By (semi-)popular request.
Jul. 2nd, 2008 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fleetfootmikeA couple of folks have asked what goes into the songwriting process for me, so here's an attempt at an answer.
"It varies."
OK. Before someone lynches me, I'll expand on that.
Songs turn up in about three different ways, and they progress slightly differently depending on how I start them.
Approach 1, and by far the most common. I noodle around aimlessly on guitar (or rarer, piano), and a neat bit pops out of the ether and I go, "Ooo, cool, I could do something with that chord pattern/fingerpick/etc..."
From there, what tends to happen is that I start singing over what chords I have until a line of tune emerges, usually with meaningless or very generic lyrics. At which point, I lock myself in a room (not literally, but close) and do several things in semi-parallel, namely:
Ways to tell I wrote a song this way? It has a really neat, fancy picking pattern with fun chords or nice bassline movement or something AND the first couple of lines of the lyric are completely waffly and aimless :) See Lament For Gwydion ("Fire across the water / Silence on the wind")
Approach 2, something inspires me to write a few lines of lyric. Sometimes I struggle for it, sometimes a half verse or so pops out just like that, sometimes a chorus.
In some ways this is easier, because I tend from there to write the whole lyric (since I have most of a rhyme/scansion pattern) before I come back and touch the melody.
The downside, and this is just a personal thing, I suspect, is that I find it generally much harder to be innovative about the melody and chords for a pre-existing set of lyrics. And so I end up back in approach 1, sweating over each chord and line of melody.
Ways to tell I wrote a song this way? The lyrics start out strong and decisive (See Jack - "Jack was headmaster when I was a kid...") but the melody/backing tend to be basic major or minor and strummed rather than fancily picked.
Approach 3, the 'woah, f***, where did that come from' thing, where I get a fragment of both tune and words together. What tends to happen with these is that generally they turn into approach 2, unless something extremely weird happens. Ancient Light is a good example of this - that whole Leslie Fish-esque chorus just turned up one day, almost complete. Fortunately, the Fish-style backing made writing a verse much easier, since I basically composed a tuney-sorta-backying-timey-wimey ( ;) ) thing on 12 string and fitted some words over the top.
Lyrics
I do seem to have rather glossed over exactly what happens with lyrics beyond 'I write 'em'. It's kind of tough to explain - most of my lyrics don't really so much narrate as describe (with isolated exceptions such as Reasons, where someone else wrote the plot anyway). I very often don't write linearly - if there's an end of verse 'thing' that I want to shift a little in meaning each verse, or similar I might try and write all three of those first, and then fill in the gaps. Equally, if there's too good a rhyme not to use, or a line I can see I want to use later on, I'll fill it in there and then try and make the rest fit (the chorus rhymes in The Miller's Tale, for example). As far as rhyming dictionaries go? Hell yes. If nothing else, because what they do is give you words you hadn't thought of ('lark', 'grind' in The Miller's Tale) that you can work with.
Summary
However much you might think that I'm gifted, and songs just 'happen', and however much I might give that impression? Ain't so. This Is My Land took most of an 8 hour plane journey for the words, and still hasn't got a tune. Jack took two YEARS between words and music. There's a lot of sweat and swearing goes into songwriting. I have spent a goodly part of June cursing my inability to come up with a tune for This Is My Land that isn't as lame as a bad nursery rhyme.
I know I say 'this just turned up one day' about some songs. This is actually a sweeping generalisation, and is more accurately translated as 'I got half a line and a fragment of tune, and the fact that I know my way around my instrument and was in a position to run with it there and then meant that that fragment turned into a verse or chorus in about 5 or 10 minutes. rather than either taking me a week to get somewhere OR forgetting it entirely because I didn't have the chance there and then.' (Note, that's why the Moleskine and a pen now live in my pocket.) It also probably means 'and when I got to the end of the song, I went back and rewrote a couple of lines in that first bit anyway!' Yes, this does mean approach 3 is a bit of a lie. :)
Don't give up. Songwriting is like any other form of writing. To be a songwriter, you have to write songs. Even if you spend 90%+ of your time throwing stuff away. There is no 'I can't'. Really. If you come up with little fragments, you can make something of them if you try hard enough. I thought I couldn't, and the only reason I can is that I spent evenings with a guitar and a pad of paper until something that didn't suck finally emerged. Example - I really want to write a Donna/Rose-inspired song based on Turn Left from the current season of Dr. Who. It isn't just going to happen, that one. I am really going to have to dedicate several evenings to throwing away failed attempts to get anywhere on it.
"It varies."
OK. Before someone lynches me, I'll expand on that.
Songs turn up in about three different ways, and they progress slightly differently depending on how I start them.
Approach 1, and by far the most common. I noodle around aimlessly on guitar (or rarer, piano), and a neat bit pops out of the ether and I go, "Ooo, cool, I could do something with that chord pattern/fingerpick/etc..."
From there, what tends to happen is that I start singing over what chords I have until a line of tune emerges, usually with meaningless or very generic lyrics. At which point, I lock myself in a room (not literally, but close) and do several things in semi-parallel, namely:
- try and figure out what the lyric fragment's about
- try and see where the chord sequence leads next
- try and see where the tune leads next
- try and see where the words lead next
Ways to tell I wrote a song this way? It has a really neat, fancy picking pattern with fun chords or nice bassline movement or something AND the first couple of lines of the lyric are completely waffly and aimless :) See Lament For Gwydion ("Fire across the water / Silence on the wind")
Approach 2, something inspires me to write a few lines of lyric. Sometimes I struggle for it, sometimes a half verse or so pops out just like that, sometimes a chorus.
In some ways this is easier, because I tend from there to write the whole lyric (since I have most of a rhyme/scansion pattern) before I come back and touch the melody.
The downside, and this is just a personal thing, I suspect, is that I find it generally much harder to be innovative about the melody and chords for a pre-existing set of lyrics. And so I end up back in approach 1, sweating over each chord and line of melody.
Ways to tell I wrote a song this way? The lyrics start out strong and decisive (See Jack - "Jack was headmaster when I was a kid...") but the melody/backing tend to be basic major or minor and strummed rather than fancily picked.
Approach 3, the 'woah, f***, where did that come from' thing, where I get a fragment of both tune and words together. What tends to happen with these is that generally they turn into approach 2, unless something extremely weird happens. Ancient Light is a good example of this - that whole Leslie Fish-esque chorus just turned up one day, almost complete. Fortunately, the Fish-style backing made writing a verse much easier, since I basically composed a tuney-sorta-backying-timey-wimey ( ;) ) thing on 12 string and fitted some words over the top.
Lyrics
I do seem to have rather glossed over exactly what happens with lyrics beyond 'I write 'em'. It's kind of tough to explain - most of my lyrics don't really so much narrate as describe (with isolated exceptions such as Reasons, where someone else wrote the plot anyway). I very often don't write linearly - if there's an end of verse 'thing' that I want to shift a little in meaning each verse, or similar I might try and write all three of those first, and then fill in the gaps. Equally, if there's too good a rhyme not to use, or a line I can see I want to use later on, I'll fill it in there and then try and make the rest fit (the chorus rhymes in The Miller's Tale, for example). As far as rhyming dictionaries go? Hell yes. If nothing else, because what they do is give you words you hadn't thought of ('lark', 'grind' in The Miller's Tale) that you can work with.
Summary
However much you might think that I'm gifted, and songs just 'happen', and however much I might give that impression? Ain't so. This Is My Land took most of an 8 hour plane journey for the words, and still hasn't got a tune. Jack took two YEARS between words and music. There's a lot of sweat and swearing goes into songwriting. I have spent a goodly part of June cursing my inability to come up with a tune for This Is My Land that isn't as lame as a bad nursery rhyme.
I know I say 'this just turned up one day' about some songs. This is actually a sweeping generalisation, and is more accurately translated as 'I got half a line and a fragment of tune, and the fact that I know my way around my instrument and was in a position to run with it there and then meant that that fragment turned into a verse or chorus in about 5 or 10 minutes. rather than either taking me a week to get somewhere OR forgetting it entirely because I didn't have the chance there and then.' (Note, that's why the Moleskine and a pen now live in my pocket.) It also probably means 'and when I got to the end of the song, I went back and rewrote a couple of lines in that first bit anyway!' Yes, this does mean approach 3 is a bit of a lie. :)
Don't give up. Songwriting is like any other form of writing. To be a songwriter, you have to write songs. Even if you spend 90%+ of your time throwing stuff away. There is no 'I can't'. Really. If you come up with little fragments, you can make something of them if you try hard enough. I thought I couldn't, and the only reason I can is that I spent evenings with a guitar and a pad of paper until something that didn't suck finally emerged. Example - I really want to write a Donna/Rose-inspired song based on Turn Left from the current season of Dr. Who. It isn't just going to happen, that one. I am really going to have to dedicate several evenings to throwing away failed attempts to get anywhere on it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-02 01:19 pm (UTC)(Re. throwing 90% away, I've heard that from many creative people in all media: writers, composers, artists, ...)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-02 01:25 pm (UTC)As far as melodies go? I lose 'em, sometimes. Other times I just walk along and sing 'em to myself until hopefully I can't forget them (this is quite often where a set of made-up waffly words windup in the eventual song), or I do some kind of notation involving numeric scale degrees... (1 2 b3 5 etc)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-02 02:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-02 01:36 pm (UTC)FWIW, I'm about 90% doing (something like) 'approach 2'.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-06 09:00 am (UTC)I can't really describe my process in words (mostly because I forgot what it is), but I'll have an idea down in a notebook, think of a line, and then the tune just kind of appears. After that, I'm writing the song to the tune.