Clear Vision

[john]

Hey

A few questions...

Would you say that you have a clear vision of how your song will be before you start writing?

How far into the process would you say you are before have a clear vision?

Do you find you have a clear vision for either lyric, or music, but not both?

How do you develop the vision into the final song? Organically? Planning and structure? Accident?

Cheers

John

[Lazz]

A clear vision of how your song will be before you start writing?

Yes

How far into the process would you say you are before have a clear vision?

To greater or lesser extents, I need that vision in order to get properly started.

A clear vision for either lyric, or music, but not both?

Depends on which way my collaborator and I develop the project. Sometimes he presents me with music first, and that helps define the vision and the map for me to write words. Sometimes I present a completed lyric to my collaborator, and that gives him a vision and a goal. Sometimes we work together and grow an idea more organically. But for both of us there has to be a target before we set off on the journey - what I called a 'design brief' elsewhere on this site a while back.

How do you develop the vision into the final song? Organically? Planning and structure? Accident?

Planning and structure work for us. Organic growth happens within that container. We don't seem to have any accidents that I can think of. In the way back when past, whenever I had tried writing on my own, the process seemed full of accidents. Many calling for serious treatment. No more. I think that's a good thing.

Just recently, I have been working on a couple of 'contrafacts' - songs built upon the familiar harmonic structures of extant standard material. There is quite a tradition of this compositional behaviour, instrumentally, especially in the jazz world. There are a load of different blues melodies, for instance, based on the same familar blues changes, another bunch based on the harmonic structure of the Gershwins' 'I Got Rhythm', and many original Charlie Parker be-bop classics built from the popular songs of the day. And I am finding it a fun produtive exercise to play along with the concept lyrically.

One of the two examples I have been working on is built upon 'My Funny Valentine' and the other is 'All The Things You Are'. Both are part of every jazz player's repertoire so everyone knows how they work already and can make a decent fist of what puports to be a new tune straight out of the block. But the copyright is yours and not devolved to the composer of the source. So you can see why it's a popular practice.

Maybe only musos and other attentive listeners would sense what was going on - you would have to 'know' the changes of the source in order to spot the underlying defining structure - and it's genarally not meant to be noticed overtly anyway - but I am sure it's recognisable to anybody when pointed out. So the big fun for me lies in playing the same game of referencing that same original source material through the new lyric. The vision then is that alongside the new verbal motive they are listening to, anybody who perceived and understood the source harmony would then be able to recognise relationships between my new words and the primary song source, too. Totally unnecessary clever-clever po-mo pretentious bollocks but cool when somebody picks up on it like an inside joke...... as long as it stands independently as a song as well, of course.

Any road up....

Pat Coleman’s contrafact for ‘My Funny Valentine” is entitled “Re-Write” – ‘cos that’s what it is, innit, right? (I am pretty certain Steve has a copy of this tune on a CD I sent him. If I am correct, then I’d be curious to know whether he spotted the Valentine roots or not.) So now I have two guiding principles to steer by and towards: one is to make some kind of sense out of ‘re-write’ as a song-title, while the other is to honour the sentiment of the original source.

The contrafact for ‘All The Things You Are’ is called ‘Thing’ – so I am having fun making a similar kind of respectful nod in the direction of Oscar Hammerstein while getting to use some unknown monster “Thing” as the central metaphor for a huge great love.

That’s the vision thing, anyway. And I grow each set of words through the plan and the structure. While this may seem a strange and perhaps perverse way of working, maybe too much conscious ‘mechanism’ for some to contemplate, but I don’t feel I have a lot of time to waste hanging around for ‘inspiration’ to strike so why not get some song-writing exercise one way or another. This game vision offers some damn good challenges, gives me a lot of a laughs, and uses up a buckets of sweat and determination that I hope never show in the final result.

I am still having fun working towards pulling-off the perfect ‘Thing’ lyrics, but Joe Coughlin debuts ‘Re-Write’ (and a couple of others) in a few days at one of the local west coast jazz festivals.

RE-WRITE

Coleman-Lazzerini © 2007

Funny how you always make me happy deep inside

I love to have your laughter lift my day

Far beyond a painter or a poet if they tried

To catch the way you look or what you say

They’d have - for heaven-sakes, dear -

To re-write all of Shakespeare

And re-make all the movies ever known

Fundamental element unchangeable and fine

With a sunny smile to drive my clouds away

Become a re-write for a new life of our own

Edited June 27, 2007 by Lazz

[Rudi]

Would you say that you have a clear vision of how your song will be before you start writing?

Deep ends whether it is musically or lyrically inspired. It is extremely rare to have both at inception. If by some miracle, both are present then I have a 75% clear idea. If it is otherwise I have no clear idea.

How far into the process would you say you are before have a clear vision?

I have no idea. I have never even bothered to wonder.

Do you find you have a clear vision for either lyric, or music, but not both?

Lyric: rarely. Music: no. Both: Usually

How do you develop the vision into the final song? Organically? Planning and structure? Accident?

Ideally it will be organically. This is rare though. At some point I have to plan and often need to shoehorn a round idea into an existing square structure. Sometimes it won’t go in. In that case I have to try hard to remember the round idea for another venture. I forget lots of stuff.

The organically conceived rarities are always best. They have to be worked through fast though, If not, the mojo will disappear and it wont come back.