Career Songwriter

Keeping the ideas fresh and flowing often requires a lot of flexibility. It’s easy to suddenly find ourselves in a dead space, a plateau where all the shimmer is gone from our ideas. When this happens to me, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve that will keep the pen in my hand and the spring in my creativity. I’d like to share a few of those ideas with you now, in hopes you may be able to jump-start your engines next time you stall as well.

Whether you write music first, words first, or both at the same time, it’s a good idea to change up your process and explore other possibilities. I’m not talking about the style of music or genre of lyric you write, but rather how you go about writing it. Always starting with lyric can lead us in a pattern where all our phrases, rhythms, and rhyme schemes follow the same patterns. The lyric also has the power to steer the musical tempo and style, and so the result can be streams of songs that either don’t match the subtleties in our musical moods, or all tend to sound basically the same.

If you often start with lyrics, try setting words aside awhile. Sit at the piano or with your guitar and just let your musicality take over. Something I like to do is write 8 or 10 different motifs, just little mini-sections of 4 or 8 bars of melody and harmony that I think are catchy. I record each one as I sit there, and once the recording is done, about 15 seconds, I move onto another idea. I don’t allow my editor to interfere too much and I’m not afraid to record bad ideas. Later in the week I dump all my recordings onto my computer and listen. I’ll pick out all the ones I think could make a good verse foundation or chorus idea, and stash it in a folder labeled “New Music 6-22-08.” I may even grab one random idea and consider it a verse, putting it together with another random idea as a chorus, both very catchy and ready to inspire great lyrics. Sometimes the pairing works, sometimes it doesn’t. The point for me is that I’m trying things without any presumptions or concern for making mistakes. I may go through this process each day for a week, letting the music clips stack up until I feel ready to sift through them. When I finally do, it’s like opening little Christmas presents – I’ve forgotten what’s wrapped within each music file and I listen with much more objective ears, responding as the listener might to my song.

In my experience, many songwriters are at least additionally, but often first and foremost performers. Having a bunch of music clips lying around isn’t exact a novel idea. So in this case, lyrics are the issue and we need a process for finishing songs that are gathering dust without words. What I like to do in this case involves a two-pronged attack. First, I focus on a musical idea that I feel is very strong. I record it – just a rough one minute job will do. Then I sit with my eyes closed and earphones on and listen to the track, poised in front of a word document ready to jot down any images, words, phrases, emotions, etc. that the recording sparks. As I type, I pay special attention to the mood of the music. I allow myself to write whatever comes to mind, free of my editor and focused on sensebound descriptions. This process of writing is called ‘Destination Writing,’ and I teach it in my Commercial Songwriting Techniques class. From my paragraph of rambling images and thoughts, I harvest the phrases and words that seem to plug into my melody, building around them always from the destination writing.

Sometimes we get mired in perfecting each section as we write. This can land us in a hole of lots of first verses and choruses, but no back halves of songs. To this problem, I take a bold leap and try using my first verse as the second verse. Seeing the song from this new angle enables new ideas to flow. I write a first verse setting the ‘who’, ‘when,’ and ‘where’ clearly, creating the foundation of the storyline. Again, to do this, give your editor the day off. You’ll need guts to leave behind old ways, but trust me, it’s worth the effort.

Every few months it can be a great idea to change up our process. Not only do we realize greater depths of skill, but we consistently knock down the tower of hesitation that keeps us bound within our typical melodic, harmonic, and lyrical styles.

If you’re writing a few times a week, you’re speeding down the path to better songs that more clearly express who you are as an artist. Along the path are inevitable pit-stops where strings of songs reflect the same stage in your musical and lyrical development and writing process. Sometimes we get stalled in these stages and find ourselves unable to move past them. When this happens to me, I go back to my toolbox, the big box of songwriting techniques that enable me to throw my song against the wall and see if it sticks. I’ll critique my own song, taking a look at the lyric content, rhyme, conversational quality, title placement, overall structure, the melodic shape, phrasing, note lengths, the harmonic progression and frequency of chords, etc. As I break the tune down into these elements, I often start to see similarities.

Perhaps I notice that several of my latest tunes use the same melodic shape, or the phrasing of the verses are all 4 lines followed by 4 more lines. Maybe I’m stuck on starting on the root chord or using the same melodic intervals. The antidote is to start implementing the opposite tools. Instead of starting on the root chord, I try starting on the 4th or 5th. Instead of large melodic intervals, I try small intervals or just staying on 1 note.

Recently a student asked for some ideas for getting out of harmonic ruts. Below are some of my tools, but add your own as you confront pit-stops in your own writing.

1. As I described above, notice how often you start your verse or chorus on the root chord. If this is typical of your harmonic movement, try starting on the ii-, iii-, IV, V, or vi- instead. Listen carefully to how your instincts tell you to alter your melody based on those changes.

2. Notice how many times you change chords in each section. Is it once per measure, twice, or every two measures? Change up the harmonic rhythm by changing chords more or less frequently than you typically do.

3. Simplify. Movement in both the melody and harmony all the time doesn’t automatically make a song better or more interesting. Try writing a verse over a 1 chord groove.

4. Avoid the root until the chorus. This technique not only changes your starting point, but helps to keep the tension taught until releasing it in the chorus when you do play the root. The root chord offers that great feeling of ‘coming home’, returning to the tonal center of the song.

5. Change the bass shape. Try descending or ascending the scale, moving up or down by whole steps or half steps. Notice how often you change chords, and then increase or decrease that frequency for more ideas.

6. Change the tempo and the time signature. If you consistently write in 4/4, try 6/8 or ¾. Notice your typical tempos, and significantly slow down or speed up for new ideas.

7. Learn a new rhythm on your instrument. If you’re a piano player, try playing quarter notes in the bass, or half notes, or arpeggios. If you’re a guitar player, try a new groove and write the whole first verse or chorus over that single 1 or 2 bar groove.

8. If you play an instrument, put it down or switch to an instrument you’re not familiar with. Try a drop D guitar tuning, try a capo on the 6th or 7th fret and turn your guitar into a mandolin. If you don’t play an instrument, pick one up and sing a melody over a 1 or 2 note bass-line in your left hand.

9. Pick up a CD you haven’t listened to in awhile. Pick a tune at random and play the intro and stop just before the verse starts. Try writing the rest of the song using the intro as a guide for tempo, rhythm, and chord progression. You can always go back later and substitute a chord or two of your own to bring the harmonic progression further away from the original.

10. Go out and buy 5 new records. Sometimes just funneling new music into our heads inspires the growth we need to move on from a plateau.

In last week’s ‘While You Are Writing’, I suggested two activities: Finding out more about the function of a publishing company, and creating some interesting collisions with verbs and adjectives. This week I’d like to suggest two more things you can do to grow your knowledge and skill.

Business:
Visit the NSAI (Nashville Songwriter’s Association International) website at http://www.nashvillesongwriters.com. Familiarize yourself with the function of the association, the workshop opportunities, and consider ways you can get involved. The yearly fee is quite inexpensive, and the benefits are far-reaching. As with any organization you become a member of, signing up alone won’t yield great results. Keep checking the site at least once a month, reading the articles and staying abreast of song camps and other opportunities organized for songwriters all around the nation.

Craft:
Analyze a song of your choice from your favorite artist. Even if you’re a novice at song analysis, starting to identify a few basic tools of the craft in other songs will help you to grow your own skills as a writer. Here are some elements you’ll want to look for:

Melody
1. Pitch. What is the overall shape from the verse to the prechorus to the chorus? If there isn’t a prechorus, how did you know the song moved directly from the verse into the chorus? What happens to the pitch in the bridge section, if there is one?

2. Phrasing. Are there sections of the song with lots of rest space? Are there sections with long notes or short notes? Are there differences in the phrasing between the verse and chorus that help to distinguish the sections from each other? (Phrasing is a word we use to describe the lengths of the melodic and harmonic ideas. When you’re in doubt as to the length of a phrase, look to the lyric for help. Lyrical phrasing lines up with melodic phrasing in most instances, and full sentences or full phrases in language equal a full phrase in melody. Broken language such as sentence fragments may signal only a partial phrase.)

Lyrics
1. Rhyme Scheme. What is the rhyme scheme in the verse, the chorus, the prechorus, and bridge if there is one?

2. Content. Summarize in your own words the overall meaning in each section. Instead of reiterating the story using different words, ask yourself what the purpose of the section is. Does the section set the scene, does it describe the problem, or does it paint a picture of the solution?

Harmony
1. Does the frequency of the chords change from verse to prechorus, prechorus to chorus, chorus to bridge, if there is one? How many measures is one cycle through the pattern of the harmonic progression? When do you hear a new chord enter into the mix? Does the new chord heighten the intensity or energy level? Does it signal the entrance of a new section?

Think about all these tools and how you might apply one or two to your next song.