PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic SONG WRITING ... thoughts from our heavy hitters

Hi Pat!

Here you go... just some thoughts that previous posts in the thread lead me to jot down....



Cello.

I enjoyed Charlie's posts. I commend him for going about commercial songwriting in an intelligent manner.
His analysis was detailed and accurate. And I wish him luck and look forward to hearing "how it's going"...
The one point that I think is not necessarily "right" for his plan (assuming the plan is to get some attention in the market),
is "Of top 5-6 recent country hits on the radio now, how many have a cello? NONE."
Just because you don't hear cello currently on Country radio, doesn't mean you should leave it out of YOUR songs.
When Taylor Swift started adding banjo to her stuff, you could have said "That'll never work! No one has used banjo for YEARS!"
Today, you'll hear a banjo in 50% of everything recorded.
And, as Kevin notes, the Americana market IS using cello. And a lot of things filter to Country productions from the Americana market.

Studying what is currently on the radio is a great way to improve your songwriting.
Although the topics of the current crop of (guy) songs has become cliché, the songwriting is not.
Those cliché TOPICS are presented (the song writing) in fairly original ways - a little fresh - said differently than it was the last time...
You have to be able to do that to write at that level. If all you are doing is stringing together a bunch of tired lines
and not stating them with a little bit of fresh, don't expect anyone to pay attention. Your song won't get past 20 seconds before it's turned off.
That would be 3 cliché lines. Click. And... That FIRST line needs to be something interesting. It HAS to grab attention.

Current Country is more a Sound than it is about the lyric (though the lyric does have to be well penned).
It's pop rock with a twang.
It's a flow, a rhythm. There are very few leads. You seldom hear all those licks after every lyric line the way you
did in the 80's and into the 90's. What used to be "the signature lick" is now a "signature rhythm".
Listen for a couple of hours and you'll hear it. It's a driving rhythm that carries most Country songs these days.
In between verses, you'll hear the "signature rhythm" not leads (speaking in general - there are still songs with leads).
There are virtually NO ballads anymore. And like Charlie says they are BIG and BOLD. They soar.

One thing to note... a good idea to learn to write as well as the current crop of songs on the radio.
A bad idea to present them to Nashville. They have moved on.
The songs you hear today on the radio were written at least 6 months ago - and more likely, a year ago.
The Nashville writers are writing something different right now. It might not be WILDLY different than what you
hear on the radio, but something has changed. It "gets around" - what is happening or "coming".
If you present a song to a publisher (or an artist - if you somehow have those connections) that is patterned after the current Blake Sheldon song, even if it is better written, it will be turned off and you will be asked...

"You got anything new?"

In order for an outsider to get noticed in Nashville, they have to present a game changer.
Like Swift's banjo - or, really, like her peppy, self-portrait, personal, teen-age girl writing...
Tom Douglas did it in 1993 with "Little Rock". It was very different than what was "on the radio" at the time.
(Douglas had "done the Nashville thing" earlier and had given it up. But he knew the craft).
He made an impact with something "different" and went on to big success.

Nashville doesn't need you. They don't have time for you.
If you are good enough to write in Nashville, the likelihood is you already live in Nashville. Because it is your passion and you would give up everything for that dream. It would be a HUGE waste of a publisher's time to look outside Nashville for good songs/writers.
Quality "outside" writers are few and far between. Needle in a haystack. They have a pocket full of nice, sharp needles.
They don't need the haystack.
There are 1000 staff writers in Nashville who are writing well-penned, interesting sounding songs on a weekly basis. So multiply that 1000 by 52 (weeks). Or, give those guys a break now and again.
Say half that. 25,000 songs. Good ones. Right there at their finger tips. Think of how many albums are released by the majors in a year.
200? (probably less). 12 songs per CD. 2400 slots? A percentage taken up by the artist writing with Nashville writers (not because those writers "know the right people" - They KNOW how to write hits).
You can do the math.... So, understand... they are not looking for you!

For your song to get noticed, you need to write something that will make their eyes pop out of their heads - within the first 20 seconds of hitting the play button.

It can be done. Stay true to yourself. Get better all the time. Use a cello.