Songwriting 1
Monday, July 30, 2007 at 04:54PM Well, I thought that I would have this up this morning and now it's 5 pm on Monday. This day really gets away from you. What i wanted to do today is to start another topic. It is my intention to get a bunch of different topics up here and get your responses and then address them, so first we'll get a little bit of everything on the site. Okay, today we'll talk a little bit about songwriting.
I remember reading a story about the Billy Joel recording the Stranger. That was his break thru album and was produced by Phil Ramone. At the time Phil had a lot of hits and consequently had some clout with Columbia, Joel's label. He and Joel met and Billy played the songs that he had written. Ramone told him that, while the songs were pretty good, they weren' t great. Go home and rewrite them and come back. Now even tho Billy Joel had already released several albums none of them was the home run he wanted, so he listened to Ramone. There is also the fact that Columbia told Ramone that this was Billy's last album with them if it wasn't a hit., and I suspect everyone knew that.
So Billy comes back with the songs. Some are better, some are not, so Ramone sends him home once more to rewrite the songs. He comes back and he's got "I Love You Just the Way You Are" and "New York State of Mind" and several other killer songs. He had versions of these songs to begin with, but by focusing on what was wrong with them, he elevated them to the status where they now reside. Classic songs. Rewriting is a good idea. It isn't like you are going to lose the first version. Take the chance, but before you can rewrite there is one little thing.
First you need an idea for a song. There are several ways that I go about this. I keep a little voice recorder with me, and secondly, I keep a notebook with me. On the recorder are melodic ideas as well as concepts and even phrases that sound like music to me. In the notebook, are lyrics, titles, ideas, drawings, song diagrams.
Perhaps I should explain that last one. When I am truly stuck, I do a diagram. I put the word that I find most intriguing in the center of the page. Then off of that word I write a word that is inspired by the original. Like say moonlight for the first word. From moonlight, perhaps I'll write, silver clouds. Then in another place around moonlight, I'll write starlight. Until I have a group of words surrounding the original word like the numbers on a clock. Then I take one of the secondary words, such as silver clourds and try to think of what that conjures up for me. Heaven, silver lining, rolls royce, england…you just free associate and this will free up any blocking you might have.
Stephen Bishop always starts with a title. He keeps them all in his notebooks and transfers them to new empty notebooks, if he hasn't written the song by the time the note book is full of titles and lyrics. I use both the title idea and the phrase idea. And I often have something that I want to say.
After the lack of leadership in the wake of the Katrina Hurricane debacle, I wrote three songs addressing my feelings. The Street Where Mercy Died; The World We Left Behind and Change. The illegal war the Bush regime started in Iraq inspired On the Bus. In all those instances I had a concept but no words or music.
Let's take The World We Left Behind. The opening line had to be grabber but also had to somehow refer to the situation. I had seen some remarkable photographs of the sky before the storm hit, so I used them.
"it's a sky the shade of iron, it's a storm just out of sight.
They say the sun may shine tomorrow, but it's gonna rain like hell tonight."
I also didn't want to make the song so specific that it could only be played and sung in the weeks after the storm. I wanted it to be universal. The next couplet goes:
"even when there's no denying thunder clouds and rising floods,
still some won't believe what lies before their eyes til they're sinking in the mud."
Here I made some veiled reference to the government and the way they handled the disaster. But no name calling, and no specific incident. I was always thinking universally. Then I remembered how the disaster was handled in Florida several years before and the chorus sort of wrote itself…
"do you ever stop to wonder? Does it ever cross your mind?
That there's a world in which we struggle, and a world we left behind."
You can write a song about anything. And sometimes being specific is exactly what will work. Look at Fire and Rain by James Taylor.
"just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone. Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you.
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song. I just can't remember who to send it to." (by James Taylor, Country Roads Music, BMI, used by permission)
Very personal stuff, but the melody and the chord progression carried it.
That reminds me, sometimes you can start writing a song by coming up with a progression of chords that appeals to you. In the late fifties, there was a progression that was used in pop music over and over again. I vi IV V or for example, C Am F G.
Literally hundreds of songs for several years hit the charts and all of them with that exact same progression, that pattern of chords. The things changed, but only slightly. Now check out the Beatles. Even they had quite a formula in the early days. Similar chord progressions in many of their songs. Then after they had an audience that would follow them anywhere, they began to experiment.
Conversely, some people seem to garner an audience for their work by constantly being experiemental. Bob Dylan seems to thrive on changing everything all the time. Sometimes it works, sometimes it sucks, but what matters is he is always following his muse and pushing his own limits.
So chord progressions are something that can drive the writing of a song. Another device that works in the progression field is to have a chord progression that you manipulate in the simplest manner. By way of example, let us take “Yesterday” by Paul McCartney. Here is the progression of the verses
F / / / (for four beats)
Em7 / (two beats)
A / (two beats)
Dmin, (two beats)
Dmin / C (the C note is on the bottom of the chord. The lowest note), (two beats)
Bflat (two beats)
C (two beats)
F / / / (four beats)
Emin7 / (two beats)
A7 / (two beats)
F (four beats)
Now here comes the cool part. He starts the B section of the song on the 2nd chord (in this instance, the Em7) and simply follows the progession just as it was, until the turnaround at the end, that brings him back to the beginning. Play it. Try it. Make up a progession and then for the B section, move to the second chord of the same progression and follow the path you already wrote. Play all the chords of the progession that you made up in the same order, but starting with the second chord. Always a handy thing if you are stuck about what happens next. Plus it makes the song cohesive and logical, but still surprising. Very fun. Let me hear from you all regarding your songwriting techniques and tips. Comment clicker is right below here.
Reader Comments (3)
I think diagram idea is very much the kind of thing i have always wanted to pick your brain about.
btw ... you probably already know this but "yesterday" is only in F if you are playing it on a piano. what he did is tune the guitar down a whole step and play it i G which ended years of my frustration tying to make it sound right in F on a standard tuned guitar. with guitar, it's all about voicings.
jack
jack, i play yesterday in f and seem to have all the voicings that i like. glad to know that he plays it in g, but i'm telling you, it sounds great in f. i'll show you the next time i'm in ohio.
as for the diagram thingy, i only do that when i'm stumped, which i happen to be right now for a wonderful thing i'm working on. literally haven't been able to get anywhere with it and forgot about this diagraming thing. i'll do it tonight.
james
jack, i didn't know that Yesterday was in G. What I do seem to rememember is seeing the Beatles perform on the Ed Sullivan show and Paul did that song solo. This was a later performance. I know that upon his completing the song, I went off with my guitar and learned it immediately. I knew the words melody and the chords after hearing him play it once. Only time that that ever happened. But I learned it in F, which is what I thought was how he played it. Weird.
James