Career Songwriter

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.

When I began writing songs, I remember the fear of sitting down in front of a blank page. There was a certain amount of trembling expectation, a sense of humility as I’d attempt to express myself through lyric and music. Nowadays, I still feel those same jitters, but with a great deal more foresight and confidence as I move through the writing process. Looking back, I realize it was not one moment of realization, one tool of the craft, or even one song that single-handedly sparked a growth spurt. It was the culmination of many beginnings, many first tries, failed bridges, stumped second verses, and flopped choruses that allowed me to emerge an experienced writer (who still sometimes writes failed bridges, stalled second verses, and flopped choruses).

I’ll be the first to admit there is a lot left to learn. I hope there are songs I have not yet written that will blow my other songs out of the water. I know there are ideas I have no yet had because I lack the experiences and the breadth of mind to conceive of them. But, that’s the beauty of an art that evolves as I evolve.

That said, I am sometimes asked what some of the most common pitfalls of new writers are. I’m sure the question is of particular interest so that those asking can evade the pitfalls and skip that step in the process of honing the craft. However, the most common pitfall is not writing frequently enough to understand where the other pitfalls lie, and so it’s a bit of a catch-22.

If you are writing a song a week, or at least a few songs a month, you’ll find yourself moving along a path to becoming better. Some of the scenery you might encounter along the way is generalized lyrics, strings of songs that are beginning to all sound the same, a lack of ideas, complex or difficult melodies that fall short of being memorable, disconnected harmonic progressions, etc. Which combinations of these depend on our musicality, training, our influences, our listening habits, and so on. With practice, we can improve no matter what our foundation.

But one particular pitfall I remember so clearly from my own experience (or lack thereof), had to do with the lyric content of the songs. I wrote the typical themes, love lost, love found, being the angry dump-ee, and being the self-righteous dump-er. As a whole, I suppose the lyrics weren’t particularly bad, but just not particularly memorable. The themes were universal enough, but what was missing was heart. My heart wasn’t in them. As years went by and I started writing for life events and experiences closer to me such as death in the family, or a celebratory song for a wedding, an interesting shift happened. Instead of the songs becoming less accessible because they were so much more specific to my situation, they were becoming more universal because they were specific and purposeful. It didn’t matter that my description of canning peaches as a little girl with my Grandma wasn’t a universal idea. What did matter was that by revealing personal and vulnerable details with the listener I connected us for a moment in time. I was singing about real situations, believable situations.

Now, one could argue that songs about canning peaches with my Grandma aren’t commercial. Indeed, it may not fit the mold. However, while I was writing detailed songs about my own life experiences, I was becoming fluent with a tool. I was involving words and situations I didn’t normally use in love songs, and taking risks with content beyond the ‘we met, we got married, we had a child’ formula. Eventually, that tool became a part of my process without my having to consciously think about its use. That’s the whole point with studying a songwriting process and gaining new tools. The tools themselves are merely vehicles for getting where we want to go. We’ll employ different tools in different songs, depending on what we need to accomplish.

Whatever pitfalls that keep us all from writing what we feel are our greatest songs, all can be conquered or at least minimized by exercising our writing muscle. Write often, and write without hesitation.