Approach To Writing A Song

[john]

Hey

I don't know if any of you do this, but I find it a useful stepping stone when I am struggling for lyrical inspiration.

come up with a melody. Sing it round a few times work out the basic kinks

put together basic chords

sing the melody a few times through.

now look around your room/place you are sitting... sing about that.. let your mind explore it.

when you get a line you like you keep it, but try as much as possible to do it as you roll

Once you have the basic lines you can start editing and making it more interesting... but you have that start

Not finished, but here is something I did as I wrote this post. I will noe continue with it, substituting, editing etc to see where it goes:

Sitting in my living room

looking round my world

it's funny how circumstance

can make that seem absurd

I try to breathe, try not to scream

I try to see beyond my means

Only took minutes (and it shows) but it has potential. I basically looked around and let the objects take me on that journey with the thoughts they evoked.

I don't usually write this way but do find it a useful way to kick start my thoughts and help them find direction.

Cheers

John

[roxhythe]

Well, you're right. I don't work like that. Probably everybody's different.

I don't have to worry about the music--it's *there*. Envision a gigantic 8-track playing 24/7 (no on/off switch, and no controlover what's going to play). The Soundtrack From God. None of it has words. Pieces will eventually grow words (it's about the best I can describe it) because I will get tired of humming and la-la-ing along with the music. It is not necessarily country music--but I know from experience that when I try to play it on the guitar, no matter what it is, it *will* come out country music, so I try to plan for that these days.

Since it will be country music, I know it'll be a pretty simple chord progression, and most of the chords will be monosyllabic. And I won't worry about that just yet. I will work with the words instead.

And I can't just "write about anything," any more than I can sit down and say, "Okay, now I'm going to write a song. Gotta have inspiration, and inspiration, for me, comes mostly from outside myself. And it can be all sorts of things. I've had songs inspired by bumperstickers, by news stories, by a chance remark someone made. I've responded to a wide variety of online challenges, and I occasionally will set chsllenges for myself.

I don't know where it will go from there. Sometimes I have a clear idea of the structure, and sometimes I don't. My only hard-and-fast rules are (1) when I'm done, it must express a complete thought, whatever the thought is, and (2) it must be between 3-1/2 and 5 minutes. If I can't do it in 3-1/2 to 5 minutes, then it probably wasn't worth doing.

I will not write anything down until the song is "done." I will have sung it to myself enough while I've been "writing" so that I should remember it when I'm on stage without props. I will still go to sleep and see if I remember everything in the morning; if I don't, it may not have been worth remembering. *Then* I'll write the lyrics down, toss them to the wolves at one writers' site I subscribe to, and see if people like it, and what they think should be changed. I may or may not agree with them.

*Then* I'll try playing it on the guitar, seeing if I can make the guitar make those notes I was hearing and puzzling out what chords they're in. (Challenge for the tone-deaf composer, really.) Depending on how it feels to sing and play it, I may make further changes to either the words, the music, or both, but they are unlikely to be major.

Whether any of that has been worthwhile, however, depends on whether a live audience likes the song enough to request it again. If they don't, I will do my best to forget it. I am only interested in the "keepers." The rest are steppingstones.

That help any?

Joe

[john]

Hey Joe

Interesting. There not a problem at the moment but lacking inspiration does strike sometimes and i have a few ways of approaching it.

I just love comparing notes so to speak. I like varying my approach to help keep things fresh.

Cheers

John

[roxhythe]

John, lack of inspiration used to really bother me--I worried I was losing my creativity. I finally got it out of my system by writing a song about it--"The Writer's Block Blues." People liked it well enough so it went on the last album. And I really haven't been bothered since.

These days, I just make sure I have other stuff to work on during the "dead times." One of my favorite sideline activities is setting other people's lyrics to music. (Yes, Tone-Deaf Composer, me. Makes me feel like Beethoven.) That "composing," though, really consists just of matching somebody's words up to a piece of The Soundtrack From God. It'll either happen or it won't. I have three, maybe four, of those to do right now, and I was going to try to record them all tonight.

I also do lead guitar tracks to other people's stuff, and that's always fun; some of them wonder why I have to ask what key it's in, and what the chord progression is, and some of them either don't wonder or don't ask. I've also recorded one other writer whose work I was impressed with (so I can add Tone-Deaf Recording Engineer to the resume, too), I do as much graphic-design work for other people as I can (used to be my business), and of course, I have the blog for a weekly writing-for-space and writing-for-deadlines exercise.

And sooner or later, something always ends up triggering a song.

Joe

[Boff]

Hmm.. I'm really still a beginner at songwriting, so I haven't really developed any technique but..

I always have pen & paper and something to record stuff with (my phone), because these lines keep popping up in my head on my way to school, when I'm going to sleep, anytime and anywhere really. Sometimes these lines are several, and when there's enough lines to make a verse or at least a though, I bring it home and see what I can do with it. On the very rare ocations that I actually finish a song, I bring it to the drummer of my band, and he'll make up a melody and the musical part.

I'm not at all happy with my "method", it doesn't feel like it brings out the best of me, and I barely finish any songs. I'm currently stuck with countless songs that consist of two verses and a crappy chorus. If a

[MikeRobinson]

It would be fun to keep this going . . .

I actually "write a song" with music paper. Well, these days with an open-source scoring program (that is quite good and runs on everything).

I start with a key and noodle around with intervals. Look for an arrangement of four or five notes that seems to be going somewhere. Look for various possible arrangements of those notes. Sketch a bunch of those out, with several measures of rest between them. One or two of them usually hop out. I work with those.

Various things you can try... copy and paste, shift 'em up and/or down, flip 'em end-for-end or upside down. Change the length of notes. Insert some rests.

I usually work in silence, strange as that may seem. Humming to myself. Occasionally turning the sound on to listen to a phrase.

Eventually, what comes out of all this a lead-sheet. It's just a single line of melody. I block-in the very basic (I, IV, V) chord structure just to give a sense of what it might sound like in some sort of a setting. It's not intended to last; just to make it sound a bit more encouraging than just a single line of notes.

Usually, by this time, something definite has begun to take hold. So, taking the idea phrase-by-phrase I start writing out (on the computer) more detailed ideas of different possible versions of the various possible lines. I do not know which one(s) I am going to use yet, and I am very meticulous to keep them all. There is, in a folder, every file I ever did of every song (there aren't many yet) that I ever write, or tried to write. One folder (containing subfolders) is called TrashCan, and yet it is not the Trash Can. Time Machine is always running once-an-hour (or sooner) on my Mac, and nothing goes into the trash, no matter how snarly. Nothing.

Strangly, there aren't any lyrics yet. Quite a bit of my stuff does not have lyrics at all. Yet. And I've also got ideas for lyrics, poems and such, that do not have songs to go with them. Yet. Ditto the idea of keeping every version, every scrap of everything.

I really wrestle with it, I'm afraid. Copy and paste phrases from one page into another trying to stitch them together into a cohesive piece that makes sense. Usually don't get it right. File-away the abortive attempt (don't delete it!) or "Save As," and keep going. Days go by that way. But, poco a poco, it actually works for me.

When a song finally gets as good as a lead sheet can make it, it's time to try to arrange and orchestrate the piece into something that can be played. Usually by someone with much better technical skills on the keyboard than I actually possess. Or, by the computer, which plays better than I could ever dream to. "Orchestration and arranging" is what I'm really trying to self-study and master right now.

Anyone else out there?

Edited February 16, 2010 by MikeRobinson

[bluage]

It would be fun to keep this going . . .

I actually "write a song" with music paper. Well, these days with an open-source scoring program (that is quite good and runs on everything).

I start with a key and noodle around with intervals. Look for an arrangement of four or five notes that seems to be going somewhere. Look for various possible arrangements of those notes. Sketch a bunch of those out, with several measures of rest between them. One or two of them usually hop out. I work with those.

Various things you can try... copy and paste, shift 'em up and/or down, flip 'em end-for-end or upside down. Change the length of notes. Insert some rests.

I usually work in silence, strange as that may seem. Humming to myself. Occasionally turning the sound on to listen to a phrase.

Eventually, what comes out of all this a lead-sheet. It's just a single line of melody. I block-in the very basic (I, IV, V) chord structure just to give a sense of what it might sound like in some sort of a setting. It's not intended to last; just to make it sound a bit more encouraging than just a single line of notes.

Usually, by this time, something definite has begun to take hold. So, taking the idea phrase-by-phrase I start writing out (on the computer) more detailed ideas of different possible versions of the various possible lines. I do not know which one(s) I am going to use yet, and I am very meticulous to keep them all. There is, in a folder, every file I ever did of every song (there aren't many yet) that I ever write, or tried to write. One folder (containing subfolders) is called TrashCan, and yet it is not the Trash Can. Time Machine is always running once-an-hour (or sooner) on my Mac, and nothing goes into the trash, no matter how snarly. Nothing.

Strangly, there aren't any lyrics yet. Quite a bit of my stuff does not have lyrics at all. Yet. And I've also got ideas for lyrics, poems and such, that do not have songs to go with them. Yet. Ditto the idea of keeping every version, every scrap of everything.

I really wrestle with it, I'm afraid. Copy and paste phrases from one page into another trying to stitch them together into a cohesive piece that makes sense. Usually don't get it right. File-away the abortive attempt (don't delete it!) or "Save As," and keep going. Days go by that way. But, poco a poco, it actually works for me.

When a song finally gets as good as a lead sheet can make it, it's time to try to arrange and orchestrate the piece into something that can be played. Usually by someone with much better technical skills on the keyboard than I actually possess. Or, by the computer, which plays better than I could ever dream to. "Orchestration and arranging" is what I'm really trying to self-study and master right now.

Anyone else out there?

Dear Mr. Robinson, John, roxhythe, Boff, and company...

I'm working daily to increase my fluency in writing notated music, and I mean I am working hard! I am burning alive (complete with roiling, acrid, choking smoke and revoltingly charred skin!) with the desire to one day sit down with another musician and work together on a composition or a performance, completely assured that we're communicating thoroughly and creatively using the literal language of music.

I am also deeply and lovingly enamored of the skills that orchestrators and arrangers possess. That a single human being can use their minds to catalog the sounds of musical instruments in all their various modes of performance, and then use their hearts to organize the resulting sounds into something harmonious and emotionally stimulating, is profoundly impressive to me. I worship Pop/Jazz musicians like Henry Mancini, Duke Ellington, Michel Legrand, Burt Bacharach, Johnny Mandel, the classical composer/orchestrators such as Stravinsky and Ravel, and craftsmen such as Bernard Herrmann who orchestrate(d) their own film scores, and others who bring so much happiness into this world through their musical gifts. I wish you well with your stated goal of self-study.

HOWEVER...until that day arrives when I can follow a printed musical score I'll be constructing songs in this way, which obviously begins with an inspiration. For me, that flare, that sunburst, that inner phone call of an idea has most often come to me in one of three specific ways:

1) Swinging like a monkey from the tail of another melody that I may be working on. That happens so often that Ive got more melodies recorded than I have lyrics to fit them.

2) An insight that occurred in the immediate wake of an emotional experience of any type, happy, sad, whatever;

3) In the aftermath of observing a human being or beings doing or saying something really unusual, something I have no prior experience with and cannot for the life me understand or comprehend. I will think about what Ive witnessed or overheard until I find a way to explain it to myself. Its like solving a problem. Most of the songs and lyrics I have written that I am particularly happy with have come about as a result of me trying to get my head around some startling example of human (or even animal) behavior.

I wear a sporting/utility vest with lots of pockets, into which I have crammed, stuffed, and shoved a leather-bound, pocket-sized, ruled journal to write down lyric ideas; a small portable cassette recorder to sing melodies into, and plenty of No. 2 pencils. Along with the tools of my day job and other personal items, my vest has become heavy enough to shield me from lethal doses of radioactivity! (Smile!)

The musical and lyrical ideas ALWAYS come when I am not thinking about them. Ive taken note of this and will do absolutely nothing to force them out of me. Never works. Never. The attempts to wrench creativity out of me just make me mad and frustrated and feeling sorry for my itty-bitty ol self, and...Hey, wait a minute. What am I talking about! Feeling sorry for myself feels good! Seriously, though, its become an article of faith with me that once my mind and heart start acting like they need other and bubble up with song ideas, the end is near. Now, I dont mean that everything comes in a rush. Far from it! But it comes eventually, even if only...one...word...at...a...time...Z-z-z-z-z-z....Huh? Oh, yeah. Right. I was writing a song....

Then, I take all this stuff to my Band-in-a-Box program and play with chords and progressions and time signatures and breaks and holds and shots until what I hear through my earholes is what I feel in my heart.

Ive gotta end this before Mr. FinnArild gets after me for posting such a lengthy reply...(Another smile!)

I wish all of you well in your endeavor to fill up the silence in our lives with music...

bluage

P.S. Hey, Boff! As far as I’m concerned, every song idea is a “beginner’s” idea, man. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Finish your songs even if they don’t make musical or lyrical sense. They’ll straighten themselves out, if you want them to, believe me. You finished posting your thoughts in this forum, didn’t you?

Edited February 16, 2010 by bluage

[imahollywoodstar]

hmmm... great discussion going on here... gud keep up !!!!!