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Songwriting
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Joined: Jul 2002
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Lenovo YOGA 900 Window s 10 Home 64bit M4 pro Mac mini 1tb HD 24GB mem casio wk7500 presonus audiobox i2 usb interface
casio wk-7500
biab & realband 2025 everything pk both with Current builds
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Songwriting
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Joined: Jul 2019
Posts: 253
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Joined: Jul 2019
Posts: 253 |
Interesting.
Too clinical for my taste, but there's some truth in there. Some of what is discussed are things that I always did organically, without being told to or showed how to....I just tried to write songs that were structured the same way as records I listened to or ones I heard on the radio.
I've only read one book on songwriting in my life, and I didn't read it until 13 years after I had already been writing for a living. I only picked it up because of it's author (Jimmy Webb). Granted my sample size is limited for most part to the Nashville market, but I've never known any writers who attributed their success to any book or workshop - more just taking what talent they were born with and working hard every day at getting better at it.
My songwriting "mentor" was a guy named Frank Dycus....wrote a bunch of country hits. He had dropped out of school after 6th grade, grew up in a little place called Hard Money, KY - a real hillbilly (his description of himself, not mine). I remember him being asked once about the craft of writing, and his answer always sort of stuck with me. He said "I ain't got no craft, I'm gifted" (told you he was a hillbilly). It made me think back to when I was a kid in the 70s. More than anything else, I wanted to be a baseball player, specifically a pitcher. I was a fan of a young Nolan Ryan, and I wanted to throw a fastball 100mph like he did. I worked at it constantly....had a pitching mound set up in our back yard, read books on pitching mechanics, lifted weights, went to instructional camps, etc. I felt like I was really getting there. Then I got a chance to throw with a radar gun, and threw what I thought was one of the best pitches I'd ever thrown....fastball, right on the outside corner. The gun had the speed of the pitch at 74.
That was when I realized that throwing a 100mph fastball wasn't a "learned" skill, it was a God-given talent. All the work, study, & effort I put it just made me an ok baseball player. I sort of have the same opinion about songwriting/singing/performing. It's a talent, certainly one that can be developed, but I don't believe it can be taught successfully to someone who didn't have the ability to start with.
Long-winded response, basically saying that I don't put much stock into "how to" books, blogs, or articles as they pertain to songwriting, primarily because many read them and think if they use the given templates, they can write great songs. Well, if your songwriting chops/talent have 100mph potential, they probably can....otherwise, 74mph in the backyard is likely the ceiling.
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Songwriting
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Joined: Jun 2017
Posts: 3,007
PG Music Staff
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PG Music Staff
Joined: Jun 2017
Posts: 3,007 |
I feel like a lot of song writing should be, to a degree, experimental. But I think this could work for folks looking for a starting point!
Cheers,
Ember
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Songwriting
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Joined: Jul 2019
Posts: 253
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Apprentice
Joined: Jul 2019
Posts: 253 |
I feel like a lot of song writing should be, to a degree, experimental. But I think this could work for folks looking for a starting point! I'm curious as to your choice of the word "experimental" in regards to songwriting, I do hope you'll elaborate. I hadn't really thought about it in that way, but I suppose (in some genres at least), there is and likely should be an experimental element to it. I've never thought of writing that way in the genre(s) I work in. I can't recall who said it, but a line I always liked about songwriting is "Writing songs is telling someone what they already know in a way they haven't heard it before". I lean more towards that line of thinking. My job as a writer is to convey my perspective on different aspects of the human experience....love, loss, joy, happiness, etc. Very common emotions, things that everyone goes through at one time or another. The closest I get to what I would consider "experimental" is, for example, to take a very common expression or figure of speech, and try to write a song that has it mean something completely different than the listener expects it to, or in different way than the phrase is typically used. One of the things I've learned over the years is that the first rule of songwriting is, there are no set rules. What makes a great country song is often very different from what makes a great urban song, a great jazz song, or a great alternative song. It's always great to hear different approaches and perspectives on the subject, that's why I'm hoping you'll expand your thoughts as they pertain to "experimental" as it relates to songwriting.
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Songwriting
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Joined: Jul 2014
Posts: 175
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Apprentice
Joined: Jul 2014
Posts: 175 |
Roger, I just read this thread- try "organic" instead of "experimental." Testing, but within bounds of a specific but unnamed emotive or functional vector? That can define a lot of what you want to set up your tune. I write a lot of "stock" tunes - AABA, blues, typical 40s-50s jazz heads. Also more electric 70s-era, and other pre-existing styles. But I have one that just came out of "Life." Before we were married, working out a really difficult time in our relationship just as I had to leave to go back on the road, I literally stopped the car, went to the side of the road and wrote "How Can You Love Someone." With lyrics , which I don't do, with multiple semi-connecting parts, my personal Bohemian Rhapsody" Never got to perform it, I don't sing. But it is a coherent composition out of thin air and stress... I have a few others that break the forms, but when in need, a quick blues or faux 40s tune (a sub-standard?) does the job. And then, even though I am NOT a Bible follower, I wrote about the Fall of Man: After The Fall... which I stlll think is my best lyric.
Last edited by The Soundsmith; 08/01/19 08:37 PM.
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