MikeRobinson

Yeah ... all of us are writers ... and everything that we create is fiction. You will never meet Your Audience, and they will never meet you. (Do you know Stephen King's mailing address? No fair using the Internet!) But they will feel that you are speaking directly to them, and they will understand everything that you are saying. Yes. That is the Magic.

"Happen again with the same girl?" 🤔 Even marriage is a roller-coaster ride sometimes, "and if it ain't a ride, it ain't worth it." (Waitaminit ... that sounds like a song! But, I digress ...) First, and foremost, capture everything. I've lost count of how many "voice memos" I have on my phone [archives]. Don't stop collecting them, whether they are verses or musical ideas. Now... what to do with them? Welcome to the world of "the writer.™" Grab a cup of coffee or tea, and sift through at least some of them. But, now, try to look "a little-bit objectively." Find one that seems to be "a central idea," and then find two or three others that "support it." (Some also may "stand in contrast to it.") Single them out and try to be a storyteller. "Song storytelling" can approach from either angle, or both: music, or lyric (poem). And the first thing that you must know about storytelling is that it isn't a deterministic process! Therefore, just as you've captured all your "source material," also capture all your "drafts." Never(!) throw anything away. As you try to tell stories, think about Gentle Listener, and how to construct a "necessarily-universal" emotional moment ... or insight ... or reflection ... or ... that mirrors your "necessarily-personal" experience. (Or, if you dare and if you wish, hers.) = = = "Start with the hook?" I think that remains to be determined. Once you've got the idea, there are dozens of ways to execute it. ("Keep all of them! Keep all of them!")

MuseScore amazed me long ago, and the team that produces it continues to make it better. Back in a day when I was "feeling flush," I decided that I would "spend lots of money" either on Sibelius or Finale – these being the only score-writing tools that I was then aware of. But first, I decided to surf the "open source" world. After quickly passing by a few inevitable pieces of "dead-dud abandonware (of course ...)," I found MuseScore. "And-d-d-d... I stopped looking." This is professional-grade stuff. A startling demonstration of what "community-supported open-source software" can actually be.

... but they devised, and intended, and purposed(!) for "the reader/listener to do that." They meant for a third-party ... the reader/listener ... to be there, and to be The Audience. Seriously: in this case, pick a word: "abstraction?" "fiction?" Really we're just talking about the same idea. Anytime we exit from our own deeply-personal experiences and decide to write a song about these experiences, we have purposely invited an unknown-to-us third party into our experience. And, to accommodate him, we prepare a place for him. We've built a bridge. A "fictional" place where (s)he can meet us. To me, "fictional" does not mean "false." Maybe it means "contrived." "Necessary."

John, I use the phrase "a work of fiction" here in a very specific way that you might have mistook. Unless a work is a literal ((auto-)biographical) statement of a particular real-person's life or an actual it-really-happened situation, I call that work "fictional." If the work interprets the situation in order to "relate it to" anyone or anything else, in my strict meaning of the term it has become "fictional." You are now invoking some lesser or greater amount of "dramatic license," in order to convey a greater and more-universal point, because you desire the listener to connect with that point, not merely to be informed about "what occurred between Mary Jones and Tom Swift on May 21, 1997 at 2:35 PM." The origins, and indeed the power, of many tales originate directly from real life. (Hence the rich world of "historical fiction" and "alternative history.") But they are, nonetheless, tales. They are not meant strictly to inform an otherwise-disinterested bystander. "Goody for you that you rode your Kawasaki ... what's in it for me, especially since I don't own a bike?" "Glad to hear that you love your wife ... what's going to make me want to stop right now and hug my husband?" This is what I meant by "fiction." The word is not intended to convey that the events did not actually happen, nor that the persons are not actually real. But, as a songwriter, you have purposely exercised your fiction and artistic license with the express purpose to include a third person: Me. Everyman. And, not only that, but to tell him something. Not literally "of" what happened, but more-universally "about" it.

I think that every song, even if it is personal, is "a work of fiction." A subtle reason for this fiction-writing is that the listener, no matter who (s)he is, needs to be able to relate to the song as more than just a sympathetic bystander. The listener should be able to project himself/herself into the fictional scenario that you've contrived, making it their own.

Here it is: https://sites.google.com/site/musicproducersorganization/

Good "fiction-writer's thought" here is this: "first, set up your story ... whatever it is ... and only then finish it." The lyrics that you have right now consist of the narrator talking about himself: there is, as yet, no context that I can relate to, which could serve to "draw me into it." Therefore – in an economy of one or two lines, do these two things: Create a fictional situation in which your protagonist can be a Hero. Make him/her a hero! "Self-absorbed self-doubt" is not what fiction-buyers come to see. While you can indulge one or two lines to this, what they want is resolve, followed by either decisive action or, as the case may be, decisive promise of future action. "Yes, you must be a story-teller." Your protagonist needs to be set upon a journey ... or, about to embark on one ... or at least with a clear picture of what the confronting situation actually is (which you now share with the rest of us).

What I remember from every "music theory class" I ever took was that they focused on the Pig Latin and never got around to pointing out the very simple musical ideas that were actually lurking just behind it. "Music" is naturally very mathematical and therefore has a lot of "theory." A lot of that "theory" is actually boots-on-the-ground useful! But, there's a whole lot of "memorization fodder" that gets put in the way. For instance, we could just as easily refer to the modes using numbers, 1-7. And stop "petting little monkeys after lunch."

In Nashville they'd say: 4 - 1 - 4 - 1 - 4 - 5. A typical, if boring, "chord progression," waiting to be imaginatively decorated.

MuseScore, which runs on everything and is absolutely free(!), can do tablature very easily. (Along with "everything else you could possibly want to do with music notation." A truly amazing piece of software.)

Music-students since time immemorial (at least through the past several centuries ...) have been forced to endure the topic of "Musical Modes" without ... I submit ... really understanding them, nor their very(!) practical effect upon your musical compositions. No, in their desperation to achieve whatever was (for them) "a passing grade," they very quickly realized that pig-Latin sequences such as "Ionian, Dorian, Phyrigian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian" were nothing more than irrelevant nonsense that had to be memorized (somehow) for at least the next twelve weeks. So they came up with things like "I Don't Pet Little Monkeys After Lunch" to tide them over during their periodic "one-hours from Hell" before racing for the door. So ... why am I bringing up this probably still-sore point now? Because there really was a very-essential and very-useful "point of pragmatic music theory" out there which you can actually use for dramatic effect in your songwriting. (Actually, in your orchestration of whatever you have written ... which actually turns out to be a very important part of what you must do. Unless you don't.) (First of all, and before we continue, "the Nashville Number System." No more pig-Latin: just numbers, "one through seven." Say goodbye to those monkeys.) The first(!) essential idea, in all of Western music, is staring you in the face whenever you look at your keyboard and play "the C-scale, all white notes": The "white notes" are separated by "black notes." ... but ... The arrangement of white-and-black notes is not symmetrical, and the spaces where "no intervening black key exists" is also not symmetrical. It exists between notes #3-4 and (wrapping around(!)) notes #7-8. If we agree to call "white-key to next-white-key" a "whole step" when there's a black-key in the way, and a "half-step" when there isn't, we actually see a very definite pattern to those steps: "W-W-H-W-W-W-H." (Go ahead, check it out. I'll wait.) Well, the second(!) essential idea is most likely where your music-theory semester ran out – as they patiently explained what "all those sharps and flats on the left side of a piece of music were arranged in just the way they are. It turns out that, if you start on any of the twelve-total notes in the scale, and follow the above-mentioned progression of halfs and wholes, you will (the hard way ...) "play a major scale in" whatever ... "key" ... you found yourself in. (The "key" having been determined by whatever note you started on. Try it. I'll wait.) So now, the third(!!) essential idea: What if "this is the key that I'm in, and I'm stickin' to it?" Well, of course you could simply give them "three chords and the truth," but you could also decide to play a musical trick on them: instead of sounding the "next note" that would be proper in the key of (say that you are now in) "C," what if you gave them the note that would sound just-right in "E?" (Nashville numbers: C=1, E=3, difference=2.) You have just dealt them a mathematically-simple musical surprise that "sounds right, except that it doesn't sound quite right in this context, except that it sounds right and I'm not entirely sure why." Here's the trick: Your music teacher would say that you "used a <<pig-Latin>> mode." A mathematician would say that you "rotated the progession of halves and wholes." And yet, most-importantly, your audience didn't see it coming. Here's the math: (nothing more than a simple rotation!) Math: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 C-Major: W W H W W W H C + 3: H W W W H W W Math: 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 Now, "if you persist in this trick," for more than a measure or so, then your audience will of course "enjoy a key-change," and expect your newly-established key to "become the new major." Within seconds, their sense of surprise will have been overcome by expectation. But ... what else can you do? - - - Suppose that you "salt" the melody that you are playing, "in the key of (say) C," with the sharps-or-flats ... but perhaps not all(!) of them ... from some other key? Until now, you called them "accidentals ..."

I think that it is very nice, although the violins are probably a bit "too far forward," overpowering the piano especially in the lead parts. (Make them stand out, but don't shove them in my face. When the piano appears, give him room.) Consider, e.g. around 2:30, whether you want to draw my attention to the piano or to the violins? You probably want to do some "riding the faders" here. Direct my attention during this segment. (Consider using left vs. right pan, reverb (back) vs. no-reverb (front) and so on.) Also – consider adding double-basses playing long, slow, legato parts ... literally to give it some foundation. Depth ... And – if ever I actually gave you advice about one violin over the other, "you nailed it." The two violins very nicely complement each other, and the piano part is also very expressive and clean.

This is very nice. When the instruments all came in at the very beginning of the song, they kinda clashed, but around 0:30 they seemed to have found their relative places. I think that this song would benefit from some additional mixing, to set (say ...) the piano as the lead instrument, the first violin behind it, the concertina in a steady fill/supporting role, second violin next, and synthesized everything-else filling in the remaining gaps. If you wanted another instrument (say, the concertina) to "take the lead" for a phrase, you could actually do this in the mix. Also consider the artful use of EQ. Many of these instruments occupy the same general area of the sonic spectrum, although they specialize in a few frequencies. You can use EQ to create "slots" so that other instruments don't step-on the one that you've designated to fill that slot. Even though two instruments are perhaps playing at similar volume, within the slot one instrument is attenuated so the others can be more clearly heard.

Here's another way of looking at it – "let the politics be the topic!" Consider, for example, Sting's iconic song, "The Russians." He took neither side but commented on both. Video: https://www.youtube.com/wHylQRVN2Qs In essence, this entire thing is Mass Psychology. Certainly one of the most fascinating disciplines within this study of humanity, if only for the number of people it has killed. Two well-funded and well-schooled propaganda machines who call themselves "Left™" and "Right™" are steadily churning out two parallel divisive messages whose primary purpose (I think ...) is to sow division, in everything. Simply because "a house divided against itself cannot stand." A fundamental principle of this form of propaganda is that it is "strictly binary." It is "Red or Blue, Black or White, Left or Right." If you are not "X-Polar" then you are either accused of being "Y-Polar" or vilified for not being properly "X-Polar" because in this mass-psychology play "there is no continent, only two coasts." Because this propaganda wants you to move, and is specifically engineered to make you do so. It wants you to feel that you must. Wants you to feel that the only "truth" is either on "the correct coast" or "the wrong coast" and that you must be a fool to be anywhere else. (Scary but true: https://medium.com/@AspieSavant/16-basis-principles-of-mass-indoctrination-8ee8b179cf4a ...) "Aww, Mike, that could never happen in my country ..." Don't Be A Fool! 😡 However, the continent is where your audience lives: that vast middle ground composed of people who daily observe the two über-polarized messages that are being screamed at them, but who do not and will not subscribe to either one. "These are not, in fact, 'as the polarists describe them.'" These are the people who, I submit, are your true audience. No matter what the polarizers scream at them daily, "they are the country, and their country shall not be moved." And they'd probably love to hear a well-made song that is addressed to them, whether or not it conveys "national solidarity." Speak to them. Speak to their homes, their children, their lives ... and their fears. So: "your true audience, ripe for a song." Instead of taking a position on either "coast," step back towards the actually-vast "continent" and write from there. Once again we live in interesting times. Those times are waiting for the perfect poem. Write a song that helps us to understand the hyper-polarized, propaganda-driven world in which we are now living ... without automatically starting with either of their messages as your starting text. ("Don't march to their drummer ...") Just as Sting did with The Russians.

Now, at the same time, it very much depends on "what sound you are after." If those condensers bring you closer to the sound you want without the necessity of digital filtering later, "so be." But on the other hand, if you think you might need it later, you need to capture it now. However ... "who says you can't sing into two mics at once?" As long as you can send both of them into your DAW as two separate tracks of audio information ... 😎

I like it. Now, cut out two-thirds of it. "Kill your darlings ..."

I've owned Macintoshes and iPhones for a very long time, and I've always very-religiously kept backups. Which basically means that I find that I have "voice memos" which were recorded at the spur of the moment since 2016. "When a song wanders through my head," I reach for Voice Record, and capture it. This in due time makes its way to the permanent backups that I keep, and also into the Mac's various sound libraries. And so – after all these years – I've decided on a project to turn most of them into actual songs. (I do not promise to release all of them, because some of them suck.) However ... "here goes!" It really is very interesting how your own spur-of-the-moment ideas can, after the passage of time, both sound like "the work of a complete stranger," and sound rather interesting. "How strange ... to follow the ideas of a perfect stranger, into territories where I have been before."

Lisa, maybe an alternative perspective might be ... "what if this is another story?" What if this might turn out to be "your next story?" I say, "no matter what happens, never 'cross it out.'" Instead, shove the file into a "trash-bin folder (or set of folders) that you never, ever empty." Whether you're trying to find the right tune or the right story, "above all else, keep everything." (Ummm, it's not like any of us are ever going to run out of disk space, eh? And if we do, "external drives" are cheap and fast.) Newspapers (and, criminal investigators ...) famously kept their "morgue files," the likes of which J. K. Rowling freely admitted were part of her inspiration of the "Room of Requirement" in her Harry Potter series: "the place where everything went, but never went away." Sometimes, when I feel that I am absolutely at a creative dead end, "I visit the morgue." And there I find something. "If you created it, it deserves to live forever."

Sorry about that, Lisa. You see, I use the "uBlock Origin" ad blocker (as well as quite a few others), so I don't see that commercial content. Although I don't subscribe to the notion that "this is a practical way to write music" ... nor do I seriously think that the authors intend for you to suppose that it is ... I do think that it is valuable for encouraging us to switch-off the internal critics who would "keep us from actually finishing(!) anything at all." Also: in the various other kinds of creative endeavors in which I actually do (right now... heh...) "make my daily bread," I am from time to time re-reminded just how quickly your own material sounds or looks like "the work of a total stranger." Because enough time has now passed that you do not completely remember what was in or on your mind at the time that you created it. And, suddenly, you find yourself approaching it now as though you were "the stranger." (That is to say: "the audience.") And, lo and behold, "it looks/sounds pretty darned good!" 😮

But also remember this: "you are the writer, not the audience." When you listen-back to your own material, you can never actually listen to it as a brand-new listener does. We wouldn't get very far in our infatuation if certain well-known artists had pored too much over their lyrics: Sometimes, we are our own worst critic. And sometimes, we are dead wrong. There comes a definite time in the life of any commercial product when you must "shrink-wrap the thing and send it out into the world." (FISI™ == "😯 it ... ship it!") When that moment happens, promise yourself that you won't look back.

These days, there are lots of website postings which talk about either "writing a song in one hour," or "writing and recording a song in one hour." Most of them seem to be trivial. Some of them are good. Some of them are very good. Here's one that I think I've found which falls into the last category: https://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-write-record-a-song-in-one-hour-or-less--audio-9435 Although this post is certainly no longer current – it was written in 2011 – the essential principles do remain the same. That you really can "bust through the various blocks" by simply refusing to be held back by them – for the purely-artificial and purely-contrived reason that "you are in a hurry and do not have the time." That is to say, if you [artificially ...] choose to prioritize "bustin' through to the finish line" ahead of "winding up with anything that you'd tell your mother about, once you get there." Also this: https://blog.landr.com/write-song/

Part of my general disagreement with "Techno" is that too much of it really is formulaic ... please remember that I was there in the 1980's when the Drum Machine (and MIDI) were first being invented. I really don't like to encounter "musical tropes." Yes, we've all watched YouTube videos where composers literally "write a 'song' in one hour." All I can say is that there's a very, very long distance between a McDonald's hamburger and a carefully-cooked steak accompanied by a very good bottle of wine ... and guess which one of the two I'm gonna pay my money for.

Although "TED Talks" of whatever flavor are, of course, "a staged media event," I nonetheless appreciated this presenter's en passant exposition of what the actual song-creation process looks like: "thumbs up, thumbs down." You're never actually trying to "find" some "foregone conclusion." You embark upon the journey with no idea where it will wind up ... "this time." Instead, you dream up an[other] idea and try it out: "thumbs up? or down?" If down, you set it aside and try the next one. Eventually you find yourself playing your brand-new song all the way through and now it's "thumbs up all the way." According to who? According to you. Now, "this song is finished." I really like that approach because it takes the pressure off. (And yes, at the end of the presentation, he really had written a song about: "who's your daddy," "does white wine give you headaches," and "do you really miss the Dewey Decimal System." All three of which were randomly selected from cards written earlier by participants. And, he had the audience singing along.) "Write. Just write." Whether or not <<this_song>> turns out to be, or turns out not to be, "the thing that makes your fortune," at the end of your life(!) the only thing that you can truly regret is ... that you didn't write.

Pahchiscme, one of the most-exciting aspects of "our present computer era" is that these days it's much less important whether-or-not we managed to "develop proficiency" on an instrument. Today, we don't have to be "touch typists," because we have word processors. (I actually do a lot of my work on a [completely free, and awesome] music scoring program, MuseScore. As well as a DAW.) Even if your "hand/eye coordination" skills have never been and will never be commensurate with those of your favorite musical idol, you can hammer out a pretty darned good second. Yes, it may take longer and feel like grunt work, but it comes out just like you actually do have the supple fingers you never had.