Songwriting Strategies Read online

  In the musical imagination from whence seed ideas spring, memory and invention are closely intertwined. I learned this lesson in the context of traditional folk music, where the lines between old tunes half-remembered, variant versions, and new creations can be hazy and fluid. But the principle applies across genres and styles. Great performers play material they didn’t compose as if they did—in fact, as if they’re composing it on the spot. The corollary: great writers can stumble across original ideas that don’t feel original when they arrive. Famously, Paul McCartney woke from a dream with the melody for “Yesterday” in his head, then spent weeks trying to find which old song he’d half-remembered.

  The Work of Not Working the Seed

  Another common way that we inadvertently dilute the unity and clarity of seed material, especially with musical seeds, is by overdeveloping or overelaborating before or during the process of capturing it. Many musical seeds are cyclical or looping in nature. You “tumble them ’round” in your mind. Often, you catch yourself humming something you recognize as a seed only after it’s been cycling this way a while. (This is especially true of seeds caught during repetitive physical activities like walking.)

  These repetitions are never exact; as you cycle the idea, then externalize it with voice and instrument, you experiment with minor variations in notes, timings, and durations. It takes time for these variations to sort themselves out and stabilize. The ideal moment to capture the seed is just when it has clarified and come into focus, but before your mind starts elaborating and varying too much, or pivots from a unified single idea into a response and starts building a larger structural phrase. Err in the direction of early capture. You can always do the same “tumbling” and refining afterward.

  The Art of Seed Catching

  We’ve described some challenges in seed catching in general: separating seed from filler, not prematurely working the seed, capturing the seed without unnecessary context, and, with musical seeds in particular, avoiding the tendency to elaborate seeds before capturing them. Let’s illustrate some of these pitfalls in seed catching with an example melodic seed.

  FIG. 1.1. Melodic Seed Example

  This seed is in a minor pentatonic mode, often used for improvisational vocal riffing, but I’ve made more definite melodic choices in capturing and especially in notating it as a seed. As you practice catching and notating melodic seeds, the melodies get more distinct and shaped, and you’ll be able to retain longer, more complex melodic passages in your mind’s ear.

  This seed is unified, with little inessential material. The repeated melodic figure in the first half of bars 1 and 3, respectively, creates an audible question-answer phrase structure. Yet in an important sense, the seed is irreducible. Take either the start or end away, and you lose the asymmetrical phrasing essential to the seed. The one-bar pause at the end, though silent, is integral, building an even four-bar phrasing into the seed. If we loop the seed, we’ll loop it with this extra bar of time.

  There’s no lyric yet associated with the seed. There may be hints, though, of some features of an eventual lyric setting. For example, the slur in bar 3 hints at a lyric melisma (a single syllable sung over a sequence of changing notes). We don’t know what that lyric will be, but the slur even now has a textural effect, contrasting with the similar, but articulated, figure in bar 1.

  Rhythmic information is interleaved with melody in a more intrinsic way than chords or lyrics we might add to it. It’s still possible for the rhythmic component of a melody to be filler. It’s also possible that the rhythm is the interesting seed idea and the melody the filler—or that this seed really depends on both aspects together.

  One way to test this is by removing rhythmic effects to see if what’s left still has the magic that caught your ear. At first, this is painstaking work, but with practice you can learn to more rapidly “stress-test” a seed idea in this way. In the example, the rhythmic effects embedded in the seed, especially the anticipations in bars 2 and 3, do help shape the melodic seed. In particular, the anticipation into bar 3 connects the two halves of the phrase: we hear the figure D, C, A ending on the A, the last note doing double duty initiating the new phrase of bar 3 (a motivic device known as “elision”). The rhythmic effects add structural interest to the melodic seed. Take the anticipations away, and to my songwriter’s ear at least, the phrase feels less unified.

  FIG. 1.2. Melodic Seed with Simplified Rhythm

  Let’s see how filler might get captured with this seed. Suppose I get this seed sitting at my instrument. To capture it, I hum the tune and support myself with some chords:

  

  FIG. 1.3. Melodic Seed with “Filler” Chords

  I’d call these chords harmonic “filler.” The progression isn’t inherently very interesting; the melodic seed is rendered no more interesting with the chords than without them. The relation between melody and harmony is slaved: all melody notes sounded with chord attacks are chord tones; and the chords move in parallel with rhythmic accents of the melody. The chords aren’t wrong for the seed; they’re just not essential to the melodic idea. They’re an add-on, an amplification. I could find these chords, or different ones, later, working from the melodic seed alone. Notating the melody without the chords would be more effective seed catching.

  How about lyric filler? Suppose I’m walking down the street, humming this tune. Instinctively I’m drawn to put lyrics to it. A pretty girl passes by, and I sing:

  

  FIG. 1.4. Melodic Seed with “Filler” Lyrics

  This lyric shows telltale signs of filler—material grabbed on the fly after the melodic seed came to me. It lacks intrinsic interest. A good test is asking the question: Would you write this line down on its own as an exciting lyrical seed? It has a cliché aspect, with no redeeming fresh angle. While the lyric arose partially in response to the melodic seed, it’s not a compositionally attentive response. (Perhaps, I was attending more to the girl.) The lyric matches the melody only crudely, and thus is not very singable. The abstract, innocuous word “person” is set on a long spotlighted note. Syllabic junctures like “just / the” are crowded on rapid repeated notes. An unimportant connective (“to”) is placed on the melisma. And the most telltale sign of lyric filler? It’s a “telling” line.

  Even a bit of compositional thought could get me to a lyric better matched to the melodic contour, like “If you’re gonna leave me for no reason, tell me no lies.” That thoughtful lyric work isn’t as likely to come as I’m walking down

  the street. (After all, I haven’t even talked to the girl—so we aren’t breaking up yet!) If I save the seed as melody only, I can write this lyric (or a better one) later. If I save melody and lyric together, I may pass them both over later. Or, instead of writing my breakthrough hit, I’ll wind up with “Just My Kind of Person.” In seed catching, sometimes more is less.

  We’re not finished with our catalog of sins in the fleeting act of catching a song seed. Here’s an illustration of starting to overwork or “pre-work” our example seed on the fly:

  

  FIG. 1.5. Melodic Seed with Instrumental Phrases

  In figure 1.5, measure 4 is now interspersed instrumental material, intermixing an accompanying funky bass line or guitar riff into the vocal melody. It will be hard later to sift out which part was the essential vocal line, destined to take a lyric, and what was embroidery.

  In figure 1.6, we’ve overworked the seed by ornamenting it, filling in some of the very gaps in the rhythmic pattern that made the original idea fresh. As we work seeds in our minds, it’s natural to vary them and fill them in, in this way, using the original seed as silent counterpoint. Do too much of this before capturing the seed, and you weaken or obscure outlines of the original idea.

  

  FIG. 1.6. Melodic Seed with Melodic Ornamentation

  Exercise 1.1. A WEEK OF SONG SEED CATCHING

  Here’s an intensive regime for a week’s “boot camp” of song seed catchi
ng, guaranteed to jumpstart your seed-catching skills. For this week, be as uncritical and indiscriminate as possible in seeds you grab (given that day’s focus). Don’t go hunting for seeds. Wait until they come to you. When they do, don’t judge or filter them.

  Also during this week, do your best notto “work” any song seeds you gather! This is a chance to teach your creative mind the difference between catching and working seeds. Of course, there’s a nefarious reverse psychology here. Try this weekly practice at times when you’re feeling stuck in your writing, or suffering from a bout of so-called “writer’s block.” Be strict about the “no working the seed” rule. By the week’s end, you’ll be itching to start work on a song from one of your seeds!

  Day 1

  This is your “calibration” day, where you find out about your natural seed-catching rhythm and the facets most familiar to you. Catch seeds of any and all kinds as they come to your attention.

  Day 2

  For the first of your days of specific attention, focus on lyrics, the facet most comfortable and familiar to most writers. Write down any seeds you notice of any sort, but be particularly attuned to lyric seeds. Given the focus of lyrics, though, be alert to any possible sources of inspiration: dialogue, media, or lines that pop into your head, etc.

  Day 3

  On this day, switch your focus to concept and sound seeds. By doing this the day after lyric seeds, it will highlight the differences for you. Again, be open to any thematic ideas, images, fleeting memories, or sonic source material that strike your interest. In this case, don’t worry about whether the concept would be best suited for a song as opposed to a poem, a short story, a blog post, or a stand-up comedy routine.

  Days 4, 5, and 6

  On these three days, focus on a different musical facet (melody, chords, rhythm) each day. You can try these in any order, but following the general principle of moving from easier to harder facets, I’d suggest the sequence: melody, rhythm, then chords.

  Caveat: This part of the week’s exercise may be difficult in advance of working through the chapters that follow on the individual facets. As we saw with our melodic seed example, rhythmic ideas especially tend to be closely interwoven with other material when we grab seeds. You’ll get more out of working through each chapter, though, if you’ve first tried some seed catching focused on that facet, relying on your own intuitive approach. This will provide you an experiential reference point, to ground those later explorations.

  On each day, be open to any sources of inspiration for that day’s facet of focus. For example, listen for melodic ideas from non-musical stimuli like sounds of the natural environment. Listen for chordal ideas away from your instrument. Listen to similar snatches of spoken dialogue overheard in coffee shops that sparked lyrical seeds earlier in the week—but listen now for rhythmic aspects of that spoken language, or the melodies suggested by the speech tones.

  Days 7

  or the last day of your week’s practice, go back to open-ended seed catching. See how many seeds you catch and from which sources. Compare these with your experience and results from the first “calibration” day.

  Reflection

  At the week’s end, consider the seeds you’ve gathered as a whole. What senses, facets, sources of inspiration came most easily to you? Which did you pass over without enough attention?

  This seed-catching week requires an intensity and pace that is difficult to sustain over a long period of time. But in this one week of practice, you’ll learn a lot about your level of skill in seed catching—particularly, which facets and sources are easier or harder for you to draw from. You can come back to this exercise periodically throughout your development as a writer, using it as a refresher, or to replenish your seed catalog. You can also use the daily focus format to stretch your seed-catching skills in other ways, working with polarities such as: natural vs. man-made sound sources, inner and outer sources of inspiration, catching seeds at vs. away from your instrument, silly and humorous vs. serious and emotionally intense seeds, etc.

  Conclusion: Song Seeds and the Facets

  Song seed catching is the master strategy of 360° songwriting. Separating the moment of catching an inspiration from the work of developing it into a song is a process skill that can transform your entire songwriting practice in many ways. Seed-catching practice also provides an experiential foundation for all the work we’ll do with individual songwriting facets throughout this book. Instead of working only with unwieldy “lumps” of unfinished songs—fragments combining both strong and weak bits of lyric, melody, chords, etc.—we learn to recognize strong starting points and leave these as far more potent kinds of fragments, yielding strong seed ideas in multiple facets.

  Song seeds are not the only way songs begin. As we’ll see especially in

  working with the facets of rhythm and harmony, many writers work over loops, riffs, sampled sounds, or by improvising over familiar chords and cycles—a range of processes we could call “jamming.” I’ve focused on song seed catching as an essential technique to prepare us to work more independently with material in the various facets. In addition, as you strengthen seed-catching skills, you’ll also get better at the on-the-fly “seed catching” necessary to recognize strong material when jamming over riffs, chords, and loops.

  Now that we can get song ideas from all directions, it’s time to learn to write in all directions.

  CHAPTER 2

  The Songwriter’s

  Compass

  Working with song seeds, we’ve established an experiential reference point for the 360° songwriting approach. You should now have a better idea of which kinds of sources of inspiration come naturally to you as a writer, and which stretch you beyond your comfort zone. In this chapter, we begin work with the 360° songwriting model in detail, as a comprehensive set of strategies for expanding your scope and flexibility as a songwriter.

  Songwriters love metaphors. We’ll explore the 360° model with the aid of a metaphor that we’ll use throughout the book—the Songwriter’s Compass. This model involves three main components: the four songwriting facets, the World of content, and structure or form.

  The Four Facets

  Creative material we work with in writing songs can be viewed in terms of four distinct facets: rhythm, lyrics, melody, and harmony (chords). These facets are core to the essence of the song—rather than ancillary material used in writing the song, or part of arrangement and production aspects. Picture these four facets as four quadrants or directions around a circle—the four directions of the songwriter’s compass.

  Words and Music

  Let’s compare this circular picture of four facets to a more conventional way of breaking up songwriting: with the cut-with-an-ax distinction of words or lyrics vs. music. Like the “mind/body” split, this false dichotomy not only over-simplifies but misleads, in ways that can hold back our work as songwriters.

  There are two big problems with this conventional wisdom. First, the words/music split lumps two vital yet separate aspects under the umbrella of “words” or “lyrics”—lyrics as sound elements interacting with melody, chords, and rhythm, vs. lyrics as expressing the theme, meaning, or subject matter of the song—the content. This reinforces a notion that a song’s meaning is embodied solely in lyrics, with music mere support or accompaniment. In practice, this attitude leads to songs with cool lyrics but thrown-together music, or great music with disconnected lyrics.

  Lyrics are more than just content or sense. Their sonic aspects are equally important for songwriters. Conversely, meaning or content is not exclusively the province of lyrics. Melodies, chords, and rhythms all carry meaning and emotion in equally important, though different, ways than lyrics. You can start a song from a musical idea and be led directly to content, without lyrics (yet) in the picture. You can be inspired by the sound aspects of lyrics, prior to any firm idea of what the song will be “about.”

  The words/music dichotomy also treats music in an undifferen
tiated, monolithic way. Songwriters work with melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic aspects of songs in markedly different ways. Lyrics also connect associatively and sonically to these three musical facets in distinct ways. Songwriters are often asked, “Which comes first, the words or the music?” Rarely are we asked, “Which comes first, the melody or the chords?” Yet, differing answers to that question have dramatic effect on the songs and kinds of songs we write.

  Sound and Sense

  More fruitful for songwriting is recognizing an interplay of sound and sense, which plays a role in lyrics and each musical facet. This interplay can be considered, not as a dichotomy or split of two distinct components, but more as a continuum or polarity. Just as lyrics involve sound as well as sense, the musical facets of rhythm, melody, and harmony each offer their own sense or “meaning,” in ways different than the referential meanings of words. The implication is that we can start a song from a concept or idea and move directly, in response, to material in any facet, matching thematically between content and emotion and that material. We can also start directly from seed material in any facet—without a predetermined idea or content. We can then let material in that facet suggest content: themes, subject matter, imagery. And in each facet, sound and sense aspects of the material might provide different entry points. We get to different kinds of songs by exploring these different strategies.