Songwriting Strategies Read online

  The compass picture reflects these creative principles by placing lyrics as a peer facet to the three “musical” facets of rhythm, melody, and chords. (I put “musical” in “quotes” because if you take this picture to heart, lyrics are also a musical facet.)

  FIG. 2.1. The Songwriter’s Compass: Facets

  The picture in figure 2.1 lays out the facets (clockwise from the bottom) in the order that we present them in subsequent chapters: rhythm, lyric, melody, and harmony. Despite this specific visual rendering, melody is not primary, at the top; rhythm is not foundational, at the base; lyric is no “farther” from harmony than it is from melody or lyric, etc. Any two-dimensional depiction of the compass inevitably fibs a bit.

  The World

  Where does content show up in this picture? Imagine the four facets as circumscribing the realm of song, the domain or magic circle of songwriting. Content—ideas, themes, stories, characters, emotions, meaning, or real-world sense aspects that serve as source material for songs—can be pictured as lying outside the perimeter of this circle, in a region we can just call “the World,” inherently boundless and infinite.

  FIG. 2.2. The Songwriter’s Compass: Facets and the World

  We want to write songs from myriad potential inspirations: a tea kettle’s whistle, a fleeting mood, a conversation overheard on the subway, a song half-heard playing on the radio in the other room, a compelling news story. But to carry a particular inspiration or idea into a song, we must transform it, at some point engaging directly with materials integral to the song itself—passing our original inspiration through shaping forces of one or more facets. (Our starting inspiration may also, of course, take first form as seed material in a facet.)

  It’s tempting to try to structure the World itself, defining various categories of “things songs can be about”: topics, subject matter, genre, and style. I’ll avoid such discussions in this book. I won’t try to tell you what to write songs about, first, because I believe songs can and should be written about everything. Songs help us connect our heads and hearts—to think and reflect about what we care about, to care about what we think about. Given this mission, anything and everything in the world is worthy of the unique kinds of attention we as songwriters can pay, and songs can draw from us as listeners.

  More importantly, changing process can change content. At any stage of our evolution, we’re inevitably limiting our concept of “what we can write songs about.” By flipping around our habitual creative pathways, we have the potential to dramatically expand that scope. When you write from different directions, and particularly from song seeds without preconceived content, you can find your way to subject matter, source material, stories, and characters you’d never think to write about working idea-first, or even lyric-first.

  Sound and Timbre

  The songwriter’s challenges are allied with, but not identical to, those faced by the composer, orchestrator, arranger, performer, studio producer, or sound designer. In each of these creative areas, sonic aspects such as timbre (instrumental as well as vocal) play an integral role. These aspects are, however, only indirectly influential in songwriting.

  For many songwriters, specific sonic textures and timbres may spur their creative work toward a song. Vocal melodies may be strongly influenced by your own vocal qualities or those of artists you write for. A chord riff that begins a song may derive its creative force from specific voicings, tone, and resonance of the instrument. A beat maker or track producer may respond to a sampled sound or excerpt by turning it into a groove or instrumental rhythm. Sound and timbre aspects may also end up integrated into a song’s final recorded version, and can play a major role in a song’s success. Aficionados can recognize many Beatles songs from the first distinctive chord.

  Nevertheless, there is a power in recognizing the core facets of songwriting as distinct from these factors. If you can only create sectional contrast in a song by strumming the guitar louder, singing more emotionally, or bringing in a four-on-the-floor kick in the mix, you will not be challenged to learn how to use the elements of melodic range, harmonic rhythm, or lyric phrasing to their fullest effect. You develop further as a songwriter by focusing on core compositional and lyrical design concerns, momentarily at least putting these other concerns in the background. Reflecting this, sound or timbre does not appear as a separate facet or other element in the compass picture. It is best thought of as a central sensory component of the World. Just like concept seeds, sound or timbre seeds can serve as prompts to the songwriter’s creative work. But that work turns into a song by embodying sound or timbral material as vocal melody, chords, or rhythm.

  Structure

  In the songwriting compass, structure is not a facet, peer to rhythm, lyric, melody, and harmony. Song seeds can be concepts or sound inspirations from the world, or material in any facet. But only rarely is a structural pattern itself the seed or starting point for a song. Yet structure can be expressed directly in the material of any facet—and in several or all facets simultaneously. Thus, structure helps control interactions of material, both within and across facets. These structures can mirror or reinforce each other, or can be in more complex “contrapuntal” relationships. To reflect these aspects of creative process, structure (or form) is best pictured at the center or hub of the compass.

  FIG. 2.3. The Songwriter’s Compass: Facets, the World, and Structure

  Song structure is hierarchical. Larger structures of overall song form arise from varying patterns in lyric and music. Verse/chorus form in song arises, for example, out of contrast in respective sectional structures of lyric (through-composed verses, repeating chorus, or ABCB) and music (repeating music for verse and chorus, or ABAB). Song form divides into sections (verse, chorus, etc.), in turn arranged into varying levels of phrases and subphrases. A phrase has duration—a number of measures, each consisting of a number of beats in a given time signature. This phrase length forms the bones of a song’s structure. It may be indicated by melodic and chordal movement or lyric lines but is not determined by any of them. This freedom of phrasing, especially given the possibility of both balanced and unbalanced phrase structures, allows for complex interleaving between melody, chords, and lyrics, such as overlapping and crisscrossing of lyric lines and musical phrases.

  The compass reveals that content—the World—is not the province of lyric alone, or indeed of any one facet. Similarly, structure plays a role in each facet: lyric rhyme schemes, melodic and rhythmic phrase structures, chord progressions. Less skilled songwriters may conflate overall song structure with the structure expressed in whatever facet is in the foreground of their attention: lyricists attend to rhyme schemes, guitar players to chord progressions. Developing the ability to work independently with structures in each facet is a major way to advance your songwriting. Try to do this only improvisationally, and you’re usually able only to mirror or mimic the foreground structure you’re focusing on in other facets. Your rhyme scheme will be echoed by your chord progression, for example. Or else, you’ll fall back on simpler, cliché patterns that don’t require much compositional attention. By being aware of structural patterns that can be expressed in each facet, and by working with structure in each facet separately, you gain the skill to superimpose or “counterpoint” structures in more complex and expressive ways.

  Traversing the Compass:

  Songwriting Strategies

  The essence of using 360° songwriting as a discipline lies in developing the skills to work independently with material in each of the facets, and to move freely in any direction between them. We’ll address these skills in exploring each facet separately in the chapters that follow.

  These skills are not part of the intuitive ways most songwriters work on songs. In teaching these techniques, I repeatedly hear some version of this: “As a musician, I pride myself that as soon as I hear a lyric in my head, I hear a melody and rhythm connected with it.” This creates an organic, natural, unified experience for the songwriter
. But it does not necessarily produce the strongest song. If you can’t shift the rhythmic phrasing of a lyric line at will, experimenting to find the most expressive and musical setting, you must settle for that first instinctive rhythmic setting and hope for the best.

  But we can train ourselves to work independently with material in each facet. We begin by increasing our capacity to catch initial seeds in each facet, and in more independent ways. Even when starting seeds blend elements of several facets, we can pull facet-specific “reductions” or images from such seeds, giving us more options for working creatively with the material.

  Different kinds of creative work can be pictured as movements following various pathways between the facets. We’ll reference these creative operations—the key songwriting strategies—as we discuss each of the facets and their interconnections in the chapters that follow. The descriptive terms are easier to understand by picturing these operations as arrows or “flows” among facets, or crossing between the World and various facets, or between the facets and structure.

  Setting

  Once we’re working with the relatively “isolated” material we get with focused seed catching, we can move between facets by using starting seed material in one facet as a stimulus or prompt for generating responsive material in another facet. This is what we mean when we speak informally of, for example, “setting a lyric to music.” In terms of the songwriter’s compass, we can speak more precisely about setting a lyric to rhythm, or to melody—or to harmony, for that matter.

  We can also follow any such pathway in reverse: setting a melody to lyric, for example. The informal phrase “setting melody to lyric” could be interpreted as movement in either direction or sequence. To make our language unambiguous with respect to the directionality of “lateral” moves across facets, throughout this book, we’ll generally say we’re “setting from X to Y.” 

  While there is a deceptive logical symmetry to these various operations, each is a qualitatively distinct kind of creative task—requiring different skills, and yielding different results. For example, in setting “from lyric to melody,” we transform a “dry lyric” to a sung lyric. In setting “from melody to lyric,” we start with a wordless melody and must derive a lyric to be sung to that melody. Many songwriters find the generation of lyrics daunting, in comparison to finding a melody for a lyric. Johnny Mercer was said to have spent a year finishing the lyric to Hoagy Carmichael’s music for “Skylark.” Similarly, you can say “set from lyric to harmony” fast—without stopping to consider what that creative work would entail, in a strict process scenario: speaking words, not yet set to melody or even a definite rhythm, while searching for the chords for that lyric. This is a simple and powerful strategy, but one we simply might not try, unless guided by—ah yes, a songwriter’s compass!

  Casting and Framing

  Picturing the World as unstructured territory beyond the compass pulls meaning—theme, story, idea—out of the province of lyrics alone. We can work from concept seeds as starting points directly to material in any facet, or begin from musical seeds—or lyrical seeds (when drawn by the sounds of the words)—only gradually figuring out what the song is “about.” These insights support two complementary strategies: casting (from World to facet) and framing (from facet to World).

  Casting

  Casting is the creative work of using content—a starting-point idea for a song—as a prompt for generating material in any facet. We’re most familiar with casting from idea to lyric, then to music, but we can cast from content directly to material in any facet.

  FIG. 2.4. Casting

  Suppose you want to write a song about your grandfather. Your first instinct might be to remember pivotal conversations or scenes and to begin generating words, either description or perhaps remembered dialogue. This might be a creative writer’s approach, and one can approach writing a song in similar fashion. But as a songwriter, you have other options. Once you know what you want your song to be about, lyrics may not be your next creative step. You can cast from concept straight to a wordless melody or chord progression. For example, you could sit at the piano and search for “grandfather chords” that evoke your emotional connection to him. A bit more challenging would be to search for a rhythmic phrase or accompaniment groove suggested by the subject or theme. 4

  Framing

  What about when your starting point is not an idea but a bit of actual song stuff: a fragment of melody, a title or line, a chord move or progression? Adapting a term used in artistic contexts such as film or theater, framing is the complementary move to casting: starting from lyrical or musical material, and working towards an idea or concept. For a lyric line, framing often takes the form of the questions, “Who would say this? To whom? In what situation?” For a musical starting point, framing can be more like imagining the music as a soundtrack to a movie, and asking what scene is playing on the screen.

  Our frames for lyric material in particular are often tacit. Writers tend to bind lyric seeds such as titles to the original context in which the seed arises, or to the first notion of “what the song’s about” that pops into mind when catching the seed. But framing can be applied as a more intentional brainstorming technique or strategy, by challenging yourself to come up with several (ideally, at least three) alternative frames for a given title or lyric line. (This is an application of the general creative strategy of iterating or “sketching,” discussed below.) This “framestorming” strategy is especially useful for those intriguing, ambiguous titles—that sound like they mean something though you can’t nail down what something they mean. (These are often lyric seeds captured primarily for their sound aspects.) But the strategy can also push us to think beyond the first obvious angle on a cliché or interpretation of a title or lyric phrase. Because the activity of generating alternative frames gets you more conscious and explicit about the frame you eventually choose, framestorming is also particularly useful in co-writing.

  In the broader context of the songwriting compass, framing can apply to any song seed—in any facet—not already embedded with a story or theme. That is, just as we can cast not only to lyric, but to melody, harmony, or rhythm, we can also take any musical seed and, prior to fully setting it—in particular, prior to searching for specific lyrics for it—inquire about the “story it wants to sing.”

  FIG. 2.5. Framing

  With musical as opposed to lyrical seeds, therefore, the value of framing is a bit different. It’s less about shaking loose preemptively locked-in ideas or themes, resolving ambiguity, or shifting seed material from its original context. It’s more about tapping into implicit imagery and narrative in the musical material. I have a strong melodic idea; before grabbing for lyrics to the melody, I ask: “What might a song with this melody be about?” You’ll be surprised how readily your creative mind provides possible answers to this backward-thinking, Columbo-style question!

  Structuring Strategies

  The work of structuring the song is distinct from setting (associating material across facets), or casting and framing (connecting facets to content and theme). In structuring, we build lyric upon lyric, melody upon melody, etc.

  FIG. 2.6. Structuring Strategies

  We can structure songs following bottom-up or top-down strategies. Some writers like to work bottom-up, taking a fragment of material (a lyric line, a scrap of melody, a cool chord progression) and building or unfolding it into a matching question/answer phrase, a complete phrase, a section, eventually a whole song. For example, from a single lyric line, we might add a rhyming line, then build that couplet into a four-line verse or chorus, etc. Other writers are restless until they place a starting phrase in the context of an overall form, thus working top down. Is this a title? A line for a chorus? A first line for a verse? Working from a structural pattern or plan, they gradually fulfill the structure with material in the facet they’re working with. One advantage of this way of working is that you can fulfill a structure out of sequence, sometimes
literally working in reverse (e.g., from refrain line to the rest of the verse) of the sequence of elements as they will be heard in the final song.

  Those of you who had secret crushes on your third-grade English teachers (outline your ideas, dear!) might imagine I’m going to tell you working top-down is preferable. It’s true that there are risks in structuring only in bottom-up fashion. With only a “worm’s-eye” view of the immediate song section, you can write yourself into a corner. There are risks in trying to complete a section before you know whether it’s functioning as chorus or verse, or whether it’s verse 1 or verse 2. But working top-down has its own risks. Often, we make early decisions about song form before we see the shape of the song or know the content. Top-level structural commitments are difficult to shift in revision. They affect multiple small compositional decisions throughout the song. Whether building intuitively and organically from a seed, architecturally from an overall song plan, or alternating back and forth, we’re wrestling with song structure and form. There are several advantages to working more intentionally with structure, separate from its expression in individual facets: expanding our repertoire of structures and forms, better supporting the emotion and meaning of the song with our structural choices, and exploring possibilities for using different structures in different facets (structural counterpoint).

  General Creative Strategies

  For any creative operation or move—setting, casting, framing, unfolding, or fulfilling structure—we can apply a repertoire of techniques or process strategies, made practical by our increased ability to work independently with material in various facets, and with structure as a separate element. These strategies can be applied at every stage of songwriting: when first working from seeds, in development work, in revision, in co-writing, and as learning or skill-building exercises.