still not wholly resolved and it’s very long, but you can read the details on The “My Sweet Lord”/”He’s So Fine” Plagarism Suit page. So if an ex-Beatle can do it, anyone can.

For anyone who writes songs protecting them is absolutely necessary. You should find out how to avoid stealing from others and keep others stealing from you. Check out the articles Copyright (Not the Right to Copy), Copyrights Revisited and Copyright Protection.

For new lessons on this topic keep an eye on our copyright for songwriters page.

This answer can be edited and improved by you on the Guitar Noise Wiki. Go to Copyrighting songs and select edit to make improvements.

What is the best way to get a demo heard?

I’ve read articles that say most major labels toss demos into a pile of trash with 1,000 others they are equally interested in. Is there any sure way to avoid this without having to buy a book with a list of labels (major and independent) accepting demos, or better yet is there something on the web you know of perhaps?

Unfortunately, there are no sure-fire ways of avoiding not being listened to or being “tableted” by the record company execs. One thing you could do, though, that would improve your chances is to find an agent. These people are usually better connected and have a better chance of getting your demo listened to by the right people.

Your best resource, in my opinion, would be a book store. They usually carry a yearly guide of who does what in the business. Go to a bookstore and ask a sales person exactly what you need and they should have that resource. Make sure you get the most recent edition, lots of people move or change places. People get fired and resigned. Execs don’t like receiving mail addressed to their predecessors.

If you are interested in demos, how to record them and what to do with them check out our series of lessons including Recording Part 1: Why Do It?, Recording Part 2: Building a Digital Studio, and Submitting Demos. Songwriters and musicians can also look for more help in Guitar Noise’s Songwriting and Copyrights Forum.

This answer can be edited and improved by you on the Guitar Noise Wiki. Go to demos and select edit to make improvements.

How can I make it?

Start dreaming, but never let go of the dream. Especially during the hard times. You hear about so many people who’ve tried to make it but failed. The truth is that not very many people have tried to make it and failed. There are some, obviously, but not many. Most people get discouraged once they see the work involved. Once their band breaks up and they realize they have to start all over again, that’s it. That’s when you start separating the men from the boys. Or the women from the girls. Go on to the next band and the next. If you knock on twenty record company doors with your demo and they all reject it, don’t get deflated. Most people do. What you need to do is write and record more songs and do it all over again.

Don’t assume that they’re fools who wouldn’t recognize a good demo if it hit them in the face. Assume that they’re fools who wouldn’t recognize a good demo if it hit them in the face, but come up with something even better anyway.

Check out the article Inflating the Ego for more tips on the required attitude for “making it.” Also, a good place to find where to start or go next is the website Music Careers.

Am I too old to make it?

To answer your question, if you are twenty-six you have plenty of opportunity to make it. Then again you will always have opportunity to make it. However, you will need to better define “make it”. Are you talking about the music or the money? If you play great music that is loved by many, but can’t support yourself solely on the proceeds is that success or failure?

Remember this quote (by Dr. Wayne Dyer) from a past newsletter: There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there’s only a scarcity of resolve to make it happen.

Check out the rest of the answer Am I too old to make it?

The “why” behind this approach isn’t too hard to fathom. When I learned to play guitar, my motivation was to play as often as possible and with as many people as possible, so I learned what I needed to learn to play songs. First thing to learn was chords and keeping rhythm so that I could strum along while other people sang or while other instruments played lead. Then I branched out to more complicated chords and strumming patterns and set out to learn more about my instrument so that I could add bass lines, riffs, arpeggios, different chord voicings, or whatever it took to make the song sound its best regardless of whether I was playing it with a single guitar or with a dozen other musicians.

To paraphrase Guitar Noise Forum Moderator Wes Inman, people come to hear you play songs. They don’t come to hear you play scales (unless it’s on a tutorial DVD or YouTube!). This is an important thing to keep in mind when taking up the guitar or re-evaluating your progress. Of course, if all you’re interested in is creating music that will never be heard by someone other than yourself, then you can do what you’d like. But when someone asks you to “play something,” chances are likely that they are expecting to hear a song.

And as I’ve mentioned in a number of the songwriting articles here at Guitar Noise, I started writing songs in earnest very shortly after taking up the guitar. Part of it was simply the whole overwhelming euphoria of discovering a new instrument. And part of it was also a bit of learning on my part. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say it was part of learning to learn.

Seemingly another lifetime ago, if you can remember that far back (although I have to say I truly don’t remember that far back, so you may not want to take my word for it!), we were born not knowing how to read. So somewhere along the way, you were taught the alphabet and from that alphabet you learned words. And then from those words you learned how to read sentences, which became paragraphs and pages and books.

Creative writing was often a part of this learning process. After learning words and seeing how they were used in sentences, you probably were encouraged to write your own sentences. Some of your early prose may have been succinct and possibly exemplary (“See Jane play guitar.”), some of it may have left your readers scratching their heads (“Blue dogs fly south.”). These are steps we all took and still take today.

There’s no reason that this path of learning can’t help you with music as well. We sing songs and play songs all the time, so why not take a moment to figure out exactly what we’re doing. You can make any analysis of song structure as simple or as complicated as you wish, but it’s still a good thing to be able to identify a song in terms of its anatomy. One of our oldest columns here at Guitar Noise, Unearthing The Structure, can help get you started. Even the simplest of blues songs tend to follow specific patterns in terms of measures and chord progressions. And that’s precisely the thing you want to know.

Chord progressions are often the focus when it comes to learning songs. When we start out playing, we’re usually worried about making the chord changes in the first place and it is a while before we start seeing that certain chords seem to be linked together.

Before long, you might even get to the point where you can anticipate what chord is going to follow which one as you’re playing. While chord progressions can (and do) vary wildly, most times they follow very logical patterns. Our article, A Before E (except after C) might help take some of the mystique out of the seeming wizardry of chord progressions.

More important and helpful than any article, though, is simply listening to songs with a critical ear towards piecing together a song’s structure. Then going a step further and listening for chord progressions. Start with songs you already know and that you already have the chords for. This is the sort of practicing that you can do almost any time at all and it can pay off very quickly when it comes to trying to figure out songs from recordings.

Now that you’ve a handle on song structure, try your hand at writing some chord progressions on your own. You don’t have to put together a whole song with both music and lyrics (although many people find it helpful to do so). Simply creating chord patterns over specific rhythmic changes is an excellent way to work your way through your own personal trouble spots. You’re having the devil of a time going from G to F? Well, you can find a song (actually thousands of them) that has a lot of these changes, or you can make up one yourself! Need more practice switching from open position chords to barre chords? Write yourself a song that meets your personal needs. How about Dm (open position – XX0231) to F (barre – 133211) to Bb (barre – 668766) to C (open – X32010) with four beats for each chord?

You might think it’s weird to put all this effort to create a song simply to work out something as basic as changing chords. And you’re right – most people might just practice making the chord changes until they’ve got it down. But when you’re making the changes because it’s your song, there’s a little more at stake. Silly as it sounds, it becomes personal. You want to know that you can play your song for someone and you will hopefully put in an even more focused effort than usual.

Songwriting gets even more personal as you progress with your learning. Songs that may have started out as exercises, such as we discussed at the end of the last section, will then have to evolve as you improve your guitar skills. You’ll find yourself taking all the little techniques you’re picking up and putting them front and center into your songwriting.

In addition to chord changes, you can create song based on rhythms or riffs (which, when you think of it, serve as the foundation for tons of songs of all genres), or even work out songs to help you practice specific techniques such as walking bass lines or hammer-ons and pull-offs.

You can also delve into songwritng as a means to expand your chord vocabulary, both in terms of the chords themselves and of the voicing you may choose to use for said chord. Suppose you have written a simple song, one that goes from A to D to E and then back to A, all in open position. One thing you might try to do then is to work out how to play your song with all barre chords further up the neck. An obvious choice would be trying chords centered on the fifth and seventh frets, using A (557655), D (557775) and E (997779). But now go a step or two further in your thinking, embellishing the chords a bit by using those barre chord positions and combining them with your open strings to create new sounds. So now your A, D and E might become Aadd9 (X07600), Dadd9 (XX0770) and E7 (076700). For more information on this sort of idea, check out Multiple Personality Disorders.

The possibilities of what learning material you can turn into a workable song are, needless to say, limited only by your desire to learn. If you find yourself on a finger picking binge, then why not work up a song that employs a number of patterns so that you’ll have to work at being able to switch from one to another on a dime (much like Paul Simon’s version of Scarborough Fair)? If you’re experimenting with the tone settings of your amplifier, try writing a song that plays well in a particular setting you like. Many a song has certainly started that way!

I hope you’ve enjoyed our little look at how songwriting can benefit you as you learn more and more about your instrument. In case you didn’t know, we have four terrific Forum pages where you can either take part in writing assignments or simply post your songs (or songs in progress) and get feedback from your peers. They are, in no particular order:

• The Guitar Noise Songwriting Club is where you’ll find people posting original songs, mostly in lyric content, but lately more and more are submitting complete words and music, along with links where you can hear the songs online.
• The Sunday Songwriters Group (or “SSG”) is an assignment-oriented writing workshop focusing on the lyric aspect of songs. Each Sunday a new assignment is posted and anyone is welcome to submit a song lyric based on that week’s particular assignment. Currently in its sixth year, all the past assignments are also listed, so you can either join in on the current week or take an old assignment and jump in there.
• Hear Here offers a potpourri of music, from beginners demonstrating their progress to more seasoned players offering their latest recordings. Both original material and cover songs are bound to turn up
• The Sunday Composers Workshop is the latest addition to the Guitar Noise Forums. Here the focus is on the music aspect of songs. Assignments can range from creating a short melody to creating a guitar part for a song based on a rhythm track to reformatting the time-honored twelve bar blues formula.

Until next time, and as always,

Peace

However, you will need to better define “make it”.

There are many questions you need to ask yourself.

Do you just want to play as your sole means of financial security?

Would you consider teaching? Maybe a part time job too?

The answers to those little questions make a big difference.

Are you willing to treat playing as a job?

It won’t be a hobby anymore. You will need to formalize what you do. You need to put aside certain hours every day for writing music, real practice, band practice, PR, calling people, arranging gigs, collecting past due money, negotiating contracts, writing checks for posters, buttons, shirts, arranging travel, booking hotel rooms, etc.

Are you ready to play when you don’t want to? Don’t feel well? Are tired? Burnt out?

It’s not glamorous. Is that what you mean by make it?

But wait there is more.

Are you talking about the music or the money? If you play great music that is loved by many, but can’t support yourself solely on the proceeds is that success or failure?

See the problem is defining the question. You’ll see this quandary often in business and science and ethics classes and well, everywhere. If you don’t know the question, you won’t know how to get to the answer. A business wants to grow and be profitable. Is acceptable growth 2% or 20%? Is $10,000 of profit the goal or $1,000,000? Is making it living in a small apartment and driving a used car or do you want a big house and a new car? See what I mean?

So let me help you define the question. Don’t call it making it.

Personally I’d call it four things.

1. What do I love to do?
2. What am I willing to do to do the thing I love to do?
3. Where is the balance?
4. Will I learn to recognize and appreciate what I have when I have it?

Once you know the answers to those four go and do some homework. Get a book from the library on managing a band so you can see what goes on. Talk to people in the business. Do some soul searching.

Then again, maybe you shouldn’t ask me because I have already made it.

I teach and work and play out. Sometimes I play in front of a hundred or so people. That’s a big crowd for me. Sometimes I play in front of ten, a small crowd. I enjoy both equally. I play around campfires, with strangers, with beginners and experts. I play for kids in school and the occasional church service. I met a homeless guy playing on a street corner near where I work. I asked if he minded if I join in. Whenever I find someone to share music with I know I’ve made it.

I enjoy teaching guitar. When I get a student past a hurdle or they master a new song, I know I’ve made it.

I also enjoy my work. My co-workers want to know where I’m playing and they show up and support me. When people show up like that you get all warm and fuzzy and you know you’ve made it.

I have a bunch of the most wonderful and amazing friends. You know I’ve only met them a dozen times, but I think of them as some of my oldest and dearest friends. I play guitar with them a couple of times every year, wherever they are come hell or high water. Playing with these friends is more important to me than playing in front of a stadium full of people. Yep, once again I made it.

I’m a perpetual beginner guitarist. I always will be no matter my level of technical proficiency. Whenever I learn something new I know I’ve made it.

Just about anywhere in the world I could email someone and tell them I’m bringing my guitar and I’d not only have a friend to jam with, but probably a place to stay too. Uh-huh, I made it.

I’ve had a song written about me. I’ve got a musical nickname. I’ve got my picture hanging in a basement in Chicago. I’ve made it baby.

You’ve probably guessed that for me the most important question is the fourth one. Once you’ve got that one you really have made it.

And finally, just in case I got you down, remember this quote (by Dr. Wayne Dyer) from a past newsletter:

There is no scarcity of opportunity to make a living at what you love; there’s only a scarcity of resolve to make it happen.

Some of the amusing pieces we’ve done have involved the re-use of certain characters and voices.

No, we didn’t do Mr Angry or Sid the Manager. Those are the creations of another bunch at the BBC.

Nevertheless, someone out there might remember a song with the hook:

Taramasalata, fried tomat-ah
An’ that’s before me tea.

That was mine.

So what has this got to do with anything and why am I writing this article? Well, first of all, I’ve been politely asked to do it (here’s the article you asked me to do, Alan!).

Secondly, seeing as it would be pertinent to this site’s ethos of offering crucial tips and guidance to aspiring musicians and songwriters (or perhaps even radio jingle writers), I’m going to discuss why I think a fair few of our jingles were successful (I’ll spare myself the task of dissecting any that weren’t!) even though, as you can imagine, we didn’t sit about discussing such things at the time.

Thirdly, I’ll attempt to answer a question I get asked now and again down the pub, that is, “How did you get to do jingles for Steve Wright?” Or, in other words, how do you get your foot in the door? An answer to that one would be useful, wouldn’t it?

Well, dealing with that last question first, I have to say that I had nothing to do with the initial paperwork that went on (apart from filling in the PRS forms!), so I can’t throw light upon that side of the business.

However, I remember clearly what happened at the start. I remember, for instance, how it could have been any one of us from the outset who would’ve been putting their stuff down on the first day of recording.

Personally I managed to get my oar in early as, although my ideas were ridiculous (and therefore potentially ear-catching for radio listeners), I’d been carefully honing them overnight with much care and attention to detail before going in the studio the following morning to perform them in front of the others. That meticulous and ridiculous working ethic has enabled us, I think, to maintain a steady line of jingles being used on the programme over the years.

So then, what is it about these jingles of ours that the Beeb have liked? Well, they’ve been carefully made and…

Ok, then – they’ve made people laugh!

For instance:

CHILD’S VOICE (steeped in reverb, no musical backing):

I think that… Steve Wright is like a fluffy bunny rabbit with pointy ears and… the reason why he’s so poplee-urrr is cos he’s on the radio.

As soon as my friend Arthur (a grown man who, in this case, was impersonating a child – “Amusing Element No.1″) delivered this on the mic in the studio, we were convinced it would be used on the show. We didn’t ask ourselves why at the time but, with the benefit of hindsight, here are some points that I think were significant during the process.

Well, there was the context of the thing to consider.

As well as it is silly for a man to be talking like a little girl on the radio, we could already imagine how the coolest pop record of the day would be followed on the show by something which, in its entirety, sounded peculiar (a continuation of “Amusing Element No.1″).

Then there’s Arthur’s delivery itself, which included a pause between “that” and “Steve” then later between “and” and the silly climax of the sentence. These pauses were just enough to induce suspenseful silence over the airwaves while not being enough to slow things up completely.

Then there’s Verbal stumbles within a slickly delivered show, Amusing Element No.2.

As a subsidiary to our previous point about delivery, we have the fact that the speaker has a broad South West England accent (somewhat of a novelty on BBC Radio in 1989-1992 when it was broadcast) which is further exaggerated by the mispronunciation of “popular” as “poplee-urrr” (Amusing Element No.3).

The popularity of “poplee-urr” enabled us to repeat the joke in further sequels to the jingle with words like “Dracli-urrr” and “binoclee-urrrrs.”

Then, of course, while the prominent namecheck of “Steve Wright” is important, it’s the comparison of the man with a fluffy bunny rabbit (Amusing Element No.4) which no doubt surprises the listener. Also, the clarification of the image is further reinforced by the rabbit itself having “pointy ears” (all together, “uh?”). So, halfway into the jingle, a listener is no doubt rather curious about where this odd intrusion to the programme is going next.

Finally, for its punchline, the whole jingle (whose point is to serve as a namecheck for the DJ) proves to be a rather poor addition to anyone’s library of knowledge, ie, the person speaking seems to think it’s worth telling us that Steve Wright is popular because he’s on the radio. Pointlessness on such a high profile stage is amusing (Amusing Element No.5).

So, the point is -

There are at least five elements that seemed to make this jingle work and helped to persuade Steve Wright and the BBC to use it on their programme.

Context, delivery, accent, surprise and pointlessness.

Of course, it would be most inappropriate to embark upon being creative while armed with a clipboard and a checklist of qualities to attain. But, certainly after making one of these things, there is a part of the brain that, at the speed of light (or however fast a thought can travel), mentally ticks off such necessary qualities before hereby declaring it “a wrap,” something like:

Is it going to work in context?

Is the delivery right?

Is the accent ok?

Is there enough there to surprise and invite further curiosity?

Is there no point whatsoever?

If the answer is a yes to those questions then I know we’re on to something.

About the Author

For further details on Dave and to hear MP3 samples from the album Songbook please visit http://www.flowerbedmusic.com

One of these options is to emulate what others do. See what they do to find out how they think. Discover how their thought process can be blended with your own.

The best way to do this is to find a great songwriter (Paul McCartney, Greg Lake, Bob Dylan) or one you admire but who has a style that is completely at odds with your own.

For example, if you always write using the verse-verse-chorus-verse-chorus, etc. recipe, go to Classic Genesis (the period where Peter Gabriel and Steve Hackett were with the band) and check them out. You won’t find this recipe very often.

Then select a song you’re particularly fond of. Make sure it is well written: a great melody, at least “very good” lyrics and interesting chord changes. Find the sheet music or TAB of the song and get the lyric sheet.

Next, study these. Find the patterns. There will always be patterns, although sometimes you’ll have to look hard to find them. See how they’re used, how they’re repeated, how they are varied. The best way to do this is to actually learn to play the song. Playing it will help you identify the patterns, as it requires your abilities at playing, hence your unconscious mind. It’s important to learn to play it the way it is played on the recording. If the song has a particular strumming pattern, learn to play it the same way in order to keep the same rhythm.

As for the lyrics, all songs start with a particular idea, a line or a few words from which all the rest of the lyrics are derived. This idea is not necessarily and actually rarely at the beginning. See if you can find it. Which words in the song are key to the story being told.

Here are the lyrics to Mad Man Moon from Genesis’ “A Trick of the Tail” album. See if you can find the basic idea of the song. A hint: there is one line that gives away the whole story.

Mad Man Moon (Genesis)
Was it summer when the river ran dry,
Or was it just another dam.
When the evil of a snowflake in June
Could still be a source of relief.
O how I love you, I once cried long ago,
But I was the one who decided to go.
To search beyond the final crest,
Though I’d heard it said just birds could dwell so high.

So I pretended to have wings for my arms
And took off in the air.
I flew to places which the clouds never see,
Too close to the deserts of sand,
Where a thousand mirages, the shepherds of lies
Forced me to land and take a disguise.
I would welcome a horse’s kick to send me back
If I could find a horse not made of sand.

If this desert’s all there’ll ever be
Then tell me what becomes of me.
A fall of rain?
That must have been another of your dreams,
A dream of mad man moon.

Hey man,
I’m the sand man.
And boy have I news for you;
They’re gonna throw you in gaol
And you know they can’t fail
‘Cos sand is thicker than blood.
But a prison in sand
Is a haven in hell,
For a gaol can give you a goal
[and a] goal can find you a role
On a muddy pitch in Newcastle,
Where it rains so much
You can’t wait for a touch
Of sun and sand, sun and sand…

Within the valley of shadowless death
They pray for thunderclouds and rain,
But to the multitude who stand in the rain
Heaven is where the sun shines.
The grass will be greener till the stems turn to brown
And thoughts will fly higher till the earth brings them down.

Forever caught in desert lands one has to learn
To disbelieve the sea.

If this desert’s all there’ll ever be
Then tell me what becomes of me.
A fall of rain?
That must have been another of your dreams,
A dream of mad man moon.

© Genesis

Obviously this is not about a guy who grows wings and ends up in the desert… It’s about a guy who abandonned the woman he loved because he believed he could find a better love somewhere else. The desert and the people who made him land there are just images. But that’s not the point of the song. This is found in the last verse:

Within the valley of shadowless death
They pray for thunderclouds and rain,
But to the multitude who stand in the rain
Heaven is where the sun shines.
The grass will be greener till the stems turn to brown
nd thoughts will fly higher till the earth brings them down.

People are never satisfied with what they have; they want what others have. Those in the valley of shadowless death pray for rain, those who stand in the rain think heaven is where the sun shines.

Yeah but that’s more than a single line. Right. Because what gives the song away is:

O how I love you, I once cried long ago,

This is most certainly the lyrical starting point of the whole song. After saying this, one must suppose that something happened to make him leave. The story is then told after… and before.

Was it summer when the river ran dry,
Or was it just another dam.
When the evil of a snowflake in June
Could still be a source of relief.

The river is the emotion, love. The dam might be some silly fight between the couple. However, the snowflake in June as a source of relief seems to indicate that the relationship was stale to the point where even a bad event brought some kind of motion to the tediousness of the relationship.

And this takes us to the point that people are never satisfied.

By studying any song, even a Celine Dion song, one will find this starting point. Then you follow through the artist’s thought process. In the Genesis example, if you had written these lyrics, you might have automatically jumped to something like “she left”. This would be quite natural, but quite boring. Here it’s the guy who decides to go, but for no good reason.

Now, once you’ve studied the song and that you’re comfortable with it, it’s time to start writing your own version of it. Read carefully, this is one of the rare occasions will I will tell you to plagiarize. But only as an exercise.

Using different chords, play the exact same pattern as in the song you’ve studied. Build your own as a copy of the other song. Then, lyrically, you can come up with a completely different storyline, but use the same thought process as the original. Take however long it takes to do so.

Once you have your completed song and that you have understood the process perfectly, you must do two things. Take your completed song and destroy it. You cannot, may not, must not use it under any circumstances. Anyway, the point was not to come up with something creative, but it was an exercise. Even if you believe it is the best thing you ever wrote, destroy it anyway: you will soon be writing much better material; I’ll explain this in a minute.

The second thing you must do is to forget the original. Never play it again. The reason for this is that as it is now in your baggage of learning, you will unconsciously plagiarize it at some point; you’ve just done it once. And you must never do it again. By forgetting it, you are less likely to plagiarize it again.

What’s important is that the thought process of this other songwriter, his way of writing songs has now become incorporated into your own style. Every once in a while, when you will need it, you will be able to automatically borrow from this person’s style. You won’t be doing it the same way as this person though, you will have adapted it your own style. Which is why I said you will be writing much better things than you did during this exercise.

When writing a song I normally start from the lyrics. In the case of Picking A Flower I felt, after reading the lyric of Picking A Flower (written by Emile Clemens) several times, that it needed a Brazilian rhythm for the first verse. Also I had this idea of using chord changes that were derived from a particular type of harmony, namely, using all (or mostly) minor 7ths. I decided to start with a four-note Bm11 chord. Normally, Bm11 consists of the notes B, D, F#, A and E. Typically the fifth is usually omitted in a four-note voicing, which left me with B, A, D and E.

For some reason I love adding fourths or elevenths for colouring a chord. When tones are added to a basic chord, the resulting chords are called “extensions.” Extensions for Bm could be Bm6, Bm7, Bm9, Bm11, Bm13 etc. For explanations about chord theory, please search on the Guitar Noise site. There’s a mass of information about this and other topics, like the recent article by Tom Serb on this very topic.

I began to sing the first two lines of the lyrics on this chord. For the next two ones I needed a second chord and, as I wanted to let it be a minor chord again, I played all kind of combinations: Bm11 to C#m7, Bm11 to D#m7, Bm11 to Em7, etc. I tried them out chromatically (per half step) and not diatonically.

I soon discovered G#m7 would be my favourite chord to use. I sang different melodic phrases and wrote them all down in standard notation to run through them later on. (TABs or even simply recording them are also effective solutions, of course). I followed the same procedure for the second verse.

It was now time for the third verse, which expressed another content and feeling. In my mind, I heard the introduction of a new rhythmic accompanying pattern. I also moved down a half step to Bbm7 to emphasis this different content, thus playing in a new key. This concept is called a modulation, or change in key. Here we modulate from a Bm key to a Bbm key. I started humming again and soon I discovered that Abm7 would work fine to follow the Bbm7.

I like to use pedal notes, which involves the repetition of a single note, or series of notes throughout a lick or chord progression, so the Abm7 chord became Abm7/Bb (or B/Bb) This voicing is also called a “slash chord.” A slash chord is a chord with a bass note other than the root . For instance, C/B is a C major chord, but with B as its bass note instead of C. You’d play it with the fingering X22010.

Being stubborn, I decided my next chord would be a minor 7 th -related chord again. I was already descending scale-wise, so why not proceed in this manner. This thought led to Gm7. But humming the melody, I used a C# which is the b5 in the Gm scale. A Gm7 with a flattened fifth is called Gm7b5. A chord that has a b5,#5,b9 or #9 added is called an “altered chord.”

The most difficult part was now to find a solution for the last line of the lyric. I felt I shouldn’t use a chord, but instead employ a melodic line being executed with the melody. I started searching out all sorts of possibilities and finally got to a convenient intervallic phrase mixing fifths and fourths.

Then it was “scrapping time.” This is when I run through all the ideas I had written down thus far and took the lines that touched me the most, deleting and adding notes. And wrote the lead sheet out on my Finale software program.

The next day I did the same process of polishing again and then decided to keep the melodic and harmonic development. With my performing group, we decided to spice the song with some solos of the bass, guitar and voice.

Summary:

In this song I used the concepts of using:

1. Chord changes derived from the same type of harmony
2. Chord extensions
3. Slash chords
4. Pedal notes
5. Modulation
6. Scale-wise chord movement
7. Different accompaniment patterns
8. Improvisational section
9. Voice and guitar playing identical lines

So here’s the chord progression of

Picking A Flower (lyrics : Emile Clemens/music : Gilbert Isbin ©

The song’s form is AAB. This is one of the most commonly used forms in both jazz and popular music. The B section is also known as the bridge.

Bibliography: Links, notes and reviews

Listen to the song and read reviews at Gilbert Isbin’s website. Buy the Cd online at Guitar 9.

The song Picking A Flower was the January winner in the International Songwriting Contest “Song of the Year” in the category “jazz/world/instrumental. The 1 st place winner in each category will go on to compete against the other 1 st place monthly winners in their respective category at the end of the year for the Grand Prize.

Song of the Year review of ‘PICKING A FLOWER’

LYRICS: The lyrics on this jazz number are superb. Excellent word usage, styling, tempo, and complexity. Great job.

MUSIC: The vocals are awesome! The guitar, baseline, and percussion are wonderful on their own and blend wonderfully!

MELODIES: The melodies were absolutely wonderful! Pure jazz riffs with a perfect flow!

STRUCTURE: I cannot say anything about the structure of this song. The chord progressions are great. The musical elements come together and blend well, harmonizing fluidly. Tempo, flow, levels, breaks, changeups…everything is as it should. Excellent!

MARKETABILITY: This is a jazz work of art that in said genre should be a dominating song. I thoroughly hope to see this song on the market and on the airwaves soon.

EMOTIONAL RESPONSE: Coming from a virgin jazz enthusiast, I must say that this song grabs me in every way, making me want to dance, sing along, tap my toes, and just feel the music!

Words to the wise from the wise. What was the meaning of that line? Have you ever looked at your lyrics and wondered what exactly it was that you meant? I’m not talking about writing a song using formulas and trying to make it commercially acceptable, I mean writing artistically.

If you’re anything like me, when you start writing you fall into a sort of second state. This is quite common for artists, whatever art they do. If you think of people like Beethoven, Da Vinci, Mozart or too many others to mention, and who created without the assistance of drugs or alcohol, it’s surprising how much, through their art, they had an understanding of the world around them. Yet, in their personal lives, this is often not the case.

A couple of years ago I was going through some old lyrics and in one of the songs I went, “Oh, that’s what I meant!” I don’t remember the exact details, but I had written about a particular situation that I was faced with only fifteen years later. Meaning that at the time I was writing the song, I understood how to deal with that particular situation. When it happened for real, I didn’t know how to deal with it.

Often I’ll look at songs I wrote and don’t understand how it is I did write them. I have a hazy memory of writing them, but that’s it. I’m sure I couldn’t write the same song again if I wanted to. But I do know I wrote them, however. Usually, these songs are among my best.

But let me give you a more concrete example about understanding what you just wrote. Here is a song I recently wrote and call “Jasmine Scents”. You can click here for a MIDI of the song or the GuitarPro 4 file. The MIDI is just an export of the GuitarPro file. Please understand that this version is meant for demo purposes only. It contains the basic guitar, piano, hammond organ, bass, drums and vocal tracks. These are used to illustrate where the tempo changes, key changes, punches, etc. go, and where each instrument belongs (not all instruments are present throughout the piece). The drum track is simply an indication of the kind of drum patterns I’m looking for during each section. The vocal track is the one that sounds more or less like a synthesized flute (the MIDI instrument is “Lead 6 (voice)”). This track is not quite precise, the first chorus should be, then it’s more or less a cut and paste. Basically you’ll know where each verse starts and by using just a little imagination, you’ll be able to figure it out. The lyrics are below.

Jasmine scents
A J Charron

Up and down this crazy sea
Wasting all my energy
As I watch the sun comes out
A mystic call for remedy

All around me every day
Talking crazy people talk
Borrowing my sanity
Abandoning my right to be

Wheel goes ’round beyond my grasp
Spinning yarns of fantasy
Calling out to catch the creep
Burrowing within my reach

Jasmine scents
The tea leaves dried
I wait for you
By the begging moon

A mandolin
Plays a cheerful tune
Like a jest
Toward my silly mood

The orchestra
Begins at last
The maestro nods
I finally get that solo right

Through the glow
I call a name
The audience
Acclaims my feat

The music stops
The players rest
The crowd goes wild
I take a bow

The laughter starts
I turn around
It follows through
My final breaths of sanity

© A J Charron, 2003

This song is about an artist who has attained perfection, leaving everything else meaningless. And no, it’s not autobiographical.

The crazy sea simply means refers to daily life. Watching the sun come out means going through a sleepless night. I still don’t know what mystic call for remedy means. The second verse is pretty much straightforward: people talk and, to the character of the story, don’t make much sense. They are lost in their day to day lives which, to him, are meaningless

The image of the wheel going round, I know from experience, to me is a reference to the passage of time; I somehow associate time to a wheel going round. The yarns of fantasy means adding more to the previous silliness. Things happen to him which feel unreal as compared to that perfect moment in time.

We’ll skip the next verse. The final verses refer to a live performance where the character loses his sanity. The performance is absolutely perfect (I finally get that solo right and The audience acclaims my feat and the crowd goes wild/I take a bow).

It’s all about finally attaining perfection and knowing it probably won’t happen again, therefore, all the day to day stress is worthless, everything is worthless compared to this one moment in time. It may not be obvious, but everything above the verse that starts with Jasmine scents is in the present, while everything else is in the past.

This verse is the key to the song:

Jasmine scents
The tea leaves dried
I wait for you
By the begging moon

After I wrote this, I had no idea what I meant by it; it just sounded good. When I wrote the words Jasmine scents I immediately copied them to the top of the sheet, knowing this would be the title of the song as it is the key to the song. The following line about the tea leaves made even less sense.

After a while, I finally figured it out. I don’t believe in clairvoyants, but they made this whole image clear. From what I gather, to read the future in tea leaves, you place the tea leaves in hot water, then have the person who’s future you will read take a few sips. If the tea leaves are dry, then this implies that all the water has evaporated from both the cup and the leaves, therefore, that the reading was made a long time before; the passage of time. Hence, the moment of perfection, mentioned later had been predicted. Not necessarily by a gypsy fortune teller, but maybe by some other artist who knew that this character was bound to achieve perfection at some point due to his talent.

Then, Jasmine scents makes a lot of sense. It’s a known fact that our sense of smell is the one that is closest to our memory. Certain smells trigger certain memories. Which is why you sometimes wonder why you’ve suddenly thought of something that happened twenty years ago. The best way to illustrate this is, if you haven’t been in school for years, to step into an elementary school. You nose is instantly assaulted by the smell of sweat from hundreds of kids blended with the smell of industrial cleaners. Immediately your brain is swarming with memories of childhood events. Things you thought forgotten for ever. There are so many of them that at first you find it hard to think clearly. I’ve always wondered how teachers manage it. They are probably people who had happy childhoods.

In this song, the scent of jasmine was present, for whatever reason, at the moment the prediction was made. Over time the prediction, probably not taken seriously, was forgotten. Now that the performer is living a life in which he finds everything and everyone meaningless and wonders why, the smell of jasmine triggers the memory of the prediction, which brings him to the event, the perfect performance, and explains his current predicament. I still don’t know what I meant by I wait for you/By the begging moon, except that at the time, it seemed extremely important.

OK, so it’s taking the long way about. However, I wasn’t consciously in control of what I was writing at the time.

All this to say that you’re often faced with lyrics you’ve written and which don’t seem to make much sense. We sometimes have the reflex to toss them out and replace them with something simpler. I suggest you don’t do this. Instead, look into the symbolism of what you’ve written. Try associating your strange lyrics with things that don’t seem related. Sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes you’re simply dealing with fillers: words that are needed in order to fit the rhythm of the song. However, most of the time you’re subconscious mind has taken over and inserted images which, to it, at least, makes sense. It’s left to you to decipher them. And this can take years.

The best way to know if this is what you’re dealing with is to “feel” the lyrics. Do they seem right even if you can’t explain why? If that’s the case, then they probably are right. If they just seem like meaningless fillers, then that’s probably what they are.

As you grow more into your art, you see the reality of the business behind everything and you realize how the game is played. That’s when cynicism tends to take over. Nevertheless, we tend to remain naive even when we’re being rational.

I’d like to mention though that naivete should not be mixed up with foolishness. Some artists have had long careers without making money and are offered the “big” contract, the one that will bring them money and legions of fans. These people know it’s not so, but their naive side tells them that it must be true, hence they will jump in. Often they will regret doing so.

Eric Clapton’s jump into commercial rock is probably due to naivete. But for someone like Britney Spears, she dove right into the big thing believing everything she was fed even when she saw what was going on behind the scenes. That’s foolishness. Understand the difference?

I’ve seen an “artist” lately who won a highly publicized TV contest and is about to release his debut album. Two weeks before the release date, the album was available on the Internet for free download. In an interview, he was crying, literally crying over the situation.

At this point, the only people who could have uploaded the album are the folks at his label or his management. Why? To create even more anticipation for the album, get an early buzz going on and selling more albums. People who wouldn’t have bought the album and saw him crying in the interview will go out and buy the album. But this “artist” surely doesn’t know that either the label or his management (or both) are responsible for this. This happens, coincidentally, at a time when a huge campaign against Internet downloading is going strong.

But in more practical senses, naivete has its place in our lives as artists. It’s actually even very important.

Look at any artist who decides to record and release an album. The reality of the situation is:

• it costs money which most artists don’t have
• it takes a lot of time
• it’s a lot of work. Much more work than fun
• there’s very little output for it: very few labels will be interested in carrying it
• with the sheer amount of music out there, there’s very little chance of people hearing it
• the odds of success, even limited are very small
• promotion of it will be more work than you can even imagine

On the upside:

• you’re doing something you really like
• it’s a worthwhile experience

But every artist who records an album, although he knows all this, does not believe it. There’s that little persistent voice that says this album will break new ground and be successful. It’s ridiculously naive, yet there it is. Should you listen to it? Of course you should. Because some people who record an album by themselves become successful. It’s that simple. If you don’t listen to your little voice, you’ll never make it.

Any artist who has attempted to make it in the business understands the reality of the situation. You go out and play live every night, just like 200 other bands in your market and you have trouble drawing a crowd. It’s tough to hold your band together because some of the guys get tired of it all and drop out. People from the business see you play and don’t like your songs and/or your image.

Most people drop out. Only a rare few persist. All of these, without exception, eventually make it. Some call them stubborn, some say they are driven. In reality, it’s largely due to naivete. They simply listen to that voice that says “it’s coming”.

Naivete is also useful for other things. As a songwriter, you must evolve. If you don’t, you’ll spend your life rewriting the same song.

Suppose you’re a country artist. You’ve heard jazz before; you like some of it and simply flip over a few select pieces. Suppose you have no formal training and cannot read music. Suppose you’re not a particularly gifted musician. Logically, you would think that there is no way you can ever write a jazz piece. Nevertheless, you try. And succeed. Why? Because even if you think you can do it, you don’t really believe it. That little voice is there again saying that if somebody else did it, surely you can.

So, listen to the voice and encourage it. Next time you have an idea that’s out to lunch; composing a symphony, recording an album, whatever, and that all your sense are telling you you’re not qualified to do it, encourage that voice to talk to you. And try.

Let me also add that this article is going to lean a bit more toward “mainstream” song writing. By “mainstream,” I mean those folk, rock, country and pop songs that tend to reach a broad audience. You might be tempted to say “commercial” (which isn’t a bad word if you are trying to sell your songs), but since I’m much more concerned about the quality of your lyrics than your bank account, I think that “mainstream” is the better term.

There are things that make songs popular, things that make songs stick in your head. What I’d like to explore with you are the lyrical aspects of this. We’ll also go over some techniques we’ve used over this past spring and summer on the Sunday Songwriters’ Group forum page, which have produced some excellent results for those participants who used them.

Remember too, that these are all suggestions and tips and not rules. There will always be an instance where I’ll say something and you’ll point out some song that doesn’t fit my point. That’s okay. These tips are simply here to add to your skills should you wish to develop further as a songwriter.

Identify with your listener and allow your listener to identify with you

1. Write with common language. “Assimilate” may be exactly what you mean, but it isn’t what you would say. You want to write from your own personal experience, in the language that belongs to that experience.

2. Make your central character likeable. There aren’t too many Charles Manson or Ted Bundy songs out there you know. What you want is empathy.

3. Have some emotional content. A lyric that talks about the content of your lunch bag isn’t going to be very popular.

The song as a piece of drama

4. You need to identify the conflict early in the song. Pull the listener in early.

5. You need to resolve the conflict late in the song. Don’t let the listener leave too soon.

6. Try to think of your lyric as setting up a scene in a camera’s viewfinder. You need to think about what is in this scene. Is that tree branch in the way? Is it in focus? Did the props person put in too much stuff? Are the costumes ok? Is there too much shadow or vagueness? Too much light?

7. Continuing with the camera idea, ask yourself this: is my song a photograph or a movie? Both approaches have merit. Composition, or how you present your lyrics, is key and you want to start off either approach with a good set of images.

8. An excellent idea at any stage of the songwriting process is to completely forget about lyrics and simply work on imagery. Write down strong, striking images. Write down as many as you can think of. Go out and search for some – look out your window, take a walk or a drive, watch a movie, read a book, get on the computer and do a search on your favorite search engine. The possibilities, pardon the cliché, are limitless. Make a notebook of your images. Doodle around them, draw lines connecting one to another, make connections between seemingly unrelated imagery. Most important – say them aloud! Get the feel of the aural power of your images. This may, at one point, help you decide on what type of music best suits your words.

9. Use imagery to replace narrative. Instead of saying “It’s six in the morning,” make yourself a list of things that would show someone that it is 6 AM rather than simply telling them that. Write about taking a shower, about smelling the unmistakable bittersweet aroma of freshly brewed coffee, about trying to remember exactly who and where you are, not to mention the name of the person sleeping beside you! You can be running late or you can “get your coat and grab your hat…make the bus in seconds flat…” You’ve heard it since your high school English classes, “show don’t tell.” Imagery of this nature turns your song into a motion picture.

10. Let’s get back to the movie making analogy – Think about the end scene of a movie. You know the one, when the camera rises up above the scene on the camera crane. Now look down on your complete scene. Have you finished the picture?

11. And speaking of the scene, do your best to set it within your lyric. Don’t throw away the little details of where. It makes a big difference where you do something. Say you are going out on a date and your date suggests dinner. Does it make any difference to you whether it is Pizza Hut or a private candlelit dinner?

Building Art (a step by step method used in the SSG forums)

12. Start with your title.

13. If you can’t start with your title, start with the lyrical hook, your “catch phrase.”

14. We talked about the plot in the beginners’ article, but as you get more advanced your plots will become more in-depth. In the movie business you’d be creating a scene by scene storyboard. You want to do that for your song. Use pictures or use a flowchart or “an 8″x 10″ glossy photograph with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back”. Do whatever you need to do in order to show the song’s progress.

15. Go for the gusto, write down every ridiculous detail you won’t ever need. You don’t need to fill the entire song with the details you list, but you need to make these characters and situations real. And you never know – it may spark a new idea or clever line. Where are they, when, why, how? What are they wearing, doing, and seeing? How do they look or smell? What were they doing 30 minutes ago?

16. The chorus is not for exposition. Make the chorus short, sweet and to the point. The point of the chorus is housing the hook and perhaps the title.

17. Use the tools available to you. Don’t think you are cheating by using a thesaurus or rhyming dictionary.

18. In Songwriting for Beginners, I said read your lyric out loud and let your own ears edit. You still want to do that. Now though, you need to read out loud to someone else. Check to see that that person reacts the way you planned. Make sure they react the way you planned in the places you planned.

19. Distance yourself from your work when you edit. Try to look at your lyrics from an outsider’s point of view. Sometimes I get so hung up in what I think is clever, I can’t see that it has no meaning to an outsider.

20. Prioritize your lyric work. Here are the parts of a lyric listed in order of importance:

Title

Chorus

First line

First verse

Verses

21. The first verse is incredibly important. You capture or loose your audience here. What’s the first thing you do when you meet a new person? You introduce yourself. Introduce your characters and conflict first.

The Delicate Balance

22. While it may seem very easy to write a mainstream lyric, it’s actually very hard for most people to do because of one simple reason: You invariably hate what you’ve written! It’s a cliché! Everyone else has written the same thing. If you listen to the songs you like, chances are that there is simplicity and an ease of lyrics that you don’t feel from your own. Why is that? Because you have two seemingly contradictory feelings about it: (1) that it’s a very personal song that the artist has written and (2) that you yourself have a personal relationship with that song. As David wrote in “Finding the Right Words” (which means you can blame this pun on him), the song strikes a chord in you. And if you think about it, I’ll bet that most of your favorite songs do this. You, too, have to develop the gift of paradoxical writing. You want to make your unique personal experience become something that others can both relate to and experience in their own individual ways.

23. Pick a universal meaning for your song. You want as many listeners as possible to identify with your song. An easy way to do this is to think of an old saying and subtly tie your lyric into it. It’s not as hard as you think, since there is an old saying for practically every occasion. Sayings like “Be careful what you wish for. You might just get it”, “Look before you leap”, “The early bird gets the worm” are good examples of the inner meanings of thousands of songs. This meaning doesn’t have to be in the forefront. Let it just be a guide to make sure you are on track throughout your lyric.

24. Go back to our photograph/movie ideas. Think about how you feel when you experienced what you’re writing about. What will be the best way of getting that across? Is it a story? Then you might be better off going with a narrative or “movie” style. Is it more emotional, harder to get a handle on? Then you might opt for the “photograph” and let your images speak for themselves.

25. Remember to trust your audience. As much as you might want them to, it is rare that any song will convey the same exact meaning to everyone who hears it. That’s actually one of the beautiful, exciting things about music.

26. Get as much feedback as you can before you make your final edits. And don’t be discouraged if your song starts taking you on a different direction than you first envisioned. That’s not an unusual occurrence! Sometimes you may find yourself with a much better lyric than you could have ever imagined.

Taking your writing up a level is both harder than it seems and easier than I make it out to be. You have to pay attention to the building blocks. You have to pay attention to detail. You have to be objective about something personal. You have to take the time to craft the components of the lyric into art.

Think about anything that is well made. You can get top of the line stereo equipment to listen to music, or you can get some import knock off. You can get a racing bike or one that looks kinda like it. Can you tell me why on earth you would spend $1000 US on a guitar when you can get brand new guitars on Ebay for $25 US?

It’s a matter of what is your goal? It’s perfectly acceptable to write lyrics that are simply pleasing to you. There is nothing wrong with that at all.

The questions you need to ask yourself are:

1. Why am I writing lyrics?

2. Do I want to write lyrics that work, or do I want to write powerful, meaningful, hand crafted lyrics?

It’s completely up to you. Write well, whichever you choose. And, above all, have fun.

Many songwriters keep a journal to write down ideas and emotions that they can later use as a reference to write songs. While I have never really used this method, it is clearly a good tool to expand your thinking. Every time you have an idea for a new song or a catchy line, write it down. It’s best to keep it organized so you can easily refer back to it later.

An extension to this tip is to keep all your old songs. Keep the music and lyrics every time you decide not to use a song. You may often find a use for it later when your skill has improved. Recently I began reviewing all the songs I wrote and tossed aside. I used a few riffs and reconstructed entirely new songs that were much better than their predecessors.

9.) Take chances.

Originality is key to getting your sound known. In many cases, an original sound may be more important than technical talent. It sticks in the audiences’ head so they can later more readily recall you. Think about all the copycat bands you hear on the radio. Do you really remember their names? A few days ago I was listening to internet radio, where they label all the songs with their respective band names. There were songs I listened to billions of times but thought the band was another band that happened to sound the same. Influences should be a source of inspiration rather than a mold.

8.) Produce the song in your head.

Create an overview of the song. While this may not be permanent, having a guideline will give you the “big picture” of your song. Make transitions between sections seamless and smooth. Use silence to build tension. Does your song build continuously, or does the energy level drop and rise sporadically?

Try and keep the song relatively structured. Disorganization causes confusion to the listener. They should be able to feel when a verse is going to end and when the chorus comes in. Transitional segments may be needed to alleviate any abrupt jumps from verse to chorus.

Here is what many wish not to hear. A commercial, “hit” song is about 3:30 min. to 4:30 min. in length. It goes from verse to choruses rather quickly. Another verse and chorus, a bridge, a solo, and finally another chorus or two follows it. This stenciled approach to writing leaves little to the imagination. However, there is a reason why this structure is so effective. The chorus is usually what sticks in the heads of listeners. Having simple verses and many choruses makes the song slightly more memorable, at least in the marketing sense. If you don’t want to follow this outline, use some of the ideas to your advantage. We learned that the chorus is the center of the song. Write soaring and emotive choruses that rile up the emotions. Make it easy to sing along so the listener can feel attached to the song.

7.) Listen to “well written” songs in your genre.

Find some hit songs that fit your style and examine what it is that makes them a “hit.” What is the rhyme scheme (or does it even rhyme)? How are the choruses different from the verses? As you write more songs, you will start to listen to other songs more critically. You will be able to examine every instrument and its role in the song. You will even be able to foretell song lyrics before you hear them, because certain words and so commonly used. As a songwriter, you want the lyrics to be flowing and fitting, but not too predictable.

Similarly, you may want to listen to songs generally regarded as unsuccessful. What makes these songs less of a “hit” than the popular songs?

6.) Build your world and stick to it.

It’s easy to get carried away in the songwriting process and ultimately forget what the song was originally about. When you write, try and envision a scene or moment that you are trying to capture. Think about the emotions you want to portray. Use several themes rather than one. For example, “bittersweet” or “calm and happy” are both better than just “happy.” Once you have a scene in mind, write specifically to build that scene. Don’t go off on tangents and write about other emotions that may be contradicting to the ones you’ve chosen. For example, if you’re writing an upbeat song about love, it may be unwise to toss in a sad verse that contradicts the overall mood and flow of the song.

5.) Add pizzazz to chord progressions.

You can easily pick out the number of chords in much of today’s music. So many chord progressions are reused. Some are more apt to be more of a hit song than others, as they are relatively more catchy and pleasant sounding. U2’s “With or Without You” has a chord progression reused in The Callings’ “Wherever You Will Go” and The All-American Rejects’ “Swing, Swing.” Analyze the chord progressions that make hits and add your own flavor to it.

Have you ever noticed that many of the more elaborate songs use more than just four chords? It’s often a good idea to use a simple chord progression for the verses, and a slightly more elaborate one for the chorus. This gives the chorus a greater feeling of grandeur. Songs that use the same chord progression throughout are ultimately repetitive if not produced well.

Chords are the musically vocabulary in which we use to create. For this reason, every songwriter should have some understanding of all the various chords and when/how to use them. Using more unique chords (diminished, augmented, 7th, etc.) adds flavor to an otherwise plain progression.

4.) Let the words write themselves.

Play the chord progression and allow words to flow from your imagination. When you allow the words to write themselves, you ensure that all the words fit rhythmically and emotionally within the song. The opposite would be to write the words and cram them into the melody. This may be a more popular method with some folk singers that need to portray a message rather than write a “hit” song. Letting the words write themselves creates an ease and flow within the song that the listener can easily digest.

Use simple words. Avoid large and clumsy words unless it has some inherent purpose. Listeners relate better to simple words, and they tend to fit into melodies more readily. Large and complex words with more than two syllables can sometimes feel awkward in a song.

3.) Listen to your songs as an audience member for the first time.

It’s difficult to be unbiased to your own songs. You spent so much time writing and revising it that you can’t imagine it to be bad. It’s a good idea to pretend you’re an audience member listening to your song for the first time. Keep in mind that they may or may not know a thing about you. In fact, they may not care about you at all. You want the song to sell itself, and to give the audience a reason to pay attention. An easier method would be to have unbiased friends listen to them. Keep in mind the genres they prefer and how musically trained they are. Regardless, you are marketing your music to the average listener who probably does not have as much musical training and may not appreciate some of the subtleties involved.

2.) Be inspired.

Writing a song without inspiration is like shoving toothpaste back into the tube: it is tiring, time consuming, and ultimately pointless. There are those that believe you should write whenever and wherever, however this may be true for those who easily find inspiration. Personally, I find it hard to write a song when I have no real emotion to draw from. My ideal writing situation is when I have a strong emotion, or can easily draw from some previous strong emotion, that allows me to write my feelings. The result is a much more emotional and passionate song. It also takes much less time and allows one to capture their emotional energy into words.

1.) Practice.

I think that all of my top ten lists will end with “practice.” It is so fundamentally important to practice when one creates music. Practice in songwriting gives you the skill to write effective songs more efficiently. You learn all the best ways for you to personally write a song. You avoid all the pitfalls that lead to writers’ block. I put away over 30 songs before writing a set I was happy with, only to dump them for much better songs a year later. Ultimately, everyone has his or her own way to write, and it is important to find your own path.

About the Author

Keane Li is the songwriter/guitarist for the band Festizio. He is also the winner of the 2003 Online Rock Festival’s “Original Song” award. Visit: www.festizio.net for more information. Also check out… Top 10 Tips: Recording a Home Demo

Something that too many artists don’t pay enough attention to is packaging. That infamous sleeve is the first thing people will see. This will be what will tempt them (or not) to listen to your music.

Once your album will be ready to ship out, you will want to have it reviewed. For this, you will be finding magazines, newspapers and internet sites that print album reviews. You will find the contact information and send out CDs. You will be giving away about a hundred if things go well. More if they go more than well…

These fall into your expenses; not only are you giving away CDs, you also have to pay to mail them out. Why do it? Because once your CD is reviewed, it makes more people aware that you are out there. They will be going to see your shows, visiting your website and, hopefully, buying your album. A good review might cost you one CD and promo kit plus mailing expenses, but it could make you sell 10 or even 100 CDs, sometimes even more.

Now, reviewers can receive up to a hundred CDs a week. Most from artists they’ve never heard of before. Not knowing the artist, you don’t know what to expect. You don’t even know what genre the artist does.

This is where the sleeve takes on all its importance. That, and the publicity photo.

Some artists choose to send out only a CD. I suggest if you do this, that the sleeve be really attractive and the album quite strong.

Most artists send a biography and an 8 x 10 glossy, black and white photo. The bio is great as the reviewer gets to find out what the artist’s background is; it’s one of the most pleasing items. If you feel a certain relationship with the artist, it will influence your review of the artist’s material and it’s always interesting to find out about the artist’s background.

The photo is not a beauty contest. Its purpose is to reveal the artist’s persona. Not the man/woman/band in their everyday life; the artist him/herself/themselves. This photo should stand out and show the artist the way he’d be if he’d be doing a show with MTV cameras pointed at him.

Forget about the jeans and t-shirt look. This is what you wear everyday, fine. As an artist, it doesn’t represent you. Make the photo interesting and revealing of your artist persona.

First, hire a professional to take the photos. Take them in a professional studio. It’s a higher expense, but quite worth it. You don’t need to get the guy who did your sister’s wedding; actually, there’s a good chance you won’t want this guy. Get someone, a student even, who has an artistic sense of photography. Ask to see their portfolio and see if their style strikes you. Some photographers are good at wedding photos, others at taking pictures of race cars going at 350 kph. Others are true artists; these are the people you want.

Discuss your artistic persona with the photographer. Explain your vision of your art. Leave nothing out; let the photographer know who his subject will be.

Go through magazines, music publications particularly, CD sleeves, look at what’s been done. Cut out what you like and show these to the photographer.

Spend on clothes and accessories. Jeans might be OK, but maybe your persona requires black jeans rather than blue. Should you be wearing bracelets, jewelry, etc? Should you have your guitar?

Once you know what you want and can explain all this to the photographer, let him run with it for a week or so. He’ll mull it over, use his own vision and experience and submit his ideas. Discuss them and come up with something you’re comfortable with.

As I said, it’s not a beauty contest; you just want to show, visually, that you need to be taken seriously.

As for the record sleeve, this is too often misleading. For the reviewer, the sleeve is seen as a reflection of the music and of the genre.

When I saw Warren Appleby’s Dark Forest Trail album, I fully expected an acoustic, relaxation type of music. Without even listening to it, I pushed it to the bottom of the pile; not that I don’t like this genre, but I had several of those already in my pile. And that was a mistake – his music is anything but acoustic and warrants great attention.

Another like that was Metaphor’s Starfooted. Galileo records sent me a whole bunch of CDs from bands I’d never heard of. I placed them in order of the sleeves; Metaphor’s was last. As it turns out, this is one of the best albums I’ve ever heard.

You may be thinking that it’s just me, but let me assure you it isn’t just me. All reviewers have to choose a basis for listening to what comes in and just the arrival date isn’t good enough.

So, your sleeve should be designed with attention. Here again, I strongly suggest you get professional help. If you get a graphic designer, here’s a word of caution. There are two sorts of designers: artists and technicians. Most are technicians and can just assemble bits and pieces made by somebody else. The artists are rare but will give you much greater results.

Here again, ask to see their portfolios. Make them explain their portfolios. If you see more than three different fonts on a design, count that designer out unless he has a really good explanation.

Also, check for those who use weird fonts: sometimes these work, but rarely. Remember that your sleeve is a seller and should be treated as half art, half advertisement. Pay attention to the designers who have knowledge of advertisement; here again, it’s not because a graphic designer has worked for an advertisement department that he knows anything about advertising; others make the decisions, not them. Try to find someone who at least knows who Ogilvy is. Ogilvy invented modern publicity. If the designer’s face is blank if you throw in that name, then this is probably not the guy you want.

Your sleeve should, like your promo photos, reveal your music vision, but particularly the vision of this particular album even if it doesn’t have a single theme running through it. It should also say: listen to me and, more importantly: buy me. Here is where using advertisement techniques can pay a lot.

It seems to be common place nowadays to use a close up photo of the artist for the sleeve; mostly a head shot. Personally, I don’t care for these; I remember walking into a record store and seeing three albums from French language artist Lynda Lemay which all featured a black and white headshot for the sleeve. You had to pay close attention to them to realize they weren’t the same album.

Be original. Find a painter who does work you like. Some visual artists specialize in record sleeves. Roger Dean (www.rogerdean.com) immediately comes to mind. He did a lot of sleeves in the 70’s and 80’s for Yes, Asia and quite a few more. There’s also Mattias Noren (http:/www.progart.com), who’s worth mentioning.

It might cost you more, but it will certainly be worth it.

Overall, be adventurous, but make sure your sleeve and your photo stand out above the crowd. Make sure they attract attention and reflect who you are. These could mean the difference between a good review, a bad review or no review. In turn, this could mean the difference between good sales and bad sales.

In this day and age, where making an album can cost less than $3,000, just about anyone can make an album. The problem is that just about anyone does…

Every week I receive CDs for review from around the world. These CDs are from the independent industry, so they’re people doing the music they like rather than the music a label tells them to do. This is a plus as, generally, these albums are much better than what comes out of the major labels. If you haven’t read my reviews, I suggest you do; there is a lot of undiscovered talent out there.

However, as I don’t like writing negative reviews, I receive a lot more than what graces our pages. The thing is one quickly realizes that not everybody should be making albums.

I know how this sounds, so let me explain what I mean by this. I’m not saying that the albums I don’t review are made by untalented people; it’s just that, generally, they are made by people who should have waited a while before making an album. They do have evident talent, but they should have developed their abilities a little more before making an album.

For a band

If you’re in a band and playing a lot of gigs, when should you make an album? Some will tell you that you need one to get gigs out of your normal circuit, that is, other towns and markets. That is not exactly so. If you have a good buzz going, your reputation will precede you. What you can do is simply rent a good recording system and the services of a sound engineer and record a show. Put your best received three or four songs together on a CD and you can use this to try and get other markets.

Overall, this whole operation will be quicker and will cost a lot less. You can do this for under $500. I suggest doing this early on as it will allow you to hear how good you sound and where you need to improve (no-one sounds perfect live, not even the seasoned professionals). Also, you never know who will be at your show, so keep a few copies with you in case someone from the industry shows up and asks for something. Just remember to put a contact name, address, telephone numbers, e-mail address printed directly onto the CD. These are more important than the band name and the song titles.

Remember that making an album suggests that you have at least 50 minutes of good music to present. If your band has only ten original songs, now might not be the best time to record an album. You should probably write more songs. Introduce a new one instead of one that the audience doesn’t seem to like as much. Check out the reaction. When you have around 50 minutes of orginal music that is all well received, then you should look into making an album.

A sure sign, also, is when people come up to you after a show and ask you if you have an album to sell. I don’t mean your aunt who’s come out to see how good you are, I’m talking about people you don’t know, people you’ve never met before. When they come up to see you and ask for an album, then you should consider making one.

Also, it’s important to remember that a studio album will not sound like a live show. The reason is fairly obvious; in the studio, you have endless tracks to play with and you can record a track as many times as you like before getting it right.

Unfortunately, as most live albums are not really live: tracks are redone in the studio, tracks are added, you don’t realize this when listening to the Rolling Stones live.

The best example of this I have seen, and I’m sure it’s not the only one, is Asia. After their second album, Alpha, which was recorded in Morin Heights on a 48-track system, before the days of digital recording, they did a show in Japan which was filmed for MTV. The show is called Asia in Asia. If you listen to this recording and compare the songs to the studio versions, you realize that there is a lot missing.

So, when recording an album, remember that you won’t sound like that live unless you want to inundate your live show with recordings and MIDIs.

Another thing you have to remember is that your stage presence also affects your sound. Sometimes you’ve been hearing a band on the radio for months and you can’t stand them. Then, because their opening for another band you want to see, or because a woman twisted your arm, you’re seeing them live and you realize that they’re great. Mind, you, the opposite can also happen. This is because their stage presence is so good, that you’re not just hearing the music, you’re getting an experience for each of your five senses.

Remember that your studio recording will not deliver your stage presence. Another reason for making sure your material is strong before going into the studio.

The solo artist

When you’re solo and not gigging, and there can be many legitimate reasons for not gigging: your first gigs bring in no money, yet a lot of the musicians who would be willing to play for you will require payment, or you may simply live in a market which is not into the style of music you’re playing. There can be many more legitimate reasons why you’re not gigging.

So when is it time to start recording?

First, you should have a fairly large amount of songs. Over the years, the ones that sound best to you will be obvious, these are the ones you’ll be playing the most often. Once you have fifteen or more of these songs which you keep playing over and over, that’s when you should consider recording an album.

And that’s when things start getting complicated.

Once you’ve made the conscious decision of cutting an album, there will be songs you haven’t played in years which will start haunting your every waking moment. Some will even be in your dreams (and that’s not just a manner of speaking).

Because, as you’re now focused on recording rather than just playing a song on a single instrument for yourself, the older songs start taking a new life and you start seeing them in a new light.

The best advice I can give you at this point is make demos. If you have access to MIDI software, this is the cheapest way to go. Soon (I have been saying this for a while, but it is a monumental task) I will be showing you how to do it using Guitar Pro 4. You don’t need to wait for me though.

Demo even those older songs which you hardly remember unless you really don’t like them anymore. Sometimes just adding drums can make a huge difference. The demos don’t have to be perfect; just have more tracks than just a guitar and a voice. You’ll also start getting all sorts of ideas as to how to improve the material.

Then, the worst part. Choose the ten or so tracks that will be going on the album. You’ll probably need input from other people for this. It gets so complicated at some point that you can’t see your way clearly out of it. That’s why I strongly recommend you don’t wait until you have a hundred good songs before making that first album.

That’s what I did, and let me tell you that selecting the songs was a nightmare. I called upon professionals in the industry to help me out, such as Warren Buttler, Jeff Sherman and Robert Berry. I hope you don’t have to through that ordeal. It took me about 8 months just to make the appropriate selections and I’m still uncertain as to some of the tracks.

Once you have your demos and have made the selections, then and only then, is it time to cut the album.

Overall

Remember that your first album will follow you all your life; like it or not. Suppose you sell 500 copies and that’s about it. Then, five or ten years down the road, you sign up with an important label. They’ll want to hear that album. If they like it, they’ll re-edit it. If they don’t, they won’t.

Suppose your worst critic finds out about that first album and, in retrospect, you realize it really isn’t good, what do you think it will do to your career? You can’t undo the past.

So, overall, before making that first album, make sure it’s the right time and that you are really ready for it.

On inspiration:

1. Be on the lookout for things to write about everyday.

There was a comedian on the Letterman show the other night who told the story of her college years. She was living in a garage, the kind with the roll up doors. Whenever she sat down to relax on her couch she was staring at the two motorcycles that were parked in her living room. She used to sit there and stare at them and wonder if there was anything funny she could write about.

Okay, so you are living in a garage and your front door rolls up instead of swinging open and the centerpieces of your living room are two motorcycles. Wait a minute – that is funny.

Don’t overlook what’s right in front of you. There are things all around you every day that would make great songs. Go and find them.

2. Take a notepad or micro-recorder with you everywhere.

I have a friend who has been playing and writing for many years now. She tells me she has forgotten 10 times as many great lines as she has written down. If you don’t have a notepad or recorder, write them in your own blood. Just write them down.

For those of you who are Nirvana fans, if you take a look at Cobain’s writing, it’s in a spiral notebook like you’d get for school.

Many a great song has been written on a McDonald’s napkin.

Inspiration is a precious gift. Don’t waste it.

On writing lyrics:

3. If you can say it in fewer words, why don’t you?

You can pause while singing. You can hold notes out. Don’t feel the need to fill every space with a word. This is a danger most often experienced by lyric first songwriters.

Let the listener’s ears rest. Use empty space to develop contrast.

This one ties in with the next:

4. Try not to use phrases like “I feel”, “it’s like”, “because”. Tell me how it is, not what it’s like.

These words are often used to make lines fit the meter. But the effect they have is dilution.

Is she the most beautiful woman ever, or is she like the most beautiful woman ever?

Are you crushed and thrown in the gutter, or do you just feel that way?

5. Be direct, don’t give the listener too many choices.

Although you do want to allow for individual interpretation, you want to make sure the listener is getting the point. Write like a salesman. Ask questions that get you where you want to go. Don’t ask “Would you like to buy this car?” Ask “Wouldn’t it be great to be out on the coastal highway, top down, radio playing?”

6. Content dictates form, not the other way around. You aren’t writing haiku.

Don’t limit your initial creative output by imposing form limits. Maybe you have 4 lines and a chorus, maybe 8. Maybe you’ll have two verses then chorus, maybe 1. Just get that initial burst of creativity out. Create the form of the song around the content you have.

I doubt Stephen King decides beforehand, “Hmm, 637 pages, and I want every other chapter to be 42 pages.” You don’t need to either.

7. If you have to explain a line to me, you need to re-write it.

If I have to explain that line to you, I need to re-write it.

8. Do not confuse profound with vague.

This one ties in well with number 7.

This is one of the biggest errors I see and it manifests itself in a couple of ways.

First, even the lyricist doesn’t know what they are writing about. Overly impressed by their own ability to use flowery imagery, the writer will get stuck for an ending or chorus and ask for help. Heck, if you don’t know what you are writing about, how should anyone else know?

Second, the message is so lost in flowery writing that the natural progression of the song gets lost. The obvious symptom of this is overly long, formless writing usually followed by a request for help formatting the song into singable lyric.

No one needs to write in “Dick-and-Jane” style, but you don’t want to sound like a dot com company earnings call either.

9. Write about what you know.

I guarantee these will be your best songs. Go ahead and write about something you know nothing about and compare.

One day you cut your hand badly and require stitches, do you go to the auto mechanic? Nope, you go to the doctor. You want someone whose life experience includes stitching up cuts. Songwriting is no different.

9a. When you want to write about something outside your realm of experience, use what you do know to write about what you don’t know.

If you have to write about something, someone, someplace that you have no personal experience with, find something, a feeling, a belief, that you do have in common. Start from someplace that is authentic.

10. As you get better and better at writing, you’ll write simpler and simpler lyrics. Why not start now?

This one I stole from David Hodge. It’s true. There is power in brevity.

Don’t mistake “simple” for lack of meaningful content. One well chosen single word can have many more connotations and power than an awkward phrase.

10a. Even if you want to write about a passive condition, write it actively.

Speaking of stealing from David…

I wrote a song about a guy sitting in the dark, losing it ’cause he is suddenly alone. He’s sitting and thinking, then lying down and thinking, and then in the last verse he’s suddenly smashing things. It just didn’t flow right, it didn’t build.

Here is the first verse before and after:

Before:

Alone in the dark at the kitchen table
I wonder whatever became of you?
Didn’t I tell you often enough?
Can you tell me what I didn’t do?

After:

Talk to the empty chair in the darkness
I wonder whatever became of you?
Didn’t I tell her often enough?
Can you tell me what I didn’t do?

It’s a minor change, but combine that change with the new second verse you can see an active progression into losing his marbles.

11. Even if your lyric doesn’t tell a story, it takes the form of a story. It has a beginning, middle and end.

Number 11 is the subject of much confusion. There is a big difference between a story song, like old folk songs, and a story line. I think we decided to call this the “Song Agenda” or “Song Progression”, but the more I think of it, the more I like plain old “Story”. You may write a silly story with no point, a clever story, fable, parable, that it obvious fiction, a review or description of some thing, or an old fashioned folk tale, or even a true story, but they all have a timeline or agenda or progression from start to finish.

Even if a lyric has no story, it has a beginning, middle and end. Heck, even if a song is an instrumental it develops from beginning to middle to end.

Make sure you know what your story/agenda/progression is.

If you get lost while writing, take a couple of minutes to write a paragraph describing how your song develops from beginning to end. Best of all, go to number 12.

12. Write down the story you want to tell in a couple of sentences before you start the lyric. You can revisit this later if you get stuck.

Usually I do this after the initial burst of writing subsides. Then I organize my thoughts into a progression.

13. Make sure your lyric pulls the listener through from beginning to end.

Number 13 is the reason for 11 and 12. The listener should want to hear what comes next. They should be waiting for the exciting, (or not) conclusion. If you give it all away in the first verse, what is the reason the listener won’t just tune out?

OVERVIEW of 11 – 13:

Think of a song like any other form of communication for entertainment purposes. Songs are like miniature books, films or plays, a 3 minute diversion to transport the listener to another world.

14. When you have “finished” your lyric, read it OUT LOUD. Let your ears do the final edit.

The single most valuable editing tool is listening. After you read it out loud to yourself, subject someone else to it. Some words that fit when written will break oddly across rhythm.

15. If it sounds forced when you read it, it will sound forced when you sing it.

16. If you would never, ever say it that way, double check that you can sing it that way.

Probably tied for number one on the most often seen problem list, is the forced rhyme. Don’t do it. Forced rhyme pegs you as an amateur right away. Not even great lyrics will pass the “would you say it that way” test all of the time, but it is a good test. The most often seen example of this is the reversed sentence:

“..and so to you I will not go.”

or something similar. Wouldn’t you just say “I will not go to you?”

17. Write often. Practice writing just like you would practice a guitar riff.

One of the early controversies about the Sunday Songwriter forum was that you can’t force inspiration. This is true, but you can learn technique so that when inspiration pops up, you have nothing standing in your way.

If you want to improvise guitar, you go and learn riff after riff until they flow effortlessly. When the time comes to improvise, you don’t want to spend a bunch of time saying: “uhh, that would be at the fifth fret and…. I think I’ll do that Led Zeppelin thing”. By the time you get that thought out, the rest of the band will be on to the next verse.

I have a place to write with a guitar on a stand nearby, computer, rhyming dictionary, pencils, paper. When I’m inspired to sit down to write, I’ve practiced it so many times before that it just flows.

On receiving critiques:

18. If someone points out something that bugs them, I guarantee it will bug 100 others. Listen to them.

You may not agree. They may be wrong. You may not be willing to change, but you must consider what they are saying. If not, why bother to post the lyric in the first place.

When I started posting songs, I had to force myself to get over my defensive reaction. But I did it and now I probably incorporate 75% of all suggestions into my work. Hey someone wants to do work for you for free, take them up on it.

19. If someone takes the time to critique your lyric, listen to them.

20. Don’t get defensive. Listen.

21. If the critique starts with “This sucks”, you have my permission to ignore #20.

22. Turn about is fair play. If someone critiques yours, return the favor.

Besides making a habit of writing, this is probably the most powerful songwriting tool available. No kidding. By reading other writers lyrics and styles you learn volumes. You learn what works and what doesn’t, you get “what if” ideas, you expand your own lyrical horizons and you gain an ability to see things in your own work through others. Sometimes things are so close to you, you can’t see them.

23. Listen, listen, listen.

Did anyone pick up on my subtle message in this section?

On writing critiques:

24. Do unto others.

A critique of “This sucks” is about as useful as one that says “this is perfect”. Well, unless you really mean it. I haven’t seen one yet. I haven’t written one yet, the perfect one I mean.

25. Find at least one positive thing to say, there is always at least one.

The fact that someone was brave enough to put pencil to paper is one. Is there a story line? Are the feelings out there and exposed? Did one of the verses not have a forced rhyme or cliché? Come on now, you are supposed to be creative.

26. Do not start reviews with “This sucks”. I told them not to listen to you in #21.

27. Don’t get offensive.

This is not a battle zone. No tit for tat, “he really let me have it in his last critique, I’ll show him, (or her)”. Try to help no matter what.

28. Writing critiques is probably the single best way to improve your own writing.

By learning how to articulate your own thoughts about someone else’s work, you can appreciate the thought that went into someone else’s critique of yours and also develop a mindset of looking for problems in your own before you start. See number 22.

On cliché:

29. Never use the words “stairway” and “heaven” in the same line.
30. Make that the same verse.
31. Did I say verse? I meant song.
32. What the heck, just never use them…never.

Don’t make me think of someone else’s song while I’m listening to yours.

33. I would rather hear about your personal experiences than generalizations.

Take a gourmet dinner:

Fresh caught Jumbo Shrimp cocktail
Fresh made bread
Filet mignon medium rare
Baked potato with fresh butter and chives
Vintage red wine
Tiramisu

Now put the whole thing in a blender until it has the consistency of baby food and eat it. Somehow the generalization of the meal just isn’t the same. Give me the experience first hand.

34. Using cliche is the equivalent of saying, “Yada, yada, yada”.

The biggest problem with cliché is that it is shorthand for your experiences. I don’t want the Cliff Notes version, I want to do the interpretation myself thank you.

35. If you twist a cliche into something new, it is by definition no longer cliche.

It’s a pretty good technique really. You get a sense of the familiar combined with a sense of originality.

36. Back by popular demand, here is my famous cliché analogy.

If you ask 100 people to draw a tree, 99 of them are going to:

• draw two parallel lines to represent the trunk
• 1 perpendicular line beneath to represent the ground
• -and a series of scalloped lines above to represent the leaves.

But they haven’t drawn a tree. They have drawn a representation of a tree.

If you tell them that, they won’t get it. But if you show them the picture that the 1 out of a 100 drew, the one that actually looks like a tree, they’ll say, “oh yeah, now that’s a tree.”

That artist didn’t draw a representation of a tree. The artist drew one that is based on that artist’s actual interaction with a specific tree. It’s the tree climbed long ago. It’s the tree of a summer nap in its shade. It’s the tree the artist raked the leaves from under.

When you look at that picture, you can see the artist’s song about that tree.

Be the 1 in 100.

37. Rules are meant to be broken, but you better have a darn good reason why.

Does this all make sense to you? Would you like to learn more about songwriting? Then join us in the Sunday Songwriter’s forum. All writers are welcome regardless of writing experience. You’ll find a place to get positive and constructive feedback on developing both your songs and your writing style. The big benefit of the Sunday Songwriters forum is we aren’t expecting the polished, we’re expecting to help you polish. Come on in and give it a try this week or next.

One bit of advice that songwriters give (and get) over and over again is to listen to the music that’s around them. I think we can go further. What I would like to do is offer you a “behind the scenes” look at the creative process involved in songwriting. This can cover a lot of territory, such as coming up with melodies, chord progressions, lyrics, and arrangements, not to mention all the revisions done in each of these areas. It can also encompass the subsequent performance and even the recording of a song.

The obvious trouble with creating a series of lessons like this is the songs themselves. As much as I like to think of Guitar Noise as the jewel of the internet, it’s pretty hard to get some famous songwriter to take the time to write the sort of piece we’d want. But then it occurred to me that we have plenty of quality songwriters among our ranks, both staff and readers. And thanks to the generosity of Adam McMaster, one of our readers, we are able to give you an MP3 file of an entire song so that you will be able to follow the lessons.

I’ve been working on the logistics of this for some time now and it’s no secret among the Guitar Noise staff that I’m truly excited about this whole project. While I can’t exactly say where our “Song Crafting Sessions” will ultimately end up, I think I can guarantee that it will be a fun and educational trip getting there. So let’s get started, shall we?

These files are the author’s own work and represent his own original work. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Our initial lesson is a song I wrote in 1981, called Waiting For Nancy. If you’d like to hear it (or keep it handy in order to follow along), you can find it here.

Recording credits:

David Hodge – vocal, piano, organ
Anne O’Neil – drums
Mike Sexton – guitar
Roy Wogelius – bass

Jerry Soto – engineer

Recorded at Soto Sound Studios, Evanston, Illinois, in the summer of 1982.

Music

Those of you who either have read my songwriting articles or frequent the Songwriting Forum pages know that I’m pretty much a “music first” person. That is, more often than not I will write the music of a song, usually the melody and chord progression, before the lyrics. Maybe it’s because I hear the potential of a song in many things.

In 1981, I was playing keyboards for a band called “Fat Lewy” (don’t ask!). One of the songs in our repertoire was a cover of The Real Me, the opening song on the Who album, “Quadrophenia,” because it was a great showpiece for our bassist. Needless to say we had the song down cold. But one day at practice, we all happened to be in a giddy mood and decided to mess around with our arrangement. We’d do this with songs on occasion simply to see if we might come up with a new twist on things. You get bored playing the same thing the same way over and over and over again.

So we tried playing this Who song in a way that we imagined a torch singer might interpret it. It became slow and sultry instead of a rush toward madness. While we agreed it was a fun thing to do, none of us seriously thought of ever performing it that way. But I held onto the jazzy sounds in my head because I thought I might be able to do something with it.

Waiting for Nancy is what eventually came out of that strange practice session. It was originally written in C minor (the same key as The Real Me) and that’s what it is on this recording. I wrote it on guitar, playing in A minor with a capo on the third fret. For the sake of simplicity (or not), let’s discuss the music itself in the key of C minor.

Quick quiz: what is the relative major of C minor? If you answered Eb, give yourself a gold star! However, both of these songs feature a chord progression of Cm to F major. F major, as you all know, consists of the notes F, A and C. The key of Eb major, though, has the note Ab instead of A. Because of this, at least in terms of Nancy’s modality (in the verses anyway), we should be thinking in terms of the key of Bb, or rather, C Dorian.

The verses and choruses are simply our C minor chord played over a short descending bass line. Each chord change lasts a measure (four beats):

Cm – - – / Cm/Bb – - – / F9/A – - – / F9 – - – /

This is a great example of how you can create a distinct modality merely by holding on to one chord and adding more notes to it. Cm consists of C, Eb and G. If you add Bb, you get C, Eb, G and Bb, which is Cm7. Adding A to the original triad gives you, essentially, an A diminished chord with the flatted seventh stuck on it (which is called a “half-diminished” chord in jazz circles). But since we’re just going to stick an F onto it anyway, let’s think of it as an F9 without a root.

Now while this is a slinky and sultry progression, it decidedly needed some kind of bridge in order to shake it up a bit. The Who’s fast rocking version could get away with using essentially the same chords throughout and using a change of dynamics (the wonderful voice-and-bass-only verse), but at a jazzy tempo, I felt I could use a distinct jolt.

I don’t mind saying that the music of the bridge of Nancy is a bit of a gem. Here is the chord progression, and again each change lasts a single measure:

Abmaj7 – - – / Bb – - – / Cm – - – / Bb – - – /

Abmaj7 – - – / Bb – - – / Eb – - – / G – - – /

Abmaj7 – - – / Bb – - – / Cm – - – / D7 – - – /

Cm – - – / D7 – - – / Eb – - – / G – - – /

From the F9/A, which is held for the last two measures of the last line in the second chorus, we go down another half step to Ab. As I mentioned earlier, Ab is part of the key of Eb (relative major to C minor). This note, added to the Cm chord, creates an Abmaj7 and pretty much obliterates our C Dorian modality. However, our ears quickly reestablish Cm as the tonal center by our climbing up to Cm through Bb. In essence, we’ve changed our modality from C Dorian to C Aeolian (natural minor). It may seem like a little thing, but musically, your ears hear a big difference.

We descend back to Abmaj7 and once again climb up again but we go from Bb to Eb (V to I in the relative major), briefly setting a new tonal center that lasts, oh, about a measure before nailing a G chord that we’re certain will bring us back to Cm.

But wait! Our trip isn’t over by a long shot! We go from G back to Abmaj7 (a deceptive cadence!) and start our climb once more only to shoot past the Cm and move on up to D7 (V of V in Cm). Repeating the Cm and D7 in order to tease a little bit and create a little more suspense in the music, we then hit the G, albeit via yet another deceptive cadence (D7 to Eb). By this time we’re more than ready to settle back comfortably with our original modality.

The bridge not only changes the song’s modality, its personality is also dramatically altered. Instead of being jazzy and swinging, as in the verses, the bridge is punched up, almost like a power-rock ballad. The final lyrics, as you’ll see, also reflect this change in tone.

The musical hook of the song resides in the bass line. At the start of the song and then echoed in the choruses and instrumental section, the bass actually does an Eb arpeggio that drops down to the sixth (C) the first time and then the fifth (Bb). This creates an interesting mix of major and minor that infuses the song. The bass line was created by Roy Wogelius, who plays on the MP3 file, and remains my favorite part of the song. While I take credit for writing the song, it is Roy’s bass lines, walking and wandering throughout the whole song, that give Nancy its soul.

Lyrics

As much as I am proud of this song as a piece of music, my main reason for using it as a lesson is to show you the value of being open-minded. For me it was a lesson on how to use my own feelings in order to write beyond my experience.

My first lyrics for this song were miles removed from what you hear on the MP3. Typical of my style at the time, they were literate, yet vague – a love song of empty alliterations:

Aimless living lifeless love
I’m losing hold and losing ground
Passing fancy fancy meeting here
Cotton candy children laughing
Licorice ludes and lemon drops
Whispered wishes wistful yet sincere
And here’s to hoping time will not treat her unkindly
Down the mindless miles maybe she’ll turn around and will she find me here
Waiting for Nancy
Waiting for Nancy to wait for me
Waiting for Nancy
Waiting for Nancy to wait for me

Picture perfect pretty picture
Party dress and postcard smile
Wonder where she will she shall we soon
Winsome sometimes times are trying
Trying to be someone real
Reasons sung so softly out of tune
Here’s to hoping she has quite a lovely time
Seven silent years will pass and will her eyes at last meet mine
Waiting for Nancy
Waiting for Nancy to wait for me
Waiting for Nancy
Waiting for Nancy to wait for me

Never knowing
Altogether certain it’s a dream a dream
And will I wake
I wonder
Look how lifelike it all seems
To be some mischievous phantasm
But it seems to me
That she seems to be so real

Waiting for Nancy
Waiting for Nancy to wait for me
Waiting for Nancy
Waiting for Nancy to wait for me

When I presented this to the band for consideration, the initial response was positive. Everyone thought it was definitely a song we could work into our original song list. One of the other band members, Sups (pronounced “Soups”), though, took it upon himself to use this as an exercise to make a lyric writer out of me.

Sups played rhythm guitar and had written (or co-written) much of our group’s original material. I respected his opinions and when he suggested that I rewrite some of the lyrics, I asked him where I should start. He took my lyric sheet and crossed out everything except the choruses and these two lines:

Licorice ludes and lemon drops

And

But it seems to me
That she seems to be so real

I have to say that I was a bit stunned.

Apart from the band, Sups also encouraged me to read all sorts of things in order to broaden my horizons. While this is always a good thing to do, there was another excellent reason that I only understood as I started to retool Nancy. Usually I would shy away from writing about anything outside of my immediate experience. I’m sure you’re all familiar with the adage “Write what you know.” Well, the more you read, the more you know.

At the time, I was reading William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch at Sups’ recommendation. It intrigued me so much that I read Junkie immediately after I finished the first book. And while I did not understand the horrors of heroin addiction, never having even smoked a joint, I did understand need and waiting. So I decided to see if I could write totally outside of my sphere of experience. In essence, I created a narrator and then thought, “Suppose we say that “Nancy” is now the street name for a drug, like “Mary Jane” for marijuana…” Suddenly I had a whole new world to explore and write about. And even though it was a world that was, as an experience, totally alien to me, I tried to use the emotions involved as a point where I could “write what I knew.” As the song shaped up, it turned out that “Nancy” became many things – the drug, the dealer, life, death, love, release, peace – any object of obsession could fit the bill.

It was my first time writing as a person very much removed from David Hodge.

And so I wrote away:

Local gangsters in the alley
Shying from the neon signs
Funked out punked out drunk out on a tear
Candy stands the corner her pockets stuffed
With licorice ludes and lemon drops
Smiles and sweets for all God’s children everywhere
And somewhere in there time must pass
But minutes hours or days I never know
It doesn’t make much difference to me anyway
Waiting for Nancy
Waiting for Nancy to come for me
Waiting for Nancy
Waiting for Nancy to comfort me

Sal the Snake and Lonesome Leah
Back home from the sidewalk sales
With a brown-bagged bottle it’s a profitable day
Quarters nickels dimes
No contribution too small to turn down
And bless you ma’am sir God certainly may
And the ashen burnout woken back from life
Coughs the dust out of his head
There ain’t much difference here between the dying and the dead
Waiting for Nancy
Waiting for Nancy to come for me
Waiting for Nancy
Waiting for Nancy to comfort me

Dearest lady
Let me feel your cool cold whiteness
In my arms my brain
Come take me far
Where no laugh no tear no joy no pain
Dare follow when I hold you close
It seems to me
Life ceases to be unreal

Waiting for Nancy
Waiting for Nancy to come for me
Waiting for Nancy
Waiting for Nancy to comfort for me
Waiting for Nancy
Waiting for Nancy to wait for me
Waiting for Nancy
Waiting for Nancy to wait for me

And here she comes

“Local gangsters” came from yet another conversation with Sups. When we once were discussing, of all things, the signs of spring, he mentioned the appearance of “street kids, practicing their summer raps” on whoever was within earshot. He made it seem that the raps were birdcalls and I’d never thought about them in that way. This gave me a place to start.

“Funked out punked out drunk out on a tear” – no I really can’t leave any alliteration alone! I wasn’t (and still am not) comfortable with “creating” words (turning “funk” and “punk” into verbs-as-adjectives in this case) but I do have to say that it can be highly effective

At some point in your life, you woke up in the middle of the night with a song or melody spinning around in your head. This article intends to help you capture those free-wheeling melodies and harness them so you can call upon them whenever and wherever you want. It is not a technical how-to on the art of songwriting but rather an essay on the ways to open your own muse flow channel.

A Songwriting Quick Reference

Songwriting can be broken down into these four components:

• Melody
• Lyrics
• Rhythm
• Chords

You can start writing a song from any one of these or any combination. A lot of beginners will find it easiest to start with a melody and then work the chords around it. Hum, play it on a guitar, sing it out loud, plunk it on a piano and experiment with your melody until it sounds right. If you can’t play any instruments at all, find someone who can and is willing to help you. Or get yourself a cheap mini-cassette recorder and sing your melodies into it. Listening back to your ideas is a great way to gain a critical ear and figure out what works best.

When you let yourself relax, the muse finds its way into your melodies and lyrics. Don’t try to write what you think people want to hear. Write what feels natural to you! A good song is a good song no matter what style it’s in or what musical trend is currently on the charts.

Muse Guideline #1

• Write from your heart not your head.

Sounds simple doesn’t it? It’s surprising the number of musicians who attempt to fit into whatever musical climate is happening and sacrifice their true talents by missing the soul and passion of writing from your heart. The songs that mean the most to us are usually the ones where the writer is conveying a simple message. If you find yourself second-guessing yourself, stop! Take a breath. Remember, this song is coming from you. Let your heart be open without an editor’s voice in your head. Let it flow.

A cool cyber way to use the old “cut up words and throw them around” game is with this fun magnet board. You can move the words around to form sentences and even change them into whatever you want. This can be an effective method for getting lyrics started.

Let your feelings come out in your songwriting. Worry about going through it all later. You can always change lyrics and melodies at another time. Writing from your heart is the first and most important guideline to remember. This will open you to everything else, including learning to play instruments and writing more complicated melodies. If these other activities suit your heartfelt needs, that’s great. Always ask yourself if the song is truly the essence of you or if it is representing something you wish you were. Sometimes, that’s OK, but be wary of straying too far from your true self. Ideas will flow if you stay close to your soul’s voice.

Muse Guideline #2

• Listen to your inner voice.

We all have a million distractions to keep us from the paths we want to take. Your inner voice will tell you to write those lyrics down or pick up that guitar to work on that idea in your head. But we find reasons to ignore this inner voice. This guideline applies to more than just writing songs. Listening to your inner voice in all areas of your life will improve your songwriting a thousand percent.

Maybe that special someone in your life isn’t very supportive of your songwriting. I’m not telling you to leave them, but you might want to consider why you’ve chosen this person to be in your life. You know what is good for you and what isn’t. Pay attention to your own life and make whatever changes are necessary for you to have a creative support system in place. It may be as simple as finding a friend to confide in or just share music ideas with. Stop saying “should” and start taking action.

Another approach to opening your inner voice is to keep a journal. You can use the old-fashioned variety of pen and paper, or try a weblog. This can be a source for future lyrics or just a way to get the demons out of the way.

Muse Guideline #3

• Keep the tools of the trade at hand: A notebook for lyrics, a guitar, and a little recorder.

You’ve heard it before: the writer who sleeps with a notebook under his pillow. Songwriting is no different. Keep a pad and pencil in places where your muse comes to you – in your car, next to your bathtub, beside the coffee maker, in your backyard by the roses. The handy pad and paper are some of the best tools for getting great lyrics. You can think of amazing song titles while you’re watching a film or doing other activities that somehow free your mind from itself.

For those of you who can accommodate it, have a guitar handy. We have five acoustic and electric guitars in various tunings scattered throughout our home, along with basses and keyboards and drums! It makes trying out those ideas all that much easier if you don’t have to spend a half-hour setting up the equipment. Basically, you want to get your idea into the air as soon as it finds its way into your head.

Muse Guideline #4

• Turn off your critic and open your soul.

As you sit down to work on an idea, turn off that critic. It could be criticisms from your old music teacher or a parent or even a friend that told you something negative. But we all replay those voices over and over in our heads. As to why we play the bad ones more than the good ones is a chapter I will leave to the psychiatrists. The next time your critic’s voice starts editing your song idea, just ignore it.

My husband and I played one of our songs, Sparkle Star, to a successful friend/producer. He then told us that, while he thought it was a great song, the phrase “sparkle star” was going to ruin the song because it was a made-up phrase that wouldn’t mean anything to anybody. Yet, that song that went on to win Maxell’s Song of the Year in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest. We’ve received tons of letters and emails from fans who have the album it’s on, telling us how they have cried over that song or played it at someone’s wedding. This song is also in the film, Dancing At the Blue Iguana. Needless to say, we didn’t listen to our friend’s advice.

Muse Guideline #5

• Don’t write a song. Just write anything!

Sit down with a guitar, bass, drumkit or piano. Or get the pen flowing across the paper. Are you ready for the best part? You don’t have to write a song today. Just make the effort. There. Ya see? That relieves the pressure.

By giving ourselves ridiculous demands we make it impossible to live up to our own expectations. Remove them. Just get yourself to write a bit when and where you can. A song will emerge when it’s good and ready. The joy of songwriting comes from the act of doing. There will, of course, be those moments of frustration when you create something close to a song but it doesn’t quite come out how you thought it would. The experience of writing music is where the creative satisfaction comes from. Not every song will be a masterpiece but they will be your songs.

The biggest push to get your muse going is to start! It’s very easy to say we could have done something if only we’d had some assistance or been around someone who really believed in us. Believe in yourself. Get off the computer and pick up an instrument, start singing or begin your lyric writing session! Now!

About the Author

After experiencing the record deals, world tours and MTV videos with bands like Vixen, Share Ross has now teamed up with English drummer, Bam (The Dogs D’Amour) and bassist Brian Wong, to form Bubble. This award-winning punk/pop trio have proven that DIY cd’s can make a difference. 3 songs in films, 3 Japan tours, 2 UK tours and more to come. See Share on tour in Europe as the bassist with the Dogs D’Amour opening for Alice Cooper. Website: http://www.planetbubble.com

First lets look at another artist who just let it flow, Michelangelo (not the turtle). Michelangelo, one of the greatest artists of all time, wouldn’t even finish a sculpture if it didn’t “free itself from the stone.” In a way, this is what you want to do. Let’s say you’ve written your guitar part and have something you like, but the song’s guitar part is three verses and the lyrics are two verses.

Your first instinct may be to just write another verse. But ask yourself this question: is that next verse going to fit with the rest of the song? I myself have tried to write a third verse for a two-verse song only to have it ruin the song. What you may want to do is just repeat the first verse in that spot. If that doesn’t fit, have a melodic break or solo over that spot. It’s OK to not have words every second; just play music.

Next I want to look at what I like to call “the songwriter’s drought.” You’ve been sitting at your house going over the same songs over and over. You’re frustrated; you haven’t written in a long time. This can be a trap set by your own mind. This can also be a time to write something without any passion or desire. It’s also a time when you can write the worst music of you life. Writing happens when it happens; you can actually make your “drought” worse by forcing something that really isn’t there. Just wait until that inspiration hits and you will have a song that is ten times better than anything you could have forced.

Last but certainly not least is my favorite way to write a new song. I like to sit down with my guitar in my hand and just start playing different chords and different lead lines until something strikes me. This gives you a chance to experiment with different techniques and to feel the music inside. You can also just start singing with what you’re playing. We all know that some really good songs have been written on the fly, such as tunes by Aaron Lewis. This is just a carefree way of writing. You’re not forcing it, you’re just goofing. I also find this to be a therapeutic way of letting my emotions out.

I know by now you’re probably tired of me saying it, but just let it flow. You’ll feel better, your music will sound better, and you’ll be ecstatic when you hear the results.

Copy Right = Copyright. Or does it?

The major problem people tend to have with the concept of copyright is the word itself. What does copyright say to you? Probably: the right to copy. Because of the way English has evolved, this tends to be the current tendency.

However, “copy” also refers to an original manuscript:

copy: 4 Manuscript or other matter to be reproduced in type

This definition (the “4″ referring to the fact that it is the 4th definition of the word) is from the Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary, International Edition. This is the definition referred to in the word “copyright”. Hence we now have: the right of a manuscript. Clearer? I didn’t think so.

I couldn’t begin to tell you how copyright is translated in most languages, but, as the concept of Intellectual Property dates back to the Renaissance, French or Italian should do. Being French, I will use the French translation (or, probably, original).

In French, we say: le droit d’auteur. Literally, this means: the right of the author (droit means right as in the right to do something and not the direction, while auteur means author). Therefore, “the right of the author,” or the Author’s Rights. Starting to make more sense?

copyright: The exclusive statutory right of authors, composers, playwrights, artists, publishers, or distributors to publish and dispose of their works for a limited time.

This is again from the same dictionary.

It’s still not all that clear, but as soon as you start thinking of it as the Author’s Rights, it all becomes clearer. The copyright refers to what the Author (can be composer also, or any variation of Author/Composer) can do with his material. It simply points to the fact that all rights belong to the Author.

Now this is automatic. The moment a musical piece is complete, you own the copyright, the right to dispose of it any way you wish without having to ask anyone’s permission.

* It’s important to note that there are a few exceptions to this, mainly in the case of jingles: music or songs which are written specifically for advertising. As you get paid to write these pieces, the copyright is generally owned by the person paying you. If you do this kind of work, make sure you read your contract and that this point is clear.

What you do next is protect your intellectual property. I’ve talked about the envelope method in my previous article on the subject. This is not a foolproof method and many people will tell you it won’t stand up in court.

It may stand up in court and maybe it won’t. The idea is not to use this method as full protection, but as front line protection: until you register your copyrights.

Registration is the best protection you can get. It can be expensive, but it is worth the protection. With this method, nobody can steal any of your songs and you have complete proof of ownership.

For Canadians: good news! As I’ve mentioned before, registering your copyrights with the Canadian government is not worth the price of the paper the certificate is printed on. However, our American friends have thought of us poor artists. It is now legal to register your copyrights in the USA.

You can register a single song or a collection of songs on a CD or tape (I strongly recommend CD as tapes can and will deteriorate. Also, the songs can be just voice and an instrument that you’ve recorded in your bedroom) for $20.

You need a form called a “Circular 56: Copyright for Sound Recordings.”

The address is:

US Copyright Office
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave. SE
Washington, DC 20559-6000

Tel.: 202-707-3000

email: copyinfo@loc.gov
www.lcweb.loc.gov/copyright

Today I will try to help those interested in expanding their songs more poetically by taking a trip back to high school (Oh no!). Throughout the rest of this article I will be going over poetic terminology and relating how it can be incorporated into songwriting. Let us start off with the big daddy of poetic concepts.

(Note: I will use the word “viewer” inside of this article to denote “reader/listener.” This edit was done so that I wouldn’t have to keep retyping “reader/listener.”)

Three types of songs (not really poetry related, but requiring explanation)

The three major types of lyrics are

• Communicable
• Narrative
• Ideal

Communicable is communicating a topic the author chooses with a third person. Narrative is a story and contains the basic concepts of a story: characters, plots, conflict, conclusion, etc, including other concepts or even editing some out. Ideal songs are songs that communicate with the viewer about a certain topic chosen by the author. Ideal songs are different from Communicable songs because they talk to the viewer, not to a third person.

Figurative language

This is sort of like the poet’s tool to create a special effect or feeling. Some of these tools include the metaphor, simile, personification, onomatopoeia, idioms, and other things that will be covered in the duration of this article. One thing that you probably will not find in the textbooks is something I call “root words.”

Root words are the primordial base of a given word. Let us take the two most repeated words in all of musical lyrics today: Pain and Love. In the English language there have been thousands of words created to replace these root words. These are synonyms, different words with similar meanings. This brings up the point of why it’s always an extremely helpful asset to have a dictionary and a thesaurus nearby.

Example:

“I walk through these mountains”

Compare this to:

“…as I wander these snow crested tops”

You can immediately notice the figurative language in this second line. It is compiled with almost all the elements in this article, leaving out only a few.

Imagery

This is language that appeals to the five senses: Touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight. Imagery, for starters, expands those root words to be more specific. When we make our songs more poetic or artistic we wish to make them more detailed. Let’s take this line for example:

“I swerve, I sway, I speed to whirring sound an inch above the ground; I’m the sailor and the sail, I’m the driver and the wheel, I’m the one and only single engine human automobile.”

Imagery alters the scene to create a basic picture, even expanding on some. Imagery is what could be described as what occurs in our minds when we hear that specific word(s) in a certain context. In the above example, it gives a pretty straightforward image to the viewer. Imagery works to create a scene, which is highly important in narrative stories and also can be used to increase the detail of an object or a certain noun (person, place, thing or idea). Don’t exclude it from communicable or ideal songs either! It has great use in those as well.

Exaggeration

This is the obvious stretching of the truth, i.e., “Small as a peanut” or “Rich as a sultan.” The use of exaggeration in songwriting generally relates how something has become “more” or “less” of itself. Back in the forums, one of my good friends and Co-moderator, Reef, posted one of his songs. He and David Hodge ended up having discussions about the line

“Redness turns crimson”

The point came up first that the line was blank and never really expressed much to the viewer. We asked Reef what this truly meant to him and his response was that Red to him was rage, anger, blood, and many other destructive words. The only problem with this line was that it was unclear to the audience. “How does the audience know what your connotation of red means?” I asked him, and within the same post I said that he should have some imagery to exemplify what his emotional meaning of red is to a broader spectrum of people. So I suggested the line

“The red axe turns crimson”

Many people have seen axes in films and/or may take it as a weapon with red applied to it, red referring to blood. Although it would be better to have words like sword or knife fill the crack more permanently, axe works fine. Reef liked the idea and has since kept it.

Going back to exaggeration and my example, the newly refined line explains the view much more. Crimson is a slightly darker color than red and also a much fancier word. This all leads us, along with more imagery at our disposal, to make this line mean, “my rage/blood/anger/hate becomes worse/stronger/greater/bolder.”

Idioms

No, these are not the guys who bug you at work. It’s actually a little different. Idioms are common phrases or the common connotations that people have for words. Idioms cannot be understood by their literal or textbook meanings. A classic example of an idiom is the phrase “way to go” which generally means “good job.”

Allusions

Try not to confuse allusions with illusions. Allusions are words or lines that give reference to something historical or well known. Many of Shakespeare’s plays make references to gods that were commonly known back in his time. Even the famous balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet includes an allusion to the god Venus and the well known Cupid.

“…Speak to my gossip Venus one fair word, one nick-name for her purblind son and heir, Young Adam Cupid, he that shot so trim…”

Allusions can also be well known pieces of information, such as the law of gravity. Most of you know what that is; that’s why it can be “well known.” This can be effective in musical lyrics to easily express commonly known ideals to create some more imagery relating to your topic or introduce a new element to your topic. Allusions are different from idioms, which are the common thought of what something is. Allusions are the commonly known denotation while idioms are the commonly known connotation.

Free Verse

These are poems or lyrics that are not written to a regular rhyme scheme, meter, or form. Free verse allows the writer to gain a much greater outlook on his work without having to work in the confines of rhyming. Although this can be done within the confines of rhyming, it’s usually easier to express imagery and thought without having to work within a border. That way, you let your words flow without much resistance and express your topic not only faster, but with greater detail. For example:

“Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.
Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”

No form is present, except for the repetition of “Let the” at the beginning of each line. Instead, it allowed the writer to express his perception of rain with as much figurative language as possible, or as he pleased.

Repetition

Originally, if you saw the old archived forum when it was still up and noticed the majority of posts, you would have noticed from my reviews that I detested repetition in songs. But after awhile I finally changed my mind when I came across a book that acted much like this article. The book was a glossary of poetic terminology and one of the words was “repetition.”

Repetition is the use of any element of language — a sound, word, phrase, or sentence — more than once. I detested repetition in works because it commonly lead people into circles, explaining already explained themes and topics and discussing already discussed imagery and thoughts. Commonly repeating the chorus was yet another of these circles.

All these boiled down to one thing: they became annoying in the song and detracted from its quality. However, when used properly, repetition can become incredibly useful. Since these works are to be performed as well, repetition can build concepts. Using one kind of repetition, you can repeat your topic in other words near the end of a song without the viewer realizing it.

Here’s an example of a form of repetition in a famous poem by Edgar Allen Poe, “The Raven.”

“Once upon a midnight dreary
While I pondered weak and weary
Over many quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore-
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door
‘It is some visitor’ I muttered ‘tapping at my chamber door’”

Alliteration

This is the repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginnings of several words of a line of poetry or a sentence. Literally, it’s a succession of similar sounds. This can extend throughout the song.

“There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;”

From my experience, alliterations work well for stressing ideas or concepts in the chorus, or anywhere, including just the simple line of a stanza. Stressing the consonant of the word gives greater importance to the meaning of the word.

Personification

Personification gives an animal, object or concept human or animal qualities. In narrative songs, personification helps add another character. When it comes to communicable and ideal songs, personification can loosen up the rigid feeling that something may have: a lion, for example, can personify a highly controversial topic.

Personifications can sometimes be seen as metaphors with lifelike qualities over direct comparisons. That is, instead of directly comparing a controversial topic to a lion, I make that controversial topic a lion. This gives the controversial topic lifelike qualities. The personification does not always have to be human.

Here’s another example:

“Summer grass aches and whispers.
It wants something; It calls and sings; It pours out wishes to the overhead stars.
The rain hears; The rain answers; The rain is slowly coming;
The rain wets the face of the grass.”

Onomatopoeia

This is the use of words that sound like the noise they describe. Again, this is a very good tool for enhancing the mood or feeling to a song. For example:

“Susie’s galoshes
Make splishes and sploshes
And slooshes and sloshes
As Susie steps slowly
Along in the slush”

Onomatopoeia can improve a visually oriented song by making the person “hear” for himself or herself instead of just seeing.

Metonymy

This is Greek for “name change,” and denotes a closely related word for something. For example, a crown is a metonym for a king, and a cane, a metonym for old age. Also, books are metonyms for knowledge. Metonyms work to give you a more abstract stance, while still stating your concrete thought.

So if I said, “Your knowledge is supreme,” I could use metonyms to enhance that to, “Your expansive collection of books is awe-inspiring.”

That’s a very free verse line, but it does make the point. The large collection of books can relate that the man holds great knowledge without being too direct.

Oxymoron

Oxymorons are interesting things. When placed properly, they can provoke the audience. For example, saying, “I’m happily sad” instantly makes the audience consider the line. It’s best to use oxymorons to stretch between the points of a controversial or two-sided topic. Normally oxymorons are impossible by fact, but not necessarily self-contradictory. An example of this is “darkness visible.”

Paradox

As opposed to an oxymoron, a paradox contains contradictory ideas. Ordinarily a paradox involves full ideas, not just individual words, such as the debate between evolution and creationism. (I’m standing neutral here for the sake of example and with respect to readers.) The two viewpoints here are contradictory and have very different precepts. Another example of a paradox is “the ascending rain.”

Simile

This is a comparison between two unlike things using the words like or as as conjunctions.

“It was as if the shadows were lifted off their walls”

Notice the “as if.” This is what makes a simile a simile. Similes are used to make the person visualize the object that is being related to.

“He was like a cheetah”

It allows the viewer to notice the exact meaning other than the many meanings that metaphors have. (This will be explained in the next topic.)

Metaphor

A metaphor is a direct comparison between two unlike things. It does not use like or as. Metaphors are useful for drawing an image that may be more direct to the viewer than a simile but less concrete.

“Your eyes are the sun that shone upon the youthful land.”

The above metaphors are the sun to symbolize the eyes (of one of the lovers), and the “youthful land” (the other lover). Metaphors enable you to project more intense pictures to the audience. One problem of improperly used metaphors is that some people won’t be able to understand your comparison.

Metaphors are also useful for making songs more interpretive. Similes can keep a song too concrete, but metaphors make the reader think abstractly. Making the reader think is something all great literature does. This includes philosophical and religious books, fairy tales, novels, mysteries, and others.

Try to make your metaphors limited and clear, like all other things in creating poetic music.

Symbol

A symbol is something that stands for something else. Metaphors and similes are comparative, but symbols are replacements. Metaphors are used for comparisons in direct relationships, but symbols are replacements of words. In the following example, the rock is a symbol.

“This is my rock
And here I run
To steal the secret of the sun;
This is my rock
And here come I
Before the night has swept the sky;
This is my rock,
This is the place
I meet the evening face to face.”

Mood

Mood is the feeling created in the reader by a poem or story. Figurative language and poetic concepts work together to create mood. Mood can be seen as the emotion the person feels when reading or listening to a song, or even a poem. Mood is useful for illuminating the feeling of the surroundings. In contrast, imagery simply explains with words, especially adjectives and adverbs, what is around you but with more details they all implant a ‘mood’ of the surrounding environment.

Tone

Tone is the attitude the writer takes toward the audience, subject, or a character. The voice, or speaker, is that character or perspective that is taken on by a writer or poem. This is often a voice not identified by name, although names can be applied.

“There’s this that I like about hockey, my lad;
It’s a clattering, battering sport.
As a popular pastime it isn’t half bad.”

Stanza

A stanza is any group of words, like a verse, chorus, bridge, etc. For arranging purposes, most stanzas are written as if they were paragraphs, explaining ideas in a group of words.

“Because I could not stop for death-
He kindly stopped for me-
The carriage held by just ourselves-
And immortality.”

Rhyme

Rhyme is the repetition of similar sounds. End rhyme is the repetition of similar sounds that come at the ends of lines in poetry. Internal rhyme occurs within a line when two words have similar sounds.

Rhyming can make songs flow along easier. However, don’t get caught up in rhyming. Those who do fail to express their ideas and focus more intently on the rhyming. Rhyming isn’t bad, but it shouldn’t be paid too much attention to.

“I think that many owls say Who-o;
At least the owls that I know do-o.
But somewhere when some owls do not-t
Perhaps they cry Which-h, Why-, or What-t.”

Rhyme Scheme

This is a repeated regular pattern of rhymes usually found at the end of lines in a poem or song.

“Isabel met an enormous bear,
Isabel, Isabel, didn’t care.”

Rhyme schemes are designed to match the meter as well. Songs that have rhyme schemes normally have the same scheme throughout the song. But, a scheme can transfer and change in a song among different stanzas.

Rhythm

The musical quality created by a pattern of beats. The beats are made of a series of stressed and unstressed syllables. Rhythm is a brother to meter, although rhythm can add a lot more to the song. For example:

“My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, my foes, and oh, my friends-
It gives a lovely light!”

Meter

Meter is Greek for “measure.” Meter has a chart of certain levels, which won’t be covered here, in which the words can move. As to rhyming, meter is the measurement of syllables inside the lines. Specifically, it’s the stressing and unstressing of syllables inside the line. It’s closely related to rhyming in terms of measurement.

Clarification

This isn’t a poetic concept, although it can be seen throughout poetic works. It’s not documented or noted. I left this last since I felt poetic lyrics badly needed clarification to open the doors of the song to the viewer more widely. This way the viewer can be more interpretive and also be able to see your own concept. Sometimes writers will move their songs off more onto one side than another, which is still good.

The greatest point to look over when making your songs clearer to the viewer is that you have to be more specific. This means using a varied vocabulary, choosing between similes and metaphors, eliminating highly repeated words or lines, removing unnecessary conjunctions, and so forth.

Clarification can be seen as the tidying of the song’s final look. It also enhances the effect that the words have. If you are more specific and don’t have a lot of “mumbo-jumbo” in your work, then you will have more control over where the song is going. Steering the song where you want is always desired, but musicians leave this to their audience, whether lyrics are sung or read.

Accessibility to a song is always what makes it greater. If you can’t gain access to something, it’s generally useless other than to its creator(s). Songs are commonly played to audiences of people, and if those people can’t understand your song and have good access to it, there is a lost cause. Poems were often sung or spoken to others in the ages ago, giving them high reason to edit their works to be legible.

There is a great deal of people who play and write as a hobby, and I have nothing at all against this, but to those who perform, this is what you should have in your mind when you edit your works.

Closing Remarks

These explanations listed above should give you the bare essentials of writing poetic works. These are, in no way, the only way you can use them for songwriting purposes. Also, not all poetic terms were explained. Most of those that weren’t aren’t necessary.

If you wish to read more, follow a link to this Glossary of Poetic Terms. This is a full list of poetic terminology (from which some of my explanations partially came). Experiment with them and see what your lyrics can achieve. Sometimes adjusting poetic devices can lead to a higher flair in songs, almost as if the song’s style were your own.

I strongly suggest to anyone to play around with anything you wish. If you feel that more improvements should be made to fit your own tastes, then by all means do so. Music is a gift to the audience and to yourself!

Rock on and Happy writing!

To save time (and not have to see the drummer dangerously twirling his sticks in my direction), I came into the habit of giving them a recording of just a rhythm guitar and an awkward voice (basically singing really low into a microphone), but all timed and with a metronome running. I record these using Cakewalk. Although now that I’ve discovered Guitar Pro, this is now my main tool. Then I put everything into charts and give these to the guys a week or so before meeting them with our guns ready. Works a lot better.

This way they have heard the song in advance and can tell me whether or not they want to do it. A lot of what I write doesn’t make it to the F.R.O.G. Incident as it simply doesn’t fit into the band’s context. Sometimes, as I write the songs, it’s hard for me to see if a song fits or not. Also, sometimes I think a song won’t fit and the guys love it and want to do. So I give them a copy of everything I write.

With the chart, we can now all read it and play the song at the same time whilst making the appropriate changes at the appropriate places.

Most musicians don’t work with charts, and I’ve only recently started doing so myself. I regret not having used them before.

A chart is like a building plan of the song. Some musicians like a detailed plan, that is, actual notes for all instruments. Most musicians you’ll play with can’t read music so they don’t care. The musicians who can read, though, should be able to get along quite nicely with a well-built chart.

First line is the title, second the songwriter’s name. At the bottom, always put the copyright notice (e.g., © A-J Charron, 2001. Just in case someone forgets their copy in the practice room or on the bus or what-not). In between, sketch the song out.

Put the initial tempo and time signature. Then write down the chords to the intro. In the margin, write “Intro”. Then, leave a space and write the first verse (or chorus if this is how your song starts). You should basically write the chords and perhaps the first line or so of lyrics to help situate them. A good way of doing so is to write up a few measures using only chord notations (see example). Leave a space and write the next part of the song (verse, chorus, instrumental, etc). Always identify the section in the margin.

Also, always clearly mark time signatures and tempo changes.

The chart should not be more than a page long. This so that everybody doesn’t have to stop halfway through the song to turn the page around…

Here is an example of a chart for one of my band’s (the F.R.O.G. Incident) songs:

This is the title song from our upcoming album. It doesn’t have many tempo or key changes. It’s six and a half minutes long and fits well within a page. Of course, you don’t have to make your charts just like this one.

I did this one on the computer as I wanted it to be clear to show you just what I meant, but, unless I’m working with Guitar Pro, I never write them up on the computer. It’s quicker to doodle one and photocopy it after.

You don’t have to actually write the measures, you could, for example, write “Fmaj7-1 measure, Dmadd9-1 measure, play twice. If this works for you and your band, then go ahead. As long as everyone involved understands what’s written, then that’s fine.

Using this method, you can bring a song into the band even if the guys have never heard it before. Start playing it and they’ll be into it before you’re halfway through it, and making the appropriate changes.

The best-kept secret in the music business is The Publisher.

Most of you have heard of the publisher. On every CD booklet, you’ll find something like “all songs published by ASCAP” or something similar. What exactly does the publisher do?

Many years ago, before the invention of recorded music, the Publisher printed songs, much like a book publisher does and made them available to the public. If, for example, Beethoven wanted an orchestra to play one of his symphonies, it had to be published first.

Nowadays, they essentially are responsible for making the songs public. What they are always looking for are songs. Salable songs. Their main business is buying songs and reselling them to recording “artists”. For example, if Celine Dion is looking for songs for a new album, she’ll go to a publisher and see what material is available.

Often, though, the artists won’t buy the songs, but borrow them. That costs nothing, yet the publisher is the one who collects all royalties. That is because the publisher owns the copyrights. Let’s backtrack a bit… You write a song, you own the copyrights. You want the song published by someone else, you sell it. Selling it means selling the copyrights.

Hence, you sold a song for $25,000 to a publisher. It became a huge hit and all the royalties amount to $750,000. The publisher makes a profit of $725,000.

Then why go to a publisher? Because he has access to more resources than you’ll ever have. These people have better relationships with folks in the industry than anybody else. They have to: they provide the songs.

In our example, if you hadn’t accepted the 25K, you might never have sold the song.

A publisher, especially early on in your career, can be a godsend. It doesn’t matter that you may lose profit if you sell your songs, in the end, you’ll still be making good money. You see, publishers tend to be logical people. If they like your songs and think that they can sell them, they need you to continue writing them. How can you write songs if you’re working eight hours a day? You still can, but not as many as if it were what you spent most of your time on.

If a publisher likes your songs enough to do business with you, he’ll make sure your bills are paid. Even if it takes five years, he’ll be paying all the bills and you’ll be writing songs full time.

Also, you don’t need to sell a publisher your songs. You can enter some sort of deal with them where they’ll take a percentage of the royalties. Everything is negotiable.

What is more difficult is finding these people. They don’t go around with signs on them saying who they are. And very few advertise.

The Internet is one place for looking. You may come up with a few. Other places are guidebooks. Most countries/states/provinces will have a sort of guidebook called, more or less, “Who Does What“. These should contain contact addresses for music publishers. Call first, some of them are not in the song business at all, but instead collect old material that’s now in the Public Domain.

As we’ve mentioned before on this site, presentation counts a lot. As for the recordings, with a publisher, always try to be as minimal as possible. If you can, a simple guitar and voice is perfect. They don’t care for your arrangements. They can take a country song and turn it into a dance song. So don’t try to impress them with arrangements… You won’t.

And don’t despair if a Publisher doesn’t like your songs, they’re not always right. Bach, when he started composing, tried to sell his music to publishers. He was ridiculed. He was told he had no talent. He never again tried to sell his music. After he died, his brother discovered the more than 3,000 pieces of music he had written. Not one published. And nobody had known that he composed… Today, only Beethoven outsells him. And not by much. To give you an idea, Beethoven would have to stop selling altogether and Celine Dion would have to double her sales, for over a hundred years, before she even came close to selling what he’s sold.

There are three avenues you can take. Today, we’ll be looking at the first two. The third deserves a spot of its own.

Avenue one is the most obvious, and the one that makes the most sense. Yet, it can be the most difficult. This one consists of singing them yourself, or having them sung by someone in a band you are leading.

Now, for a lot of people, this avenue is one they haven’t looked at for various reasons. The most common is: ‘I can’t sing’. Almost everyone can sing. Yet, not everyone has a nice voice. But that never stopped Bob Dylan. Probably the worst voice in music (worse even than Tom Petty’s). And what about Neil Young? If you look hard enough, you can come up with countless examples. Even today. Ever heard the guy from Semisonic?

Another common reason is people think they’re bad musicians. So what? I’m sure they’re a little better now, but I saw U2 about 15 years ago (The Unforgettable Fire tour) and, believe me, none of them could play their instruments. How about Pink Floyd? Only one good musician (David Gilmour), yet the music is great.

So, perhaps all you need is a bit of courage and self-confidence. If you choose this way, then you have to decide whether you’ll be going with a band, a back-up band or entirely solo. You have to manage yourself or get someone you have complete confidence in and manage for you.

There are, of course, very valid reasons for not singing your songs yourself. Perhaps you simply have no interest in a career as a singer. And that’s OK.

So what do you do?

The second avenue is to find someone who will sing your songs. Unfortunately, this one also requires a lot of work. Actually, they all do.

It means going around clubs and festivals (partying and drinking) and finding a voice. Well, a bit more than that, the person also needs to have a presence and a look.

What you are looking for is a singer who performs no original material because she/he doesn’t write songs. Then you approach this person and offer your songs. Of course, this doesn’t happen over the initial ‘Hello, my name is”, but you get the idea.

If your songs are not exactly in the style as what this singer does, it’s not really important. You need to steer your songs toward this person and this person toward your songs. Sort of meet in the middle.

Now, the best way to insure success is to continue to involve yourself in this person’s career, essentially manage their career. Yes, more work.

In my mind, this is most likely the most difficult route of all.

I realize we aren’t going into too much detail at this time, but I’m trying to answer a lot of questions without going over the subject for several months.

Next week: the third avenue: The music world’s best kept secret.

I mentioned a while back that most songwriters tend to write their songs in an “unplugged” style. I tend to do this myself, most of the time. The harmony I incorporate with the voice, through the lyrics.

Then comes the time to arrange it.

Usually, this is fairly straightforward. You’ve written the song, and while you’ve been writing it and playing it and hearing it inside your head. You usually know how it’s supposed to sound.

Yet, every once in a while, you get that one song which doesn’t behave like the rest.

You should try different things. Changing the tempo. Playing the rhythm with a keyboard instead of a guitar. Changing the strumming pattern. Taking out a verse, adding a bridge. Putting a verse where a chorus should be.

But what if the structure is perfect the way it is?

About sixteen years ago, I wrote this fairly simple song. Two chords in the chorus and two more in the verses. Quite simple, actually. But it sounds good and it has the potential of becoming a hit. But I’ve never performed the song. Why? I could never figure out a proper arrangement for it.

In my mind, this was a fairly upbeat song. Fast tempo, lots of riffs and distorted guitar. The whole band playing along and having fun. Problem is, it didn’t work. I never got it to sound right.

I tried to record it seven times, using seven different arrangements and none of them worked.

A few weeks ago, I was discussing this with a guitarist who used to play with some of the big names, here in Québec. This is one song that I want to record for my next demo, but I have to make it work. He asked me to play it. I did. He listened. He borrowed my guitar and started finger-picking it. Very slowly. I sang along.

To my surprise, it worked! It was so simple! Yet I’d never thought of it…

Which is why I want to talk about working with others for arrangements. I don’t mean that you should turn over all of your songs to others so that they may arrange them, but you should play those more difficult songs to others to get their input.

Some people are very good at this. Actually, there are some people who’s jobs it is to arrange songs. That’s all they do.

You see, some songwriters always get stuck at the “unplugged” part. They have no idea how to arrange their songs. If that’s your case, then that’s OK. It doesn’t mean you won’t make it. It just means that you’ll need someone else to arrange all of your songs for you.

But if you can’t find a particular arrangement for a song, it might be a good idea to try and enlist someone else’s aid. As I said, some people’s jobs are to arrange songs, it’s what they are good at. Some people have a knack for it. If you know someone like that, I suggest you stick close to them.

Of course, some people will ask for money. Others may ask for a co-writing credit. Normally, you shouldn’t share the credit with someone unless they make a major contribution. You may want to try and only share the composing credit and not the lyrical one. Remember our arrangements? 50% for lyrics and 50% for music. Offer them to share the music credit and they end up with 25% of the total credit instead of 50%. And your name should come first. They can’t arrange without your music, can they?

Before we go any further, let me advise you of a few things: First off, if you haven’t done so, you might want to read some of A-J Charron’s articles on the Songwriter’s Page concerning this subject (not to mention those of mine!), as well as look over some of the latest threads over on the Guitar Forums (or even create a few new ones yourself). I know that a lot of people may not agree with me, but I have always found that the more ideas and angles I manage to get a handle on, the more I am able to think about and the more I think about things, the more (and better) I tend to write.

If you think about why you listen to a songwriter, often to the point of getting all his/her/their work (or even simply listen to the same CD or even the same song over and over and over again), it is because you identify with this artist. You have a bond with this person who wrote these lyrics. You can’t wait to hear what the artist comes up with next.

Believe it or not, the same thing applies to you. There will be people who will want to hear about anything you have to say, simply owing to their interest in listening to your unique spin on things.

So let’s get out there and write! Right? Well, maybe some questions first, like…

Why? (Finding Your Reason)

One of my friends tells me that writing is often like breathing. It’s part of what keeps you alive. When she’s not writing she’s thinking
about what she’d be writing if she was.

I’ve often felt this. I write songs for many reasons but perhaps I could also argue that I write because I don’t know how to live without writing. Lyric writing, like writing melodies, is a marvelous craft. You want to match the tonal quality of the music and you need to have words precise enough to convey what you want to say in a relatively small amount of time. It’s like taking all of the words in whichever language you use and squeezing them through a filter until just the pure essence of your ideas and emotions remains.

Think about songs you love – more often than not something moves you because the words are something that you have often, if not always, thought or felt but could not find the way to express. No pun intended, but it strikes a chord deep inside of you. It’s as if someone managed to put your own emotions into words.

There is certainly no shortage of things to feel strongly about. And you’re ahead of the game if you’ve already said to yourself “this is probably why there are so many love songs in the world.” Indeed.

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before, too – I find that writing music often helps me to put a lot of things in my life into perspective. Traumatic things become easier to deal with, sadness becomes beauty. The world becomes a place of wonder again.

So think about it? Why do you want to write a song? Usually when you can come up with an answer to this question, you will in all likelihood also answer…

What? (Finding Your Line)

Just where do these lyrical ideas come from anyway and how is it that some people can put them together effortlessly while others (myself included) have to literally wrestle onto the page?

Putting money, fame and fortune (with all the trappings, clothes cars (more guitars!!!) and that ever important “Behind the Music” appearance) aside for a moment, the “why” to writing is usually the simple fact that something has struck you as being important enough to write about. It can be a feeling, an emotion or reaction (or even the absence of an emotion or reaction) brought on by a specific incident or situation. Love, as we’ve noted, is always right up there at the top of most lists. Go figure, huh?

But all sorts of things can move you. Personally speaking, I am always taking and making note of things that occur to me in the normal course of day to day life. A simple everyday observation might become the basis of a song. Remember everything starts with just a line or even a word.

Okay, now you’re saying, “Dave, I get this – but it doesn’t help. There are, as you’ve pointed out (in that wonderful way you have with words) already tons of love songs. For that matter, there are already more song lyrics dealing with every conceivable topic that one could pick. I want mine to be different. Where do I start?”

Well I’ve got some news for you – you’re right about this. The only thing that is going to make your song “different” is going to be the
fact that you wrote it, that these lyrics represent your particular take on things concerning life, love and the pursuit of whatever it is you enjoy chasing.

Example: when I moved to Chicago (shortly after that meteor strike that wiped out the dinosaurs), my new roommate, himself a native, gave me a rundown on the local climate, “We have three seasons – July, August and Winter.” I thought that this was a great joke, that is until a few months later when I found out it wasn’t a joke. One evening in the middle of October a cold front moved in and sat down and didn’t leave for months. And as I was walking back to my place that night I thought, yes indeed, winter comes early here. And that thought was immediately followed by another – “that would make a great line for a song!” So when I got back to my (warm) room, I wrote it down and then promptly forgot about it until the following October!

But the point is that, whether I knew it or not, I had planted a seed that would (years later, actually) grow into a song. Lyrics often grow out of stray lines plucked from out of the mundane as well as the extraordinary. A very important thing to remember, though, is that not each and every line has to be a work of art – we’ll come back to this in a moment.

As I mentioned, A-J has writing some very interesting pieces on lyrics. This would be an appropriate place to mention his column À la Bowie in which he discusses the old “pull a rabbit out of a hat” routine. A lot of people like this style of writing. It kind of goes without saying that if someone tells you he or she is a songwriter, then that person has a warehouse of lines waiting to be fitted with a melody.

Speaking of which, you can also kind of come up with lines in reverse. As I’ve said on many other occasions, I’m one of those people who, as a rule, tends to sum up with the music first and the words second. Not always, but usually. So then I start strumming my chords or playing my riff while singing something (almost anything really) off the top of my head. And occasionally I will come up with something that really and truly fits the mood and feel of this song-in-progress. That is as long as I remember to write it down!

Once I have a line, or at least an idea of what I want to write about, I usually find I am ready to move onto the next question:

Who? (Finding Your Voice)

It strikes me as hilarious that people who would consider it extremely gauche to assume an actor wasn’t acting (Anthony Hopkins, to my knowledge, rarely eats people) have absolutely no problem with giving writers each and every trait associated with their creations. Think of the sheer idiocy behind the backlash concerning Randy Newman’s “Short People” (remembering that, in all probability, these were the same people who’d sing “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” at the top of their lungs…).

But this does point out that the “who,” the narrator/singer of your song is just as important as the “what” that the song is about. Sometimes even more so. I don’t know how many of you might remember this but in the early eighties a Soviet fighter shot down a South Korean passenger jet. I became obsessed with writing about this but was faced with one very big obstacle. And please feel free to laugh about how petty this is – I really didn’t want our band’s lead singer introducing my song as “This is our statement on the recent tragedy of the Korean people” or some such similar grandstanding statement. So I had to come up with some way of writing about it without even remotely referring to the incident itself.

So I had to ask myself, “Who is singing this song? Who would be the most effective narrator?” and eventually settled on what proved, for me, to be the best possibly choice: a family member or loved one who was simply waiting to meet someone from that ill-fated flight:

When You Come Home
- Hodge

I bought you flowers
Put them on the kitchen table
Thought you’d like some flowers when you come home
It’s been two hundred and sixty nine days without your smile
I’m going to tell you I miss you when you come home

Sitting at the airport
Dying to see your face again
It’s like waiting for the end of everything
Sitting at the airport
Dying to hear your voice again
It’s like waiting for the end of everything

I’ve been reading the papers
They’re having some war somewhere
And riots somewhere else
I never seem to care when you come home
I’ve been talking to strangers
You never know who’s following you
Or who you might bang into when you come home

Sitting at the airport
Dying to see your face again
It’s like waiting for the end of everything
Sitting at the airport
Dying to hear your voice again
It’s like waiting for the end of everything

I made you dinner
Now it’s cold
I’m going to tell you I love you when you come home

Sitting at the airport
Dying to see your face again
It’s like waiting for the end of everything
Sitting at the airport
Dying to hear your voice again
It’s like waiting for the end of everything

As you can see, choosing the appropriate narrator (and this does include yourself, by the way) can make your life as a songwriter a little easier. While I have never been in this situation myself, I have been left waiting for people who never showed up and I could draw on this experience and the emotions that came with it in order to write about this particular incident. And this is the real key to songwriting – do what you can to make it real. Even if you choose to write about something that is completely foreign to you, do so from a point that you can understand. As long as you have a handle on your narrator, why he/she is singing this song, the sorts of words and phrases that he or she might be likely to use, you bring the truth of emotions to your song. Remember that you don’t always have to write about a situation that you have personally experienced, but you should have a real empathy with the emotions (or even the lack of emotions) involved.

How? (Finding Your Song’s Path)

Not only do songwriters ply their craft in various ways, you will note that often those ways will vary from song to song. I just showed you a song lyric I wrote from an idea coupled with an ideal narrator. But what about if you just have a single line and no idea of how to proceed?

Let’s go back to that earlier line, “winter comes early here.” As I mentioned, this haunted me for years before I managed to come up with something that worked within the frame of a song. And, truth be told, I used it for that very tired “boy meets girl boy loses girl” story line that was old way before the invention of musical instruments.

But again, truth be told, what hasn’t been done eighteen million times already? The object is, as we’ve noted, to put your particular spin on things out there for the world to hear. What I’ve tried to do here is to give you a step by step thought process in order to try to (a) take some of the mystery (and hopefully fear) out of the whole process and (b) give you a few pointers in the “little things” you can do to help develop your own lyrical style.

In thinking about the line “winter comes early here,” I realized that, besides (obviously) referring to the weather, that this phrase could apply to relationships and hearts as well and this is what sent me off on writing the typical story. I had my line. I decided to use a thinly veiled version of myself as a narrator. Now all I had to do is fill in the rest.

A few important things to note here – first (and this is something that my English teachers in high school would tell me over and over and over again), when writing something, it is much more effective to “show” something rather than to “tell” it. The more you simply report the facts and allow your listener to draw his/her own conclusions, the more that listener becomes an active participant in the song. Now, as you’ll see, you can make all kinds of editorial slants in your reporting of the story. After all, an unbiased narrator is as rare as an uncompromising politician, no? Trust the intelligence of your audience. More times than not, they may point out things to you that you may not have realized.

Second, you should never, never ever write with the expectation that each and every line is going to be a thing of art. You are going for an overall feeling. Songs, by their nature (hell, anything really), are meant to be taken as whole complete things. Yes, you will invariably have a favorite line or two, but it is the entire sensation that should stay with you. But again, just to be a complete pain, let me tell you that by carefully choosing words, even your “throwaway” lines will contribute immensely to the finished product.

Finally, stay true to the narration. I know we’ve covered this but it does bear repeating. The easiest way to reach out beyond yourself and your experiences is to get so far inside of what you do know that you can explain it as easily as breathing.

Winter Comes So Early Here
- Hodge

I was singing for my supper in a local café
Prolonging my existence one more night
She came in seeking shelter from the early April rain
Sat down at the table on my right
And somehow we got around to talking
And we laughed ‘till we were pretty close to tears
Talking ‘bout the weather and the things that might have been
How winter comes so early here

Chapter one – boy meets girl. One of my friends who loves this song was kind enough to point out to me that anyone capable of writing that second line so casually would probably doom any relationship. Note the repetition of the weather themes early on and the general tone of sadness. Even laughter has “tears.”

Well I got myself a job down at the bar where she was working
Some nights we’d end up at her place and some at mine
And I wrote some silly songs of love and other long lost causes
They were so dumb but I was young and I didn’t mind
And I’d tell her, “Hey lady, I’m in love with you.”
And she’d laugh and say, “Aren’t you a dear?
Do you think that this will make our summer longer?
No, winter comes so early here.”

Chapter two – boy loves girl. Even though it is a fun relationship, the fact that the narrator lumps love in with “other long lost causes”
pretty much gives you an idea of where this is headed. Personally, I find actual conversations much more enlightening and entertaining than merely saying “I loved her and she loved me.” To each his own.

Though I could brush away her tears I couldn’t begin to touch her sadness
Anymore than I could understand my own
In the end the strain just drained the little hope we’d left between us
And I found her pencilled message by the phone
Said “It’s a shame we didn’t meet each other years ago
Before we learned of all the hurt and hate and fear
As it is our hearts found autumn way too fast
And winter comes so early here.”

Chapter three – boy loses girl. My early songs are very wordy. This is why I’d always try to find someway to slip in an internal rhyme or alliteration whenever possible. “Pencilled message” is precisely the way that this narrator would write something the rest of us would call a “note.”

Now I look out of my window but I only see my face
And through that face I view this world we share
The windy city streets still wear their sullen old facades
Of twisted concrete, shattered glass and wooden stairs
And I watch in wonder as my mind
Makes moments of the memories of years
All that I remember is I never saw her leave
And winter comes so early here.

Epilogue – picking up the pieces. This is actually the image that got me (finally) writing the song. Looking out a window in December and seeing my reflection and the rest of the city and thinking how often I forget that I’m always looking “through” myself in order to see the rest of the world. And just to show you that I pepper everything with puns, “stares” can replace “stairs” in order to complete the “city with a face” image.

So, why’d she leave? Was it him? Was it her? I don’t think that this even matters to our narrator. It was something as inevitable as the passing of the seasons.

When (Finding Your Time)

The hardest thing for most people to realize is that, sometimes, writing takes time. Patience, whether regarding your writing or your playing, will always be your greatest ally.

But having said that, I will tell you that you have to write, write, write in order to become a songwriter. Practice is important here as well. I try to take time out every week to do nothing but write out ideas. Sometimes things work. Most times they don’t. But you never know.

If you ever get bored, give yourself this challenge – write a love song. A happy, joyous love song. And do it without using the word “love”
even once. This is nowhere near as easy as you might think. Speaking for me, it has to be exceptional for me to be happy with something like this. That is why I found myself utterly delighted one morning last August when I was able to come up with the following chorus:

Welcome Home
- Hodge

It’s hard not to believe in heaven
When I’m watching you sleep
When your eyes can drive away the deepest darkness that I know
It’s easy to believe in angels
When that’s the company you keep
When everything is singing “Welcome home
Welcome home”

And even though, as of this writing, I have scrapped more verses than I can count, I know that the rest of the words for this are somewhere inside of me. I’ll find them yet.

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see covered in future columns. You can either drop off a note at the Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next week…

Peace

Let’s think about this for a minute. Okay, that’s long enough.

I should have said, “Let’s consider this statement from a songwriter’s point of view.” Whether or not you realize it, you yourself may be one of your biggest obstacles when it comes to songwriting. Think about how you go about writing – especially if you’re like me and happen to be one of those “let’s strum around and see what comes up” sort of folks. Well, chances are you pick up your guitar and the first chord you play will be an E, A, C, D or G. Unless, of course, you happen to be in a mad, sad or bad frame of mind and then you pound out an Em or an Am.

And then you start singing, humming, whistling along and before you know it you’ve got something that sounds pretty much like many of the things that you’ve already written. Or something that someone else has written.

Part of this is due to habit. We invariably fall into patterns. Playing the guitar, after all, is in a sense simply a series of patterns: chord progressions, rhythms for strumming or even how and when we use our fingers to pick the strings. With time, these habits become deeply ingrained. Now add to that the fact that (most of) our voices fall into a limited range to begin with and you may get an insight as to why it can be hard to consistently write interesting new material. Or even come up with a lead that doesn’t sound like it came out of the “Riffs ‘R’ Us” catalogue…

But take heart! You may not realize it, but you also have factory installed safeguards that can aid you in keeping those creative juices flowing. All it takes is using that marvelous brain of yours. That, and a little theory.

Today we’ll look at how you can restore some creativity to your melodies and we’ll also look at a sadly forgotten source which should amaze you no end. Life should always be this simple!

Finding Your Borders

In Singing In A New Year, we talked about how important it was to realistically evaluate your vocal capabilities. This is especially true when it comes to songwriting, or specifically, to writing melodies.

But before we get any further, let me also point out that this is also true when you are writing something for someone else to sing. Even if you are lucky enough to be writing for some vocalist who has a three and a half octave range, please remember this: the best melodies (“best” meaning “most memorable”) are ones that anyone can sing. This is how you can tell that what you’ve written is “catchy,” when you hear someone else humming or singing or whistling your melody.

Okay, then. Finding one’s range is truly not that difficult thing to do. Sing a note. Any note. What note is it? Well, one way of finding out is to try to match it to a note on your guitar. But instead of this turning into a snipe hunt, let’s reverse our logic. Play an open D or G string and see if you can sing that note. If you’re male, chances are likely that you can. Ladies, you might want to try your open E (1st) string or better yet, the G on the third fret of that string. Got it? Good (And by the way, this is much easier to do with a keyboard if you happen to have one laying around).

Now once you have your starting note, simply go in one direction, note by note, until you cannot accurately hit the next note. Then go in the other direction. Most people’s ranges are within two octaves. Remember, this is not a contest, it is an attempt to get some accurate data, so don’t “pad” your stats. It won’t help you in the long run and for our purposes, you’ll see that it will become an incredibly moot point. For the sake of an example, here’s my vocal range; You will first notice that I have compared it with the notes covered by the first four frets on the strings of my guitar. You will also see that I have taken the liberty of giving myself some important footnotes:

A bit high for a guy, but I’ve lived with that all my life (and as much as I keep waiting for my voice to change, I doubt very much that it’s going to happen at the age of forty-three). You can see that if I trim out all the “in my dreams” stuff, as well as the fringes of both sets of “can hit but not confident,” I’m left with a pretty typical range. For the sake of clarity, I am just going to write out those notes in the key of C major:

This is kind of funny, because, having done this, it’s easy to figure out why I’m very comforatble with songs in the key of C (or A minor). Just about everything is going to fall somewhere within my range. I’ve got a full octave (from C to shining C…)(just couldn’t resist that one, sorry) plus a little cushion on either side.

When I start a writing the melody of a song in the key of C, the chances are very likely that I will start on a note of the C major chord, that is, either C, E, or G. Now obviously, starting and ending on C would give my melody the greatest sense of tonality in that key, but with my range, starting on the high C leaves me little choice but to have a downward melody. Beginning a song on the low C pretty much dictates that I’m going to have a rising one. E and especially G, as you can see (again, sorry – I’m really in a punchy mood for some reason!), give me plenty of play on both sides. Anyway you look at it, I’ve got a fairly good amount of space to create a melody.

But I can’t write (or play) every song in the key of C, can I?

Framing And Filtering

I’m a big fan of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and no, you haven’t been mystically transported into another article on a non-guitar related website. Part of my enchantment with their films (and many many other silent movies) is directly related to my fascination with music, specifically the pop song as an art form.

You see, it is impossible not to be creative when you have no rules or boundaries with which to contend. But when you are working within a specific framework, whether it be a pop song or a watercolor painting or a haiku, this is when your creativity often has to work overtime. To be able to make something new, something unique and yours, and to make it still fit within a specific framework, well, needless to say, this takes some doing.

Do me a favor and take a look at the two ranges that I already printed up. First my full range and then my “C major range.” Look at what I’ve done. I’ve actually taken one limited range and limited it even further! Is this crazy?

Not entirely. You’ve already seen in the examples we used last time, that we are fully capable of using notes from “outside” of the given scale should they happen to suit our progression. I could, for instance, create a chord progression and an accompanying melody like this:

and it would work fine. And for those of you wondering where this “came from,” I simply made it up. Just now. In this case, the chord progression came first (because I knew I wanted to bring in as many “non C major” factors as possible) and the progression pretty much dictated the melody (again, the purpose of the melody was to bring in a number of notes from outside my C major scale).

(And for those of you wondering just how to write this out, theory-wise, well, it’s simpler than you might think: I, V of VI, VI, V of II, II, V of V, V)

But the point that I’m trying to make here is that you can constantly be giving yourself new frameworks in which to work by simply taking your capo and changing the key in which you’re working. Say I put my capo on the fifth fret and then try this same piece. Even though I am playing the same “chords,” by using the capo this progression is now in the key of F and you can see that I dramatically altered where it fits into my range:

You can see that I’ve put this in the “red zone” of my range and the chances are pretty good that it’s going to sound dreadful when I sing it. But I’ve really grown to like this chord progression so I’m going to first look at my range again, only this time I’m going to filter it for the key of F:

Can you see how radically different this is from my C range? Probably not, since the notes are virtually the same (Bb now in stead of B being the only change). But where in the key of C I had a full octave from root to root, I do not have that luxury here in F. My strongest range is actually between the fifths of this key (from C to C again). And this will effect my melody making process in no small way.

Let’s try to come up with another melody for this particular progression. One that I can sing. And since I still find myself in a “waltzing” mood, I’m going to try to keep the general feel of the piece the same. You, of course can feel free to play around with it as you see fit. Again, I want to tell you that I am doing this on the fly, simply strumming and singing nonsense syllables and this one is a first take as well:

Notice some of the small differences between these melodies. In the key of C, I started out on the low C and had nowhere to go but up. Here in F (starting on the higher C this time), I have play in both directions and my melody has many more curves to its shape.

Now, we could go on and do yet another example, say in the key of A or Ab where my range would be strongest between the thirds, but I’m hoping that you have gotten the gist of this. Just because your range is limited, that in no way limits what you might be able to do when it comes to composing a melody. Try not to think in terms of limitations but rather in terms of focus and framing and you will surprise yourself with what you can come up with. This is why I sincerely try to write each successive song I do in a different key from the last. Even if I don’t write in each of the twelve keys, I have many more chances of variety in eight than I do with just three. There’s a lot of territory to explore out there.

“Those Who Cannot Remember The Past…

…are doomed to repeat it,” or something like that, no? Well, as good or as poor a philosophy that this may be regarding world history, remembering the past is possibly the most important thing a songwriter can do. You have at your disposal such a vast catalogue of melodies and chord progressions and ideas that it can be positively overwhelming at times. But strangely enough, most people close their minds to much of this, simply because a lot of older songs are “not their style of music.”

My father played saxophone for small groups (three to five musicians) that played for weddings and various formal functions. Because of the age of the people involved, I heard a lot of music that was written in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. And I will still find myself humming a melody or two at the oddest times. And what melodies they are! If you’ve never taken the time to listen to “Deep Purple” (the song, not the group – although I like them, too) or “Old Cape Cod” or even something that should be familiar to everyone like “As Time Goes By,” do yourself a favor. Don’t just write off something because it doesn’t fit the image you’re molding yourself into.

Melodies are infectious. There is a good reason that musicians use the term “standard” to describe what is considered a classic song, regardless of what era in which it was written. Not only is it a “standard” song to be included in one repertoire, it also is a “standard” by which we measure quality and timelessness.

So the next time you’re in an elevator or a mall or a supermarket, don’t just roll your eyes at the music. Listen to the melody and try to understand what it has (or doesn’t have) that makes it work.

There are a lot of songs that I don’t like. But I will be the first to tell you that just because a song does nothing to me that does not mean it is not well-written and perhaps likely to become a new standard.

Don’t ever let yourself get caught in a “label” game. Let me challenge you to find something worthwhile in each and every song you hear – I don’t care if it’s rock, metal, rap, country, pop, Native American Indian, Indian, Northern African, salsa, blues, synthopop, and please stop me before I belabor the point.

Do yourself a favor – just as being a good guitarist involves listening as much as playing, being a good songwriter also requires that you listen to as much as you possibly can. It’s only when you open yourself up to inspiration that you find no end to your own creative possibilities.

If you think about it, there is little that hasn’t been done songwriting-wise. You’ve only got so many notes, so many chords. What hasn’t been said?

But the missing element will always be you. You have not been heard from. And you have a take on things that no one else does. Hey, if you write a stale love song (and get in line, there’s lots of them out there, mine included!), at least it’s your stale love song and you never know who is going to take it to heart. But unless you write it, no one ever will.

The most exciting stuff that is being done (regardless of where and when it is/was done) is the music that combines the best of the past in a new form, a form that you have molded and stamped with your vision.

As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or topics you’d like to see covered in a future column. You can either drop off a note at any of the newly revamped Guitar Forums or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next week…

Peace

Check out Theory/Songwriting Workshop 1: Putting Things Together.

Or, conversely, you’ve got a melody but you’re unhappy with the chords you’ve got. Not that they are necessarily bad, you’d just like to jazz it up a bit. Do something a little different.

Seriously, I cannot tell you how many emails or forum discussion threads I have seen that pretty much boil down to one of these two scenarios. And, of course, it’s not a subject that can be answered with a simple “just do this.” Well, it can, but you should always be highly suspicious of anyone who gives you such an answer. Even if it’s me…

So, over the next few months (every two to three weeks), we’re going to be examining how melodies and chords work together. And when I say “melodies,” I mean “leads” as well. After all, very often a lead is simply the guitar playing a melody of sorts. I’ve called these columns “workbooks” because not only will we look at specific examples from all kinds of songs, we’ll have exercises to try out original ideas as well. In fact, your input will pretty much determine whether or not we should make this a more or less permanent feature, much as the Easy Songs For Beginners page has become.

Two things before we start: First, you might want to read (or reread) my earlier column Christmas in June, which gives a very basic introduction to melody. Second (like you have to guess):

These files are the author’s own work and represent his interpretation of these songs. They are intended solely for private study, scholarship or research.

Okay, three things. Please let me once again explain that when we discuss things in terms of music theory, we primarily deal with the “rule” rather than the “exception.” You will find that what we discover will cover a lot of ground and help to make a lot of sense out of why certain chord progressions or shapes of melodies “work,” why they make sense to our ears. But do remember that there will always be exceptions. Think of this as a guide rather than as an authority.

Chickens And Eggs

As you might expect, especially as A-J or I have probably said so a few hundred times, different people approach music from different angles. And perhaps this is nowhere more evident than in songwriting.

I think it’s safe to say that, when writing a song, many people (myself included) first come up with a chord progression and then proceed to work from there. Or as Paul Simon once said, “I pick a key and start to play.” And actually, we’re going to start out even more simply than that; we’re going to just strum a single chord. Pick a chord, any one chord. I don’t care what it is. Have you got it? Good. Now choose a tempo and strum your chord.

And now, while strumming your chord, close your eyes and sing.

“Sing what?” you ask (and you’re probably also thinking, “Oh God! There was some devious reason for him to discuss singing and playing last week! (Singing In A New Year) We should have known…”). Doesn’t matter at this point. “La, la ,la” is perfectly fine. Come up with a melodic phrase, nothing more than two to four measures long, depending on your tempo of choice. The other important thing is to give your melody a bit of movement. Don’t just hang onto the same note for eternity. The first chord I picked was A minor. Here’s what I’ve just come up with (and I’ve included the single note TAB in case you need it):

As you can see (and hear), this melody simply dances around the notes of an A minor chord (A, C, and E) with a few other notes (B, G and D) thrown in for good measure. One of the reasons I included a TAB for this is so that some of you will make the connection that there’s not much difference between my melody and a slightly jazzed up Am picking pattern. Sometimes this is all it takes.

You can construct a melody with a relatively small range of notes, like this:

All this melodic phrase consists of is the upper voice of a blues/rock shuffle – 5, 6 and (flatted) 7 of the C major chord (and if you’re not sure what a shuffle is, then please check out the either Dan Lasley’s latest article (Playing Along) or the latest Easy Songs For Beginners piece, Before You Accuse Me) . That’s hardly a stretch for anyone’s voice.

If you’re more daring, try giving yourself a melody with a bit more of a range. Take a look at this phrase from McCartney’s Eleanor Rigby:

An important thing to glean from these last two examples is that, when it comes to melodies, you are never restricted to using only the notes in your given key. The Bb in the Beach Boys’ Do It Again as well as the C# in Eleanor Rigby are not part of the scales in their key signatures, but fit in just fine with the melody line. In fact, try it yourself using a regular B or C in the respective songs and see just how weird it sounds. It’s not that you can’t use the B or C, (both are in fact used in each song in question), it’s just that in this particular phrase, it sounds out of place.

Time And Place

Once you’ve tried single chord melody phrases for a while, the next logical step is to attempt to construct a melody (or better yet just a single phrase) over a chord progression. As always, start out fairly simply and gradually work your way up to more complex patterns. In regards to the chord progression, that is. Feel free to make your melodic phrase as simple or complex as your heart desires.

Consider that we already know that many, many, many, many songs are comprised of I, IV and V, in some order. Here are some examples of some phrases using similar, and occasionally identical, progressions:

You see that even though each pair of songs use the same chord progressions (although I have taken liberty in two places with the original key – Peter Pumpkinhead, for instance, I believe is in the key of A, but the progression is still I, IV) the melodies are markedly different. Some use long drawn-out notes; others jump all over the place and some very neatly rise and fall from one point to the next. This is why, even though there are a limited number of chord progressions, there can be so many different songs. Different people sing in different styles and have different ranges and vocal nuances and quite often songs will refect just that.

But don’t just take my word for it – let’s put it to the test. I’ve complied some chord progressions that are (and have been) fairly commonly used in songwriting. I’ve also taken the liberty to put them in certain guitar-friendly keys. Your task, should you decide to be so bold, is to come up with a melodic phrase (or two or three) for each one. Your own phrase. If you come up with a copy of a song you know, then you have to throw it back into the waters of your mind and start fishing all over again. If you’re happy with your results, then please by all means, send me a copy. If you don’t have a notation software, then simply write it out:

Progresion 1:

1st measure: G (quarter note), quarter rest, B (half note)
2nd measure: C (three eighth notes),
etc.,

I will write you to make certain I’ve got it right. Promise. Okay, here they are:

Again, please feel free to try out some of these. You will find it to be a good step towards developing your songwriting skills. And, believe it or not, your playing as well. You can choose whether or not to send them to me. In two or three weeks, we’ll do another “workshop,” this time starting with the melody and working out a progression and I’ll also not only show you where these particuar examples came from, but also share some of the melodies that you came up with. It should be an interesting and enlightening time. Next week we’ll talk about what Paul Simon said about “picking a key.” And we’ll also touch upon some great sources to find and study complexly stunning yet memorable melodies.

Once again I do need to drop a thank you to everyone who has written in the past month or so. Owing to all the year end projects at my “real job,” I’ve been a bit behind in both answering email and churning out these columns (not to mention the Songs For Beginners page). Your patience has been much appreciated and I hope that things have finally settled down for a while at least. As always, please feel free to write in with any questions, comments, concerns or a topic you’d like to see covered in a future column here at Guitar Noise. You can either drop off a note at the appropriate Guitar Forums page or email me directly at dhodgeguitar@aol.com.

Until next week…

Peace

Check out Theory/Songwriting Workshop 2: Home On Your Range

Go through his 35-year career and you’ll see that he’s touched everything. Pop, Dance, Electronic, Progressive, Classical, Jazz, Glam, Punk-Metal. Several of these style he invented.

Something else he invented is a random way of writing song lyrics.

Back in the early seventies, Bowie experimented a lot with lyrics-among other things. One of the things he did was rather original. He put together song lyrics without actually writing them.

What he would do was to cut out sentences from magazines and newspapers. Once he had enough to put a song together, say one sentence per line at around 25 lines per song, he would put them into a paper bag and draw them out one by one.

The first sentence he would draw would become the first line of the song. The second would follow it, and so on.

Of course, I’m sure you realize the first implication: the lines don’t have anything in common. The second is that you obviously won’t have the right amount of syllables to make it work. But that’s OK, what you do is adjust the lines, without actually changing words (you can take some out) to make them fit. Then you play around with them to make them work together.

Have I lost you? I think I’ve lost myself… But, if you listen to my girlfriend, she’ll tell you that’s not too hard…

Suppose the first sentence you’d draw was: “Children playing near the fountain” and that the second were “The crime rate rises”, followed by “35 died in the crash” and finally, “He never did get any respect during his time in the parliament”.

Of course, these are just sentences off the top of my head. What you’d get is this:

Children playing near the fountain
The crime rate rises
35 died in the crash
He never did get any respect during his time in the parliament

How can we associate these lines?

What are our elements?

Who: children, he
What: playing, crime rate, crash, respect
When: time in parliament
Where: near the fountain
Why: No specifics
How: No specifics

So we have children and an unspecified person who are playing, while the crime rate is important, we know of a crash and there is something about respect. We know of only one location, hence our story must take place near a fountain. The when is not really important. At least not at this time.

Our story now involves a group of children and another as yet unspecified person. Can we associate playing with the crime rate? Yes. Depending on the games, of course, but at this point it is something we must leave to the listener’s imagination, as we have no specifics. Is the matter of respect important? What if the unspecified “He” were one of the children?

As we analyze this, we see that it becomes easy to see links between unrelated events and people. Let’s look at it again:

Children playing near the fountain
The crime rate rises
35 died in the crash
He never did get any respect during his time in the parliament

That last sentence is much too long. As we decided that the time frame is irrelevant at this… time… let’s drop that reference, making the last line: He never did get any respect.

We now have:

Children playing near the fountain
The crime rate rises
35 died in the crash
He never did get any respect

Let’s play with the words a little:

Children play by the fountain
Crimes rise (note: let’s drag this vocally)
35 dead from the crash
He never gained respect

It’s obviously still not quite clear. But don’t forget that we’ve only one verse here. As we’ve seen in the past, you shouldn’t tell everything from the start.

Of course, like everything else, this will get easier as you do it more often. If you don’t want to get a paper bag (they are a rare commodity these days), you can try this electronically. Bowie had a friend write a little program for him. I’m not a programmer, but I can do a few things with a spreadsheet.

If you download the following file and open it with Microsoft Excel, you’ll get a spreadsheet with 40 rows of numbers in the first column and nothing else. What you do is type in your random sentences, preferably taken from newspapers, magazines, websites, etc, into the second (or “B”) column. You’ll notice that the every time you press enter, the numbers will change. It’s supposed to do that. These are randomly generated numbers that keep changing.

Once you’re done (you don’t have to use 40), press the “Sort Ascending” icon. That’s the one with the blue “A” over the red “Z” with an arrow pointing down beside it. Or, press: Data, Sort, OK.

The sentences will sort themselves according to the randomly generated number in column “A”.

You can use this file as many times as you wish. Have fun!

Part of the process as a songwriter is to network and meet the right people. Even if you write the best songs and Clapton doesn’t come to your heel as a guitarist, you’ll still go nowhere if nobody hears about you.

Even if all you want to do is have others perform your songs, they won’t do it if they don’t know you exist.

Answering Ads

The first thing you should do is get to know the people around you. Going to clubs and talking to the people who perform there is not a bad idea. On the other hand, you must be selective when doing so. Too many bar performers don’t want to go anywhere else (and that’s fine) or simply have reached a point where they don’t even know how to get ahead.

One thing that can bring surprising results is to answer adds. “Songwriter looking for musicians”. “Drummer needs singer”, etc. First you get to know the people out there and what they want to do. Second, they know about you. Maybe this drummer will get a call from someone who is looking for somebody like you and he’ll relay your number. Don’t be afraid of telling others who you are and what you do. And give out your phone number!

One way or another, it’s a great way to gauge who else is out there. You’ll normally get a pretty good idea, fast enough, of who stands a chance of making it and of who doesn’t.

Another reason why you should reply to adds is that you never know who you’re going to meet.

Don’t for a second believe that you have the faintest idea of who the industry players are unless you are in the industry. Names you read on CD covers or overhear are just the point of the iceberg. Some people in the business have strange ways of discovering new artists.

Other times you may stumble upon someone who’s spent twenty years in the industry and is just interested in helping somebody else make it.

This guy can be Chris De Burgh’s old guitarist. The name may not ring a bell when you hear it, but as you talk to the guy you start to get an idea of who he is.

Be a Good Student

If you stumble upon someone like this, be a good student. These people have been in the industry, they know how it works. It doesn’t mean that they have all the answers and that they know all the ins and outs, but they do know a lot more than you do. You can dramatically shorten the learning curve by taking these people’s advice.

Also, if they like what you do, they can introduce you to the right people.

One way or another, you can’t lose by listening to what they have to say. But beware: you won’t like everything they have to say. A lot of people still believe that talent is the main element for making it. It isn’t.

First, it’s an industry. Things like your look are much more important than your voice. The quality of your songs isn’t as important as how many copies the record companies can sell.

You may not like hearing this, but if you understand it, you stand a much better chance of going somewhere.

The Five Year Process

In general, once you seriously start to work on your career (which doesn’t mean doing top 40 in a bar, but rather playing your own songs in an empty room or establishing a serious network), it takes on average five years to make it to the record deal.

One of the reasons for this is plain: why should a record company invest money in someone who doesn’t have what it takes?

Most people will drop out in the first year. After a first contact with the record companies, they will get discouraged and give up. Every subsequent year, other will drop out until only a very few last to the fifth year. Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean that you automatically succeed after five years. Some people do get signed up right away. They, however, are the exceptions. Others will have to stay at it for ten years. The average is five.

Representation

Another thing that will greatly help is having someone to represent you. Bob Roper gave us some advice on getting a manager (When is it Time to Get a Manager?). For most of us, managing and meeting up with execs is not what we’re good at it. We just don’t have a good head for business. That’s normal for just about any artist. Get someone to do that part for you.

You don’t need to get an agent who’s in the business already, although that’s certainly not a bad idea. A lot of people get somebody they know and trust to represent them. Someone with a good head for business. A girl/boy-friend, a pal from College with a degree in business admin, a family member. It also adds a bit of weight to your whole package when a record company is approached by a representative rather than by the artist him/herself.

Bottom Line

In the end, whatever you do is your decision. Nobody can make any decisions for you, nor can they tell you what to do. They can only act as guides. What you must do is listen to their advice, combine it with your ambition and try to arrive at a result you can be happy with.

The point is that no matter what emotions you write about, and no matter how you write about them, there are no two people who will respond the same way.

What touches me may not necessarily touch you. And vice versa. So how do you write something very emotional under these circumstances?

First, and as I mentioned a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away) (So You Want to Be a Songwriter?), music is made to be felt, not heard. If you can’t understand this or work with this, you might as well start writing for Celine Dion, you’ll never write an honest song.

What emotions drive you? And how do you represent them?

This is where you have to work backwards.

As an artist, it is difficult to be in touch with your emotions. That’s why you are an artist. Your art is not only the delivery system, it is also mechanism through which you touch your emotions.

First, take your guitar, keyboard, bass, whatever instrument you play or, if you play more than one, which ever instrument you feel like composing with at the moment. Listen to your instincts. Then play around with it. Try chords, variations of chords, successions of notes, different rhythm patterns. Stop when something strikes you. Play it again.

And again. And again. Get comfortable with it, listen to your emotions, see what’s being stirred within you.

Most likely, you’ll end up with a verse. Yes, a verse. One would think it would be the chorus, but in most instances, that first pattern will be the verse. Why? Because at that moment you are not completely in touch with the emotion itself and what it represents. Instead, you are only in touch with a stirring of the emotion. A sensation, if you will.

It’s only as you work more on it that you will become more familiar, more in touch with the emotion itself. That’s when you will be able to write the chorus. That’s when a pattern for it will become obvious. That’s when the song will develop even more.

The next step will be the lyrics. Of course, record companies enjoy simplicity. If I were nasty (but you know I’m not…), I could expand on what this says about a lot of record company executives… (Luckily, some do know what they’re doing.) However, unless you’re writing that song that will get you the recording contract, in which case, emotions are quite useless (Going Against The Grain), I would highly recommend that you ignore that and carry a dictionary around. Try and find a colorful language that will express the emotions of the music. “Baby I love you”, doesn’t really say much. We all, at one time or another in our lives, say those words without meaning them. “You are graceful under shattered lights, bathed upon the moonlit shore” makes the situation all that more personal.

The next step is a bit more complicated. Performing and singing it. If you are performing it, it becomes easy to feel those emotions again; they’re yours. It’s the other musicians you have to be worried about. In order for them to adequately play it, they must feel it as you do. If someone other than yourself sings it, they must be able to transmit the words they way you hear them in your mind.

This is when you become a Public Relations Agent. This is where you have to reveal some secret part of yourself and explain the emotions behind the words and the music. This is where you must get them to understand the importance of the song.

If you are a solo performer, and some of you might not like what I’m about to say, when choosing musicians to perform emotional pieces, look for the ones who have less technique, they tend to play more with their hearts.

I won’t go into a guitarist debate on this one, but a clear example of this is Rick Wakeman, ex of Yes. On an album called Steinway to Heaven, ten rock keyboardists play solo classical pieces. Wakeman chose what is in my opinion, perhaps the most beautiful musical piece ever composed, Beethoven’s Sonata Pathétique. Wakeman makes no mistakes and his technique is absolutely perfect. Yet you can feel no emotions through it. I’ve another version of this piece from another pianist. The technique has its occasional flaws. Some notes are louder or slightly longer than others. But it is so much more beautiful than Wakeman’s version. You feel the emotions clearly through it.

Another bit which may help you. Learn another instrument. You don’t need to become good at it, you just need to be comfortable enough with it to compose.

As I said, when it’s time to write, you may now choose from more than a single instrument. Although I firmly believe that the guitar is the most versatile, most beautifully melodic instrument, sometimes another instrument will render the emotions in a better light.

Case in point, I’ve no idea who does this song, but I hear it every day whilst in my car, usually more than once:

This is the story of a girl
Who cried a river and drowned the whole world
And though she looks so sad in photographs
I absolutely lover her
When she smiles

Not that the song itself is so bad, but it’s this chorus that is. Of itself, it works. The song starts off like this. This method, although not very common, is usually associated with Storytelling.

You start off by explaining the point of the song. OK. Problem is, this comes back after every verse. At the end, it comes back three times in a row. That’s overkill.

I don’t want to place the blame on anyone. This might be the songwriter’s fault. Perhaps he liked this theme and decided to repeat it ad nauseam. On the other hand, maybe he just lacked inspiration or didn’t feel like working too hard and decided to make a simple song.

On the other hand, maybe he wrote it and played it for his girlfriend and she suggested that he repeat it ad nauseam.

Then again, maybe it was the producer’s fault. If it was, I don’t want him producing any of my material. Also, it may have been the record company’s fault. A guy who was an accountant last week was suddenly promoted to creative director and his favorite song is “Da-da-da”.

For whatever the reason, the song’s title should be Ad Nauseam.

To lead-in to the song with this chorus is not a bad thing. To repeat it like this is. What they should’ve done is write a second chorus, which would have been repeated throughout the song except at the end, where it could have gone:

This was the story of a girl…

If you intend at some point to write a song in this style, try to keep in mind that once you’ve introduced the subject, there’s no need to keep reintroducing the subject.

And a chorus, any chorus, played three times in a row is always annoying.

Compare this to another song currently on the radio by a band called Treblecharger.

Now I know how far you’ll go
To be the latest freak show
American psycho

This chorus is repeated throughout the song, but only once every time. It doesn’t last forever either. Three lines, then off to something else. It doesn’t kill the song.

The point about repetition is that you shouldn’t repeat the repetition.

To repeat something we’ve learned earlier, the chorus is the point of the song. Not the introduction as the first song in our example. To make sense, that chorus should have been an intro verse at the beginning of the song. Not a chorus.

In our second example, the chorus is the point of the song, not the introduction to the subject.

At least it serves a purpose: It’s a good example of what you should avoid.