Write more songs, write better songs, and write songs faster
As a singer, musician and songwriter, I want to write better songs. I also want to write more songs, and write songs faster. So much so that it pains me when I can’t finish a song… because I’m still not happy with the way the verse goes, or how the melody goes at one point. And until I’ve got one bit just so I find it hard to move onto anything else. I just keep going round in circles trying to get one or two particular bits right.
Which should be fine right? If I want a good song, then every part has to be perfect? Wrong. This doesn’t have to be the case, as I learned … or was reminded of recently.
Here’s why…
One of the most invaluable classes I had whilst at university was actually with an English professor. This professor who had been brought in to educate us how to communicate ideas better, and how to write anything well. And he gave me one of the best bits of advice I’d ever had up til then, and since then. And his advice was:
Don’t get it right, get it written
This phrase has served me well since then in other areas of my life, but has recently become a real mantra for me when approaching songwriting. Why?
Try this illustration on for size
I am fortunate enough to have a prolific and talented songwriting friend called Matt Blick. You can find his site at www.mattblick.com . Matt has been writing songs for years and has established himself as a renowned source on the internet for songwriting advice. He is active on Twitter (@realmattblick) and you can ask him almost any question, and he’ll get back to you on it. I learned a valuable lesson from him that helped me to write songs faster. Not only to write songs faster, but make them better, and write more of them too!
I met up with Matt recently and we had a good long chin-wag about songwriting and ideas in general. We then started working on a musical idea I’d had a while ago. Matt then struck out on how to build that into a song. He was remarkably driven about getting something finished, whilst being very relaxed about it all. come up with a theme, sections, and lyrics to accompany those sections. It’s not finished yet, but the constituent components of the song are laid out in our toolkit, ready to be worked on.
Shortly after, I met up with another friend – Chris Shepperson, you can follow him @ourhelicalmind – for some songwriting of a more instrumental nature. Between us we wanted to try creating some songs that involved two electric bass guitars. Where to begin? Well, I tried to adopt the approach Matt applied – don’t get it right, get it written. And you know what? In 2 hours of songwriting we’d managed to construct a 3-4 minute recording that was an actual song, and we managed to record the whole thing!
It isn’t perfect, but from a single seed of an idea, we had an intro and groove for the song. From that idea a first line of a verse appeared. A variation on that one idea became a second line. We then had an ‘A’ section from those variations- a verse. Another idea plus a variation became a ‘B’ section – a chorus. One more basic idea became a ‘C’ section – a bridge/improv section. From that we had the constituent elements of a piece. We arranged the song at the same time as writing based on what felt right, and it came out as:
Intro, A, A, B, A, B, B, C (x3), B, Outro (repetition of the intro)
So from just 2-3 ideas came a verse, a chorus and a bridge. From those parts, we can construct an arrangement of the song that is listenable and of an appropriate length. All in 2 hours.
Now, while this piece isn’t 100% finished or perfect, it is far far closer to a finished product than it ever would’ve been if I’d tried to make each small element of the song perfect before moving onto creating the next bit of it. I was amazed at how a little bit more drive to be LESS perfect enabled me to get me closer to writing a good song.
So what did I learn from all this?
I think this illustration makes it clear of the meaning behind the English professor’s advice. It’s far easier to work within some basic structure, even if you want to depart from it, than not to have that structure in the first place. So remember:
Don’t get it right, get it written.
Check out my other songwriting lessons:
My Second Lesson
My Third Lesson
My Fourth Lesson
