Hi Paul

Thanks for the input. I did write a long reply to this originally but fell foul of the 'time limitations'.

Ideas can come from all sorts of places and at all sorts of times, often unexpected. If I am 'out & about', I will make a note of it on my mobile phone. I have found my songs in extremely unusual places. On one occasion, I wrote a song while watching an interview with Meatloaf on TV and about 75-80% of the words are his, though not taken in one nor ever said as a song. On another occasion, I saw a film in the cinema, came home and wrote the entire song, including melody, in about 5 minutes flat. Another song I wrote (probably my g/f's favourite) was written when I suddenly found a 19th century character invented by Oscar Wilde in my head - it has a very unexpected twist to it and actually turns out to be a self-portrait (although I didn't realise that until I first performed it in front of friends)! On reflection, it would appear that a lot of my songs could be taken as being self-reflective but then what artist doesn't reflect themselves in their work in some way or another? The more philosophical the lyrics, the more reflective the song appears to be.

I also asked a good friend of mine here where he originally got the idea for one of his songs 'Its A F*cking Bad Day'. His answer? He was on his way to a gig, it was extremely windy and he was wearing a hat when he thought to himself "its a f*cking bad day to be wearing this hat". By the end of the evening he had the whole song.

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When you did your survey of the music, did you ever chart the songs for note or chord progressions for the length of time for a rise or fall, something like how the stock market charts look or a mountain range. If you've heard the Ventures "Slaughter on 5TH Ave", that sorta what I'm talking about. I may have said what you just said but differently.



Yes and no. I analysed things like which notes appear and how often, which chords those notes are mapped against, what variations (extensions, inversions, etc) of those chords appear and how often, where a song modulates to if at all, opening notes, closing notes, and so on. Did I make a graph of those? No. I made a chart. If, OTOH, you mean did I create a linear display of the melodic notation per se, no. You can see that from the lead sheet anyway and I don't think there was any software around at that time that would have helped me do that in any case.

With regard to 'Slaughter on Tenth Avenue' (sorry to have to correct you there), this was an instrumental somewhat similar to the work of The Shadows. As I pointed out at the start of this thread:

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If you are a singer then your dilemma re songwriting is the same as mine and probably for the same reason - we are primarily singers and think as such rather than instrumentalists and thinking as such. It is easy for us to write the lyrics and think of a good melody - arranging is our problem.



This means this article is meant primarily for singer songwriters and you can't be writing from the perspective of a singer if there are no lyrics!

Of course, an instrumental approach is somewhat different. You still need to find those hooks and repeated phrases and the focus is on creating memorable melodies. If I were to use the melody first approach (which I wouldn't as I always start with the lyrics), then I would start with the Pentatonic scales, still sticking to the mnemonic KISS. In the case of 'Slaughter on Tenth Avenue', I would think it was the Pentatonic Major (i.e. I, II, III, V and VI, in the key of C this would be C, D, E, G and A) but I could be wrong.

FWIW, I gave myself an exercise back in January to try and write a song with the melody first and it took me about 6 weeks. I finally managed it but I won't do it again as I find that my lyrics actually suggest the melody and rhythm to me, so I find it much easier if I work in that way. To my mind, working the melody first route is much harder unless the tune is meant to be an instrumental.

HTH

Follow That Dream

Sam
Karaoke King

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Turning that corner again - I have to keep following that dream, no matter what