Tag: songwriting

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Songwriting: The Craft of Songwriting Made Easy/Hard

I was recently watching a Youtube seminar by a guy called Ralph Murphy.

Who?

Well, most of you will never have heard of him, and I hadn’t either, but he is a songwriter of over 50 years, has toured the world as a performer, writer and teacher, and is presently a Vice-President within ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers). He tours internationally giving seminars on songwriting and giving insight into what it takes to make a hit song and keep doing it. He really does break it down and make it easy to understand just how hard it is to craft a song that makes it big.

 

Here is the Youtube video:

If you don’t have the time to watch the full video, here is a link to a blogpost by someone who has helpfully discussed the things that stood out to him from Ralph’s instruction.

Stop Releasing Every Song

Check out one or both of these links, and try some of these techniques out. You will notice a big difference in your final products if you do.

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John Mayer – Something Like Olivia (Acoustic in the Studio)

The highlight of last night’s youtube bender.

I was introduced to John Mayer almost a decade ago when he hadn’t quite made it onto everyone’s radar, and one or two of his songs grabbed me, but not all of them. Since then he’s reinvented himself a number of times, to escalating success each time. I’ll be doing a blog post on him in the future, but for now, just enjoy this acoustic version of ‘Something Like Olivia’.

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Songwriting: My First Lesson

Write more songs better, 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.

Better songwriting tip right here

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

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500 words or less: Stuck in a rut

Stuck in a musical rut?

Are you stuck in a rut? Just rehashing the same stuff over and over? Maybe it’s singing, guitar, piano, bass, whatever, you just feel like you are going over the same ground again and again…

Well, here’s my top tip for getting out of a rut:

Listen to something you’ve never listened to before

Why? Let me tell you why…

Something from nothing.

Music is a wonderful thing. It can take so many different forms, encompass so many different sounds, be expressed in so many different styles, be incredibly complex or ridiculously simple, pieces can be hours long or less than a minute. It can be created from nothing, and can feel like it becomes everything in a given moment. It really is a beautiful thing.

Those who are able to make their living from music are truly blessed. They get to make music and play around with it every day.

One thing that surprises me about a select number of musicians, professional and amateur alike, is their propensity to listen to just ONE style of music to the exclusion of all others. They might profess that they want to be the best at that one style, to shine out above everyone else operating in that genre… and I say that they are shooting themselves in the foot.

Products of our environment

We are all products of what we surround ourselves with. People, television, music, etc. This is reflected in our personalities and in our music. If all we do is listen to one particular style of music, then we will only regurgitate combinations of music that already exists. There is nothing wrong with listening to music we love, nothing wrong at all. But if all we do is indulge in the SAME stuff over and over, how can we ever expect to produce anything OTHER than the stuff we’re indulging in?

However, if we immerse ourselves in as many different styles of music as we can, we can take in new ideas, play around with undiscovered – or at least underutilised – combinations of sounds, and we can still further identify things we DON’T like and why… which means we can become more discerning with the music we make. All music is useful in some way. If you like it, learn how to play it, ask yourself why you like it. if you don’t like it, maybe learn how to play it, and ask yourself why you don’t like it. By doing this, you can expand your musical horizons and creativity. Why would you consciously limit yourself?

You want to get out of a rut? Ask someone to lend you the most quirky thing in their music collection, and listen to whole album. Ask yourself what did you like and why, and what didn’t you like and why. Try and incorporate ideas from this quirky stuff, and expand your horizons. If you’re a rocker, get some jazz. You a jazzer, get some country. You a bluegrass artist, get some opera in your ears…

Listen to something new today.

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500 words or less: Five Favourite Lyrics

What are your favourite lyrics?

Now, despite loving singing and songs, and as well as having a near photographic memory, I do find it difficult to pick apart lyrics for an entire song in a first listen – finding favourite lyrics can be tough. So when a lyric really sticks in my mind on first listen I KNOW I’ve got something I want to listen to again and again.

“Yes I know the name, sounds a little bit familiar, like a melody to a dream,
Yes I know, he wore the same face the same clothes, but that was so long ago”
‘Ghosts’ – Chris Cornell

This one (today) is one of my favourite lyrics because I felt it ‘revealed’ the nature of the whole song in a single phrase (the bridge). I felt it summed up what I felt the whole vibe of the song was about… the idea that someone is looking for a person they knew, but that person has left their old life behind and ‘isn’t there anymore’. Beautiful concept and wonderfully captured in song.

“Gentleness, sobriety, so rare in this society, at night a candle’s brighter than the sun”
‘Englishman in New York’ – Sting

Ah another set of favourite lyrics. I like this one because for the longest time I didn’t understand the link between the first half of the line and the second half. Then it dawned on me that (at least in my interpretation) that it was meant to convey the idea that being something rare stands out like a sore thumb. Nice combination of literal and metaphorical in the same line as well… a real eye/ear-opener for me.

“You can’t trust freedom when it’s not in your hand, when everybody’s fighting for the promised land”
‘Civil War’ – Guns N’ Roses

I don’t know what it is about this line that I love, I think it’s the raw visceral energy of the line… coupled with the strong rhyme between ‘hand’ and ‘land’. It just resolves perfectly, both musically and lyrically… yea… it’s a great song!

“You never thought you’d be alone, this far down the line, I know what’s been on your mind… you’re afraid it’s all been wasted time”
‘Wasted Time’ – The Eagles

This is another one that just transcended words for me, I felt it captured a moment into the life of a person (or both people) coming out of a broken relationship. The idea that the time spent on that relationship is lost, dead, wasted time. But the song wraps around on itself by the end and says ‘y’kno what, maybe it hasn’t all been wasted time’. And I like that ‘turnaround’ aspect… a lot!

“But is the best you can be, the best thing to be”
‘Crossroads’ – The Offspring

Great songwriters. I just love the play on words. Is the best you can be, really the best thing to be? I stopped paying attention to the song at that point because I was just totally lost in the world of that one lyric. Wonderful stuff.

There we have it, my favourite five lyrics. Why not share yours below?

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Rhyming + Songwriting

Stumbled upon this great clip today, had to share.

I felt the need to share because someone intuitively commented on this very idea in a songwriting workshop I went to. The presenter in this video discusses how choosing your words to rhyme or not rhyme, or to imperfectly rhyme, can really change or ‘subvert’ the mood of a song. Rhymes create predictability, and this can be a good thing, e.g. to help a listener engage with the song and make it feel familiar and comfortable. Or you might want to take the listener away from a comfortable place… all this can be done just with how you rhyme, and this video explains really clearly how that might work.