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.

Songwriting like any other art brings with it a fair share of critics. After all, anyone can listen to a song and form an emotional opinion. In fact, music is an art that anyone can make, whether novice or experienced. Anyone can call themselves a songwriter by writing a few tunes, effective or ineffective in creating a good experience for the listener. In addition, hindsight can make some of the most memorable songs seem simple to have written. The melodic ideas are short strings of connected tones, the harmonic progressions basic root, four, five, with an occasional six minor, and the lyric phrase after phrase of everyday language we hear ourselves using in conversations and love letters. What could be so difficult about that?

Songwriting isn’t often thought of as an art to be mastered, like classical piano or upright bass. Truly remarkable artists begin with an undeniable gift, but that gift doesn’t truly shine until it is invested into with time, focus, and dedication. But in popular songwriting today, I find that the focus is nearly entirely on the gift, rather than the development of that gift. What results is a viewpoint that either a songwriter ‘has the gift’ or ‘doesn’t have the gift’, and furthermore, that each utterance from the songwriter with the gift is art worth listening to.

I write songs for two reasons: for the pleasure of writing, and for the pleasure of those listening. Sometimes I’m fortunate enough to achieve both those elements at once. But sometimes the process is slow and frustrating, and the real pleasure only comes from knowing my craft and process well enough that those listening find pleasure in my end result. Sometimes the song was pleasurable to write, but the experience of the listener fades in comparison. The truth still stands that in order to excel in my art, I need to practice my craft. Regardless of the ‘gifting’ I may or may not have started with, I take all the credit for developing it into the useful tool it is today.

As I said before, anyone can write a song, and anyone can critique a song. But that doesn’t mean we should listen to just anyone. As a songwriter reading this yourself, I strongly urge you to do the same. As a songwriter writing about songwriting, I realize that I’m a critic right now, so I urge you to sift my words as well for those ideas that ring true, and those that do not. The most valuable lesson I’ve learned as a writer over the years is that another writers’ process is not my own. Their process may serve as signposts for my own, but the more I practice my art, the more I learn to hear and trust my own instincts.

Songwriting is an art that for some comes very naturally, and for others takes a lot of practice. But until you’ve given yourself adequate time to find out how far you can develop your gift, don’t stop writing. Consider critique or feedback in context of those giving it. Some people care very much about lyrics, some don’t. Some people swear that a great melodic hook is the key to a hit song. Some think it’s all about the guitar riff, the tempo, the vocals, etc. Some have spent years in Nashville and believe that the storyline should be clear and the title apparent. Some come from a heavy metal background and believe that lyrics should be open for interpretation from the listener. The list goes on and on, but for each opinion, there is a musical context from which these preferences were formed. Allow yourself the grace to find out where your own preferences lie, and how they direct your process.

To truly call yourself a songwriter, you must write. You’ll know you’re making progress when you intentionally apply tools of the craft to achieve desired effects. You’ll know you’re excelling when the tools of the craft become instinctual, integrated into the very process you’re developing.

Many critics in my humble opinion don’t understand the level of dedication and time required to truly excel as a songwriter. To create something with intention and to do it over and over again takes immense skill that can be directed, but only truly developed through practice. If you’re in the early stages of developing your own process, I hope you find the courage to continue amidst colorful critique, both helpful and destructive. Anyone can write a song, but not anyone can create valuable listening experiences over and over again.

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.

Over the years, I’ve had several students pose the question, What is the difference between lyrics and poetry? People keep telling me I write good poetry, so how can I use this skill to strengthen my lyrics?”

Sometimes the line between poetry and lyrics is hard to define. If we read the lyrics of some popular music, the looseness of the rhythms and rhyme schemes certainly seem to involve some of the elements I think of when I ‘define’ poetry. Not an avid poetry reader myself, I’m going to take a stab at answering this question from the viewpoint of a lyricist.

Instead of talking theoretically, I’d like to compare poems to various lyrics. I’ll try to pinpoint a few of the major differences, but before I do, I’d like to talk about the most obvious characteristic that sets them apart – music. The musical framework of a song determines the way the lyric sings. In the overall form of a song, we generally need a chorus, a verse, a bridge, and sometimes a pre-chorus. The chorus section repeats, sometimes three or four times in a commercial format. That element alone sets lyric apart from poetry because all roads lead to the chorus which contains the main message of the song.

Melody is made up of phrases, and the lengths of these phrases determine the lengths of our lyrical lines. The rhythms of the melody determine the rhythms of our words, and so instead of free-form language, we conform to a rhythmic pattern that is dictated by the musical phrasing.

Jeff Hardin is a friend of mine whose poetry has been published in several magazines, books, and newspapers. A teacher and lover of language, his poems just captivate me. Let me share with you one of my favorites from his collection, Fall Sanctuary.

From Here to There

My father wrestles with the chain, slams it
tangled toward the truckbed where it catches
tailgate, slither-clangs to a heap beneath
his feet. Like a serpent of heavy links.
like the unwieldy weight his bogus life
has been, his trying to move it from here
to there. He curses God, who made him fail.
he turns, commands me pick up what I can.

I do: his stubborn will, his quiet code,
the all day bouts of walking through the yard
to find out what the moles have thieved. The stare.
The muscle pulled. The knife slammed down to hush
the dinner talk. I’ve heaved to get to here,
mid-life, his life, to pack it up for good.

What I notice first about this poem is the breaks in the lines. Before a line comes to a conclusion with a comma or period, the author leaves the thought dangling, as if to draw extra attention with silence or pause to the thought we just left. This idea is very similar to the idea of prosody, the songwriter’s tool of using form to reflect meaning. When the knife slammed down to hush….the dinner talk, the pause after hush allowed us to experience the meaning of the words. We use music and phrasing in the same way, reflecting the meaning of our lyric. However, when we write lines of a song to match the phrases of a melody, we try to match the lengths of the melodic phrases with each lyrical thought. Another way of saying this is when the music cadences, our lyric idea comes to a close as well. This is typical of songwriting, but certainly not a rule. There are lyrics that are snapshots of experiences, fragments of thoughts like slivers of time flung across a melodic idea, combining to create an experience for the listener rather than tell a story.

Along with the breaks in the lines are uneven rhythms that do not create a consistent rhythmic pattern. There are lyrics that follow extremely loose patterns, such as Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do”:

“All I wanna do is have a little fun before I die,”
Says the man next to me out of nowhere
It’s apropos
Of nothing
He says his name’s William but I’m sure,
He’s Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy
And he’s plain ugly to me
And I wonder if he’s ever had a day of fun in his whole
life
We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday
In a bar that faces a giant car wash
The good people of the world are washing their cars
On their lunch break, hosing and scrubbing
As best they can in skirts in suits

They drive their shiny Datsuns and Buicks
Back to the phone company, the record store too
Well, they’re nothing like Billy and me, cause

These kinds of lyrics require such character and insight from the vocalist. They are conversational, as if the singer and audience are connected along a stream of thought rather than a carefully-crafted lyric. But in most popular music, the rhythms of the language follow patterns that repeat over and over, just as the melody and harmony repeat motivic ideas over and over.

One similarity I notice between the poetry and Sheryl Crow’s lyric is the type of content that is used. Notice the sense-bound descriptions such as ‘the man next to me’, ‘plain ugly’, and ‘drinking beer on a Tuesday’. That same type of language is used here in Jeff Hardin’s poetry: ‘wrestles with the chain’, ‘tangled toward the truckbed’, ‘clangs to a heap beneath his feet.’ Sometimes we classify poetry as purely metaphorical, and abstract. But this can be just as true in songwriting, with lyrics such as ‘I’ll Be’ by Edwin McCain:

The strands in your eyes that color them wonderful
Stop me and steal my breath
And emeralds from mountains thrust towards the sky
Never revealing their depth

And tell me that we belong together
Dress it up with the trappings of love
I’ll be captivated, I’ll hang from your lips
Instead of the gallows of heartache that hang from above

Though there are sense-bound elements at work here, the overall effect is an abstract picture painted of metaphor. It’s a beautiful picture needless to say, as this song continues to capture thousands of listeners.

From a lyric-writing point of view, what seems to me to be the biggest difference between poetry and lyric is not the content, but the way the content is structured. Rhyme, as we can see from Edwin McCain’s song, follows specific rhyme schemes that correspond to the phrasing of the melody. Many songs follow just a few different schemes, such as XAXA, ABAB, XXAXXA, and so on. These schemes can be found in just about any songwriting book on the shelves. The rhythm of the lines follows consistent patterns, as dictated by the melody. Because melody is composed of so much rhythmic repetition, the rhythms in our lyric are also composed of that same repetition. Songs almost always center around one main point, one chorus or refrain that sums up the message. Poetry frequently seems to ride on the gentle stream of consciousness, weaving a thin thread through an experience rather than summing up that experience into one overall moral or lesson.

If you are a poet looking to write more song-friendly prose, I encourage you to think about these structural elements and rework your existing material. As we saw in Sheryl Crow’s ‘All I Wanna Do’, free-form conversational language can work in some song situations. But all songs need a main message that leaves the listener singing the song all the way home in the car – and that’s the chorus that follows those tell-tale lyric elements of rhyme, rhythm, and repetition. Try lifting out a word or phrase from your poetry that can serve as the main message. Repeat the phrase, setting it as the first line, middle, and last line of the chorus section. Fill in the developmental lines with ideas related to this main message. You’ll find that simply sticking to the common structures of choruses will shed new light on your writing. I believe that with the structural elements in play, poetry can be transformed into lyrics, and very effective ones at that.

As always, take 15 minutes every day and research your craft. If you desire to write better lyrics, spend that time reading lyrics of songs you love. Read them out loud, just as you would your poetry. Feel where the rhymes fall, notice how the rhythms repeat and then use these as patterns for your next verse or chorus section. For more information, please refer to my blog about brainstorming. The process of ‘destination writing’ may be similar to the process you go through while writing poetry. Take heart – you’re closer than you think to turning your poetry into great lyrics.

Andrea

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.

I’m so happy to be able to offer the material of Commercial Songwriting Techniques to budding and advanced songwriters around the globe. Born from my own experiences as a staff-writer and performing artist in the commercial music industry, the techniques exercised in the course focus on writing more efficiently, prolifically, and commercially. Lyrics are a stumbling block for many writers, and the first few weeks of the course attack that monster head-on with tools such as Destination Writing, Toggling, and differentiating between internal and external language. By learning to organize these two types of language, we can identify the strongest pattern that will connect more profoundly to the listener.

Many songs we know and love have a melodic hook that instantly grabs our attention, and so focusing on the lyric alone can leave us just short of a powerful song. Writing simple and catchy melodic motifs for those lyric areas we want to emphasize improves our songs by a landslide. Tools for contrast such as changing the lengths of the notes, the phrases, or simply starting on a different beat in the measure are simple to implement and produce huge results. We can learn to critique our own material using these techniques as well, and become fluent in verbalizing our critique of other songs. From my own experience, being able to critique my own writing by applying proven tools allows me to sort through the deluge of opinions we sometimes receive on our songs. In the end, we simply become more confident writers.

If you’re ready to approach your lyric writing from an entirely new angle, gather new tools for melody, harmony, and your own unique voice, I encourage you to jump into this course. By the end of 12 weeks, you’ll have dozens of new ideas, hundreds of titles, and 3 fully written songs. We’ll also spend some time finding out what qualities about you draw in the listener, and how you might continue to emphasize those qualities.

I look forward to meeting you and moving forward with you in your songwriting endeavors.

Sincerely,
Andrea Stolpe