Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Greg Francis on April 19, 2011 at 6:37am

Hey there Steve. I love the topic of songwriting and will add any advice I can from my years of being a musician. For me music comes the easiest. Generally it's a good idea to start with music because it will automatically give your lyrics a road map for melody and structure. I am CONSTANTLY recording guitar/mandolin/banjo ideas or even melodic ideas into the voice memo recorder on my iphone. I can label each recording and refer back to it whenever inspiration takes over. The key is to be able to listen back to a piece of music you've come up with so that you can just take it in objectively rather than concentrate on performing it. What has happened with myself and others is that words will just start to come to you. The mood the music creates and the way it makes you feel and the way it effects that part of the brain that operates while we dream is what can sometimes produce your finest work. At least that's what I think is in charge when you take this approach to writing - the subconscious. Out of seemingly nowhere I came up with a song about 2 sets of skeletal remains unearthed by an excavation team sometime in the future. The story is told from the male's perspective who's body is found with shattered hands haphazardly lying next to the formally buried female's remains. It's a story about his unexpressed love for the female. Now it's possible I could have had that story laid out before going into the song but I didn't. It just presented itself through my listening back to the music I had. Get into the practice of hearing music in your head too so you can hear what you've written even if you don't have your recorder there to play back.

 

As for structure being primarily a drummer I may have an advantage of understanding that. A guitarist friend of mine pointed out that a drummer would seem to have that advantage since a drummer is in large part in charge of the feel and energy of music. Even if there isn't a drummer like in bluegrass I think approaching a song's structure with the rhythm and energy in mind helps. It will tell you when you want to hear the song change, when it should crescendo and when it should quiet down. It also depends on the style of music you are playing. Blues for instance has it's structure written in stone - a 1 - 4 - 5 chord progression in a 12 bar cycle and it just works. In my hard rock band a structure that seems to work for us is an intro - 2 verses - a pre chorus or right into the chorus - 1 verse - 2nd chorus - bridge - chorus and outro. How many times a part is played you will just have to rely on your ear and what you FEEL like you want to hear. It's important to keep things fresh and changing, evolving slightly so that you don't lose the interest of the listener.

 

Having said all of this I must put out there that my weakness is lyrics. I have come up with plenty that I'm pretty proud of actually but I usually have said all I really have to say in 1 or 2 verses and maybe a chorus so my focus right now is expanding on an initial lyrical idea I come up with. I've been attempting writing songs since I was in high school and only in the past several years have I finally come to find that I don't wake up the next morning despising what I've written. I now say " hey, that's pretty good." There certainly still are lyrics that I trash the next day but hey, not all your eggs are gonna be made of gold. The important thing is to keep at it and listen to as much music as you possibly can. Eventually all your findings and observations become ingrained and almost second nature.

Permalink Reply by Slowpaw Steve T on April 19, 2011 at 10:02am

many thanks for your advice Greg, though for now i will continue to keep things very simple!

..and would really be interested to hear that skeleton song...!!!  (-;

Permalink Reply by Greg Francis on April 19, 2011 at 10:26am

Sure thing. Now there's incentive to get that song recorded! Like so many of my tunes it's a work in progress and I haven't tooled around with it in a while but I think I'll dust it off and get it down.  :)

Permalink Reply by T. M. G. Maker on April 20, 2011 at 4:31am

Here are a couple of links you might find helpful.

http://www.robinfrederick.com/write.html

http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Song-Susan-Price/dp/0374325448

Permalink Reply by John Wendell on April 20, 2011 at 6:54am

I would really be interested in seeing those lyrics Greg....and hearing that song too....I know the idea sounds really cool!!

Greg Francis said:

Sure thing. Now there's incentive to get that song recorded! Like so many of my tunes it's a work in progress and I haven't tooled around with it in a while but I think I'll dust it off and get it down.  :)

Permalink Reply by John Wendell on April 20, 2011 at 7:06am

Steve...."for me"....the STARTING POINT is almost always your title....the TITLE is the reason you write the song...Especially if you are talking "COMMERCIAL" songwriting! And of course titles and ideas come from all kinds of places don't they??  There's some excellent advice here...http://www.songwriternation.com/page/lessons-1

Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on August 29, 2011 at 11:36pm

Gents,

Just for grins, I cranked out these lyrics-searching-for-a-tune last week, in response to a discussion on the "Other Stuff - off topic..." forum. Then I realized there must be a Songwriting group on CBN.

These things usually take me about an hour to write, once I know what form to put them in. Then I might spend another 3-6 hours working on the tune and arrangement. Been writing poems, lyrics and songs in all kinds of styles since I was a kid.

I realize this song isn't perfect, but it is workable. Your comments greatly appreciated.

The Untold Story of Matthew's Family Tree?
 
Hah, piece o' cake ( a mix of 3 line and 4-line blues verse structure):
 
My Fambly's All But Worthless, But I Loves You Anyway
 
I gotta box made of smokewood, heartstrings made of steel
I gotta box made of smokewood, heartstrings made of steel
Honey, you don't know my fambly, so lemme seal the deal:
 
My mama cooks the pizen, my daddy sells it, too
Yeah, my mama cooks the pizen, and my daddy sells it, too.
My sister Charlotte works the streets, 'cuz she looks up to you.
 
One brother's doin' hard time, cuz' he killed a friend o' mine,
The other's on a chain gang, for pickin' cherries off the vine;
An' that train rolls by at midnight, givin' out it's dead-dog whine
 
 
REFRAIN
Yeah, when I said I loved you, there was nothin' left to say;
It may not be forever, but it's longer than a day.
Nobody knows how long we got, so let's start makin' hay:
My fambly's all but worthless, but I loves you anyway.
 
I gotta tell you, baby, they none of 'em's no good
Yeah, chile, I'll tell you truly, they just ain't no damn good
But they're better off than most folks in my ol' neighborhood.
 
The jazzers at the juke joint, all drinkin' Demon Rum,
With speedballs from the needle where the damages were done,
Could tell you tales about me and the fambly that I'm from,
But that don't change the way I feel about you with my gun.
 
Yeah, the junkies get the shakes when they shuffle by my shack
They heard whut happened one night in the smokehouse way out back
That grindin' sound, that screamin' wail, the bloodstains, and the smell
Is why I play this gitbox from the hottest depths of Hell!
 
REFRAIN
Yeah, when I said I loved you, there was nothin' left to say;
It may not be forever, but it's longer than a day.
Nobody knows how long we got, so let's start makin' hay:
My fambly's all but worthless, but I loves you anyway.
 
Somebody put this to a tune, please...
 
Oily

Permalink Reply by Slowpaw Steve T on August 29, 2011 at 11:53pm

Great song Oily! Bob Dylan eat yer heart out (-;

i suggest a "Beverly Hillbillies" instrumental style arrangement could suit it, though there are a lot of tongue twisters in there i would have trouble getting round, and the dialect might be lost on some listeners over here, you made a bit of a rod for your own back, but give it a go!! (-;

 

@ John Wendell - the advice you gave on the song title as the starting point has proved invaluable!  (-;

 

Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on August 30, 2011 at 4:03am

Slowpaw,

Thanks, man! At least the lyrics seem to work for someone other than me.

Yeah, I keep hearing a Piedmont country blues sound in my head, instead of a Delta style. The tongue twisters I can handle, because there's a couple of internal rhythm things going on that, once you get 'em down, make it work. I usually "say-sing" stuff like this to see how difficult it might be to spit the words out, and 45 years of singing in school and church choirs, community chorales, and in both band and solo situations certainly help, too. I find that having sung songs in different languages, being semi-fluent in a few other than English, being an amateur actor, part-time directing and leading my church choirs, and playing lots of rhythm guitar with some pretty decent drummers over the years have given me an ear for rhythm and the spaces between words and notes. Right now, I'm trying to learn not to fill those spaces so much in the musical end of things. But when the words start flowin', I pretty much give up and let 'em take me where they seem to want to go.

The dialect bit would make sense once you heard it. It's difficult to write, though, so that it makes sense to people who may not be familiar with field hollers, or Mark Twain's style of writing Southern dialogue. This song, interestingly enough, started with the title (per John's suggestion. I find most of the songs I've written start that way, which then almost immediately leads to a chorus or refrain. Sometimes, though, a verse will pop up that wants to be the first verse, and may stay that way for awhile. Then I let the song sit for a bit - if I'm not writing to a deadline, which I usually am; I have frequently written songs for performance in as little as 1 hour before getting in front of an audience! Needless to say, this works just often enough to fool me into relying on it. Lately, I've been learning to let them simmer for a bit, then move that first verse around - many times, it ends up being the closing verse that contains the Hook. I also find that I seem to do best with "storytelling" type songs). The first half of the title popped out during the discussion referred to, but the second half of it just jumped me before I knew what was going on. After that, the lyrics came together in 2 30-minute sessions just before and just after lunch, while I was thinking about a problem at work.

Permalink Reply by John Wendell on August 31, 2011 at 6:47am

Hey Slowpaw...glad you got something out of that "TITLE" tip...thanks for thanking me, that's cool!!

Slowpaw Steve T said:

Great song Oily! Bob Dylan eat yer heart out (-;

i suggest a "Beverly Hillbillies" instrumental style arrangement could suit it, though there are a lot of tongue twisters in there i would have trouble getting round, and the dialect might be lost on some listeners over here, you made a bit of a rod for your own back, but give it a go!! (-;

 

@ John Wendell - the advice you gave on the song title as the starting point has proved invaluable!  (-;