Writing SongsThis is such a HUGE question that I get from all levels of students. And it's a pretty broad subject to cover. Let's start with what your mindframe should be, and then we'll get into some detail. But first, one of the songs that I wrote is available online if you want to hear it. Check out Ex Nihilis, which you can find links to at Hear Our Staff. It's available on our mySpace, on iTunes, and on the iPhone video game Thumstruck. There are two basic approaches you should start with. One is when you kow what style you want the song to be in. The other is when you don't. Wait....... what? You either sit down and try to make it sound like something specific, or you don't. That's the first step. Do I want to put myself under constraints, or do I not? Let's talk about the last one first, because it's pretty simple. Not trying to sound like anything: Ok, Krystel, why would I do that? I like *this style* so why would I want to write anything else? Sometimes you want to just sit down and let things happen on their own. Do you know how much money you can make selling songs? Do you know that most of the bands you hear on the radio or on TV don't write their own songs, but perform songs they bought from professional writers? For example, you love metal, and wouldn't be caught dead playing country. Ok, fine, don't play it. I don't care. But what if you sit down and low and behold you are a natural at writing country songs? SELL THE STUFF FOR GOD'S SAKE! But Krystel, how often does that happen? Dolly Parton's (country) most profitable song was performed by Whitney Houston (pop). One of Jimi Hendrix most popular songs, All Along the Watchtower, was written by Bob Dylan. It happens every day. Now, that's not the only reason you do this. Some of your best ideas will come when you aren't trying to force creativity. A lot of times when people just can't write it's because they are trying too hard to sound like something specific. If you just sit down and let whatever happens happen you'll get rid of whatever is blocking you from writing what you want. Don't take away from this that you should try to NOT write what you like, because that is trying to NOT sound like something, which is limiting what you can do and that defies the point. What I'm saying is that you want to sit down without precondition and just write, which we will talk about how to do in a minute. Trying to sound like something: Ah, now here we are. This is WAY more complicated in comparison. You have to understand the style before you can write it. Makes sense, but most people neglect the depth of what that means. It doesn't mean that you listen to that style a lot. That's not enough. It means you have to understand what makes the style sound like it does and that can get pretty in depth, because there isn't a lot of difference between styles, believe it or not. For example, the most common progression in country is a I IV V. The most common progression in rock is a I IV V. The most common progression in blues is a I IV V. .................uh.............. Yeah. It's what you do with it that makes it sound like the style. For example, blues reharmonizes the chords to be dominant seventh chords, country and rock are diatonic (in key.) The big differences between rock and country (and have we noticed those lines are getting kind of blurred lately?) is the tone of the guitar, the rhythms, the embellishments, what the rest of the band does. We are going to learn as we go on that a lot of what you hear in the differences between the styles is actually coming from the drummer, the bassist, the vocalist, and any other instruments added in. Play a rock song with a guest banjo player and guess what the song will sound like. Take a hard rock song and change the scale from major to harmonic minor and it will sound more like metal. The scale you use, chord progression and type, diatonic or nondiatonic, tempo, rhythm, tone, other instruments, note choice, techniques you use, how much is single notes versus chords, vocals or no, drum solo? So many more things than this. These all define the different styles, what you use and how you use it. If you want to sound like a specific style without sounding like you're just imitating your favorite guitarist you need to understand why he sounds the way he sounds instead of just being able to sound like him. My students often come back after we've first started talking about writing songs, and they say "I wanted it to sound like *this* but it sounded like *this*" Yep. That's normal. When I went from being a jazz fusion player to writing death metal it sounded like the soundtrack for a mexican block party. I am SO serious. It was bad (not that mexican music is bad, but when you want it to sound like death metal and it sounds like you're being serenaded in a mexican restaurant......... yeah......... bad.........) I hadn't been playing guitar for very long (I was a professional bassist before I learned how to play guitar if you didn't know) and I hadn't listened to metal in YEARS, and I got back in to it, and tried to start writing it before I understood it well enough, and it was so very not good. And it's part of the process. You don't know if you know the style well enough to pull it off until you try. And sometimes when you try it's soul crushing. But you'll get it. Now, let's look at the next big thing with this. How much do I need to know?: Please refer to the Shawn quote above. *sigh* Alright, here we go.... Make sure you read EVERYTHING I'm about to write please. Don't just get to the part that makes you feel better about yourself and then quit reading, you'll miss the point if you do that. Ok, ready? You don't need to know anything at all. (see why I said that?..... now.... keep reading please) There has been a long line of musicians that wrote phenomenal music that didn't know !*@$ about music. I've dealt with musicians that knew way too much and couldn't write to save their life. Musicians can be rated on a spectrum, with two extremes (my students are rolling their eyes..... oh here she goes again, but without the hand gestures......... I'll put them in for you) On one extreme side of the spectrum you have the musicians that only play by ear *holding out her left arm and shaking her left fist*. On the other side you have the musicians that only play by theory *holding out her right arm and shaking her right fist*. Both have their good and bad players. And all players fall somewhere inside of this spectrum. My goal for myself and my students, and what your goal should be also, is to fall (smacking her fists together) RIGHT IN THE CENTER. Aren't I epic? You want to do both. You want to be both. Sometimes it's best just to listen. Sometimes it's better to analyze. If you want to be able to do anything, and to be the best at what you do, you should be balanced. As you grow as a musician you will move around on this spectrum. The goal is to try to be so good at both sides that you are on the whole in the center, that way you can move from one extreme to the other at will. For example, it is best to write blues more on the ear side of the spectrum, shred is more on the theory side of the spectrum. If you write blues with too much theory in mind you will sound contrived and insincere, if you write shred by ear you'll sound incohesive and like you stole the song you wrote. Now analyzing blues with theory to see why what your favorite players did works is good to do. But if you overthink during the writing process, bad. So, it should be your goal to learn everything you can, to train your ear, to train your fingers, and then use what you need for what you are writing. I always use some degree of theory when writing, sometimes it's through the entire process, sometimes it's only in the beginning when I'm choosing a key, or looking at the chords I have available to me. I always use some degree of playing by ear with everything I write, improvised solos, or writing melodies. Balance, my dear, it's all in the balance. Now, remember that I said you have to know the style before you can write it, and learning the style is also a balance between ear and theory. And it starts with the ear. LISTEN to the style in a very focused manner. See if you recognize certain things they are doing, sounds like just major chords, or that solo was mainly sweeps, or they only use power chords, or it sounds kinda jazzy, basic observations like this. Get tabs and analyze those. Figure out what the progressions are (bands are repetitious when you get down to a theory level) what keys they are using, what scales, what chords, do they sweep, use sequences a lot? What's the structure for this style? Intro Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Solo Chorus Verse Chorus Outro. Twelve Bar Blues Progression. Tons of breakdowns. Same structure with key changes. Look for these things in many songs by the same band, many bands of the same style, two styles that seem totally different on the surface. Pay attention to the movement of the song, the rhythm, the speed, the note values, the busyness of the other instruments. You are observing. These are the things that define the styles. And as you mix these things you get other styles. Take rock and jazz concepts and you get progressive rock (Rush, Dream Theater, Pink Floyd.) Take jazz and simplify it and you get blues. The more you know the more options you have. That doesn't mean you'll use everything you know every time. But it's there if you need it. I feel compelled to talk about this before we move on. How many times I have had to give this little lecture is beyond me, I lost count. How creativity has become some mystic thing that certain people are bestowed with upon birth and will remain a mystery to everyone else I will never know. Nothing else is like that. Yes, some people are born naturally gifted in certain areas (an image of a two year old throwing a ball and a dad screaming HE'S GONNA BE A FOOTBALL PLAYER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! comes to mind.) This is so important I have to highlight it: Did you get that? Anyone can do anything if they work at it, and that includes being creative. Most of you just have to sit down and try. And like everything else it will suck at first. People expect that with everything else. But not with this for some reason, they try once and if it doesn't work... nope, not creative. My favorites are my 40 year olds that tell me that they aren't creative because they sucked in art class in 7th grade. I laugh and gently explain that 7th grade art class doesn't matter. People get all uppity " No, you don't understand, really, I'm not creative at all." Ok, I'm not capable of flying a plane at all because I'VE NEVER TRIED. Creativity is a skill that can be learned and improved with exercise and experience. There are books available that walk you through the process of becoming more creative if you think it may be an issue. Now, let's take this one step further. If creativity is an improvable skill that means that as you work on writing songs you will get better at it. Your songs will get more creative as you continue to write. So don't give up Ok, now lets talk about writing, shall we? We'll break it up in the same way, knowing what style we are writing and not. We'll start with not. Ok, grab your guitar. Now pick a note. I don't care, any note, just play one. Now play another one. I don't care what that one is either, so long as you like how it sounds. And I don't care how you pick the note either. Think of a scale, think of half steps or whole steps, don't think at all. It doesn't matter. Just find a new note that sounds good when played after the first one. Now, pick another note. Ok, we have three notes. I've heard guitar solos with less..... Now mess with the timing, or the technique, or keep it the way you're playing it, and then pick another note. Any note. Even one you've already played, it doesn't matter. But your ear at this point should be pulling you toward certain notes, some shouldn't sound right when you try them. This is it folks. This is how you start. You pick a note, and then you pick another, and then another. No matter what, if you refine down the process of writing, it simplifies to this. Of course, it gets much more complicated, but this is how you start writing melody. Do the same with chords. Pick one to start with, and then find another one, etc. At some point you'll find that you have something cohesive, something that is starting to sound like something. If not, well it was a great exercise in ear training. If you did get something that you like WRITE IT DOWN. Yes you will forget it, and don't argue with me. Write down everything you come up with, and not just the frets you played, but also try to write the timing, even if you don't know how to do that. Come up with a way, no matter how stupid it may seem to other people. It's not just the notes you choose, it's how you play them, and that part is even easier to forget. You aren't writing a full song yet, we'll talk about that later. For now we're just getting some ideas that we can use. Writing songs is all about taking smaller things that sound good and finding a way to link them together. Right now we're just coming up with those pieces. Alright, what if you are trying to write in a specific style? We already said that you have to analyze the style first, but then what? Let's walk through the song I mentioned earlier, Ex Nihilis. I'll use this just because it's easily available online. I head up a team of local musicians that write and record songs for a local video game company named Resolute that releases games for the iPhone. One day I was talking to one of the staff members about coming up with another original song for a game called Thumstruck (we had already written an original song for the main theme of the game.) We were trying to decide which style I should go with (I was writing this one on my own because the other writers on the team had other obligations) and I had mentioned that there was a neoclassical arpeggio section that I had written several years ago that I had never done anything with, and he said Go with that. See what I'm getting at, you come up with ideas, and write them down and sometimes they just sit on the shelf. I have tons of files, and sheets of paper and tab books that are FULL of ideas I haven't done anything with, and when I need a starting point, or am having a hard time filling in a blank spot in a song, I just flip through it and find something to work with. So I sat down with this arpeggio section and thought, ok, great, writing neoclassical. I don't do that.... that's why I never did anything with the arpeggios.... Ok, so now what? Well, what makes neoclassical sound the way it sounds? Harmonic Minor. Ok, well these arpeggios are in the key of A Harmonic Minor, so we'll start there. (as far as how I came up with the arpeggio section, I was learning an arpeggio excerpt from a neoclassical song for the practice, liked the shapes I was using and moved them around to make them my own.) I thought through where my power chords would be, and messed around with that a little and came up with a basic progression. Neoclassical is also full of pedal points and sequences, so I started messing around with those and came up with some that sounded cool, there was a pedal point section that I had written before that I thought would work, so I slapped that in there. Then I needed some form of melody. Everything needs a melody. I'd been working with Bach's Tocatta and Fugue recently, and thought about how the meoldy at the beginning felt and with that in mind I started messing around with the modes of harmonic minor and came up with a cool melody. Then I decided to write a more traditional clean classical intro with diads and melody, but instead of going with a classical guitar intro, I used guitar and bass together to imitate the tonal spread you can get on piano, writing the bassline like the left hand and the guitar part like the right hand. Then I started working on some licks to get a solo type section. Once I had all these pieces, I started moving them around in an order that sounded good, came up with some little fillers to link everything together, changed the chord progression around a little bit in a couple of places, wrote the bassline, had a drummer improvise the drumline during recording and there you go. Done. This is a fairly common approach I take when writing for a specific style. I take into consideration everything that defines the style, and use that as a starting point for what I am going to do. Although I don't limit myself to that. You have to have a certain amount of what defines a style in a song if you want it to sound like that style, but you do have a little bit of leeway. For example, it has become common lately to put clean jazz breakdowns in death metal. It's two totally different things, but it works. One style that I love, Indian music (like, far east, india), gets put in to almost every song I write in some form or another. You can blend styles without end up being fusion. Fusion is basically where two or more styles get blended to the point that you end up with a new style. Placing parts of one style into another can be done without changing the main style of the song if you are careful with what or how you blend. Be creative. And if you come up with something that you weren't expecting, but it sounds cool then who cares what you call it, right? How about songs with lyrics? Couple different things here. One is when you have lyrics and need a song, the other is when you have a song and need lyrics. If you have neither then pick one to start with. If you have lyrics, and they are actually lyrics, you should have a basic idea of the meter and melody for the lyrics. If not you haven't thought about it yet, or you have a poem and not lyrics and there is an UBER HUGE DIFFERENCE between lyrics and poetry. Not to say that lyrics can't be poetic. But lyrics need a degree of repetition and cohesiveness that is generally lacking in good poetry, atleast in my opinion. Poetry also has a larger variety of structure and meter, whereas lyrics need to have a defined structure and a certain repetitious meter if the song is going to sound fluid. There are a lot of different ways that you can start writing the rhythm behind lyrics. This next part is only talking about lyrics that are sung, we'll get to lyrics that are just screams in a minute. The first step is to choose chords that work behind the lyrics. Try starting with a key. Either just pick one to experiment with, or find the notes that you are singing on your guitar and figure out the best key for it. Then just start singing and playing random chords until it sounds right. Of course you can get more in depth with it and figure out every note you are signing and how it would fit harmonically over certain chords, but you can also just play random chords until it sounds good. Either way. If the movement through the song is fluid, the key doesn't matter If everything flows well, you can totally disregard key. Think about people who talk a lot. They start on one subject that leads them to another and then another, and you follow along just fine because the subjects blur together when they are linked by a common trait. You can do that with note/chord choice too. Once you have some chords that seem to go ok over the words you start working on the rhythm. Match the meter of the lyrics first (this is all syllable based.) Then start embellishing a little if you want, extra strums here and there. Mess around with upstrokes, downstrokes, mutes, adding embellishing tones into your chords. Then fill in blank spaces, like between the chorus and second verse for example, by taking all or part of the basic progression and repeating it, coming up with a new progression that follows the other progression well, or writing a melody. You can make the progression or embellishments a little more complicated during these sections if you want to since there is no singer to clash with. Remember that the person singing is the focal point, so you want to be a little simple during the actual singing. If the lyrics change key it's good to change the key in the guitar line while there is no singing, it will help your singer switch keys more gracefully. Now if the singer doesn't really sing but screams you are more worried about matching or complimenting meter. You can get away with a lot more since there isn't much going on note wise here, so it's much easier to choose a key. Keep the same idea in mind that you want to be more simplified when the vocalist is vocalizing than when he isn't. You can be very complicated over screams, but always make the parts when he isn't screaming more complicated or it will sound like he forgot to come back in. It makes the song sound more full and complete that way. That's not saying that you can't repeat the riff when he isn't doing anything, you can do whatever you want. But it's typical to be more simplified when the vocalist is performing. When you have a song and no lyrics....... this is a lot harder to work with sometimes. First you have to make sure that the rhythm line has some form of meter that a vocalist can work with. Things need to have some form of pattern to it, or the lyrics won't sound right. The chords themselves don't so much matter as the rhythm. Remember meter basically comes down to syllables. Have some form of rhythmic pattern going where syllables can be fit in with a pattern line by line. That pattern doesn't matter much so long as there is a pattern. Find the meter and start filling in words from there. Humming or whistling or making some kind of vocalization before the lyrics get written is a good idea because you can get an idea of the meter without having to totally rework the lyrics when you realize the song is either to long or too short in certain parts. Of course, the song will change as the lyrics get added in anyway, but you want to have an idea of the meter ahead of time. One very important thing to keep in mind is that you do not write songs from beginning to end. You write bits and pieces and those pieces move around a lot as you go. Meaning you don't have to start with the intro. Start wherever inspiration strikes and work from there. There are a lot of different approaches to writing songs, and it's a little different for everyone. You have to be open to trying a bunch of different things when you first start out, and as you go along you'll start to develope your own method. I have several different ways that I write. What I do depends on what I am writing and how I get started. Sometimes I'll hear an idea in my head and have to get it out, and when that happens I follow a completely different chain of events than if I were playing my guitar and I come up with something that sounds cool. Sometimes I write stuff without even using my guitar. For those of you that use Guitar Pro, sometimes I just sit down with my laptop and write, which is great when I am somewhere that I can't bring my guitar, but I can bring my computer. I've been playing and writing music long enough that I can just think about what I would play, how it would feel and how it would sound without even touching my guitar, and I just enter it in to Guitar Pro. A couple of the songs for my solo cd were written entirely like that. In fact, no matter how I write my songs, they always end up in Guitar Pro. It makes arrangement a lot easier, as well as writing for the other musicians I will be working with. Not only can I hear how their parts will sound with mine without having to learn them, but I can just print their part out for them instead of having to show it to them. Another great thing about Guitar Pro is that I can turn the tablature off, export the notation as a .pdf file, and use that file to electronically file for copyright protection. Sooooo easy. Point is you have to experiment, and you have to accept the fact that your first few tries may very well not end up the way you want them. Oh well, you're learning and will get better with time. Which leads me to a very important subject. Never fall in love with anything you write. This will kill any chance you have at getting a good song. You have to be willing to change stuff, to move stuff around, to cut parts out. Your song is not finished until the recording is being mastered. Up until the song is in the hands of the engineer and not yours there is a high likelyhood that SOMETHING will have to change. You have to be willing to keep working with the song until it's just right, and some of those changes may come as late as when you sit down to record it. Maybe you think that the solo you wrote is amazing, and I'm sure it is, but if it doesn't fit the song you put it in, guess what kid, you have to cut it. Now remember that earlier I said write everything down, keep track of everything you come up with. Just take your killer solo and file it away for later use. Or better yet, if it's such a great solo, write a song specifically for it. You have to be willing to move things around. You have to be willing to change your mind, especially when it comes to the stage where you start working on the song with other musicians. So you've been sitting around, writing the next great rock anthem of the world, and you finally get it to the point where you are ready to get some other people involved. So you get together with a bassist and a drummer, and you play your precious baby for them and they tell you EVERYTHING that's wrong with it. Don't get defensive, this is part of their job. Genuinely listen to what they are saying and take it into consideration. They might be right. Now if you are working with people who think that they are always right and you are always wrong, take that into consieration too, A drummer that doesn't know how to play gutiar probably shouldn't be telling you how to play guitar, but he listens to music too and has a very valid opinion about what something should sound like. If you are working with good musicians they should know their role and yours in the band and be constructive. That being said you shouldn't be sitting there as a glory hog taking epic solos all the time and thinking that everything is about you because it's not. Point in case, my metal students. They first get into guitar and they think the guitar lines are so amazing and fast and technical and they try to write songs that are complicated, fast and busy. Then when I start teaching them how to actually listen to music I have to seriously break their hearts because most of the "fast" stuff that they are hearing is actually the drummer, not the guitar player. Ouch. Most metal riffs with fast tremolo picked single notes appear faster than they are because of the double bass work of the drummer. That's not to say that the lines aren't fast, technical and complicated, just that they seem moreso with the rest of the band playing. Which leads me to my next few points. First of all, the song sounds a whole lot different when you get the entire band together. If you don't take into consideration what the time signature and tempo means to the drummer, you can end up with a guitar line you loved by itself sounding totally different once a drummer starts to play. If you are writing songs just to have cool guitar lines and you aren't thinking about anything else you are going to end up with lame, beginner level shred and nothing else. Second point, when you write take into consideration what everyone else will be playing. Leave room for everyone. There is only so much space in a song. If you are trying to write a song that sounds full and complete with just a single guitar, you're not going to have room for everyone else and it will sound lame. NEVER OVERWRITE THE GUITAR LINE. Playing other peoples songs can give you a little bit of an idea of how this works, but not really because your brain is filling in what the rest of the band was doing in the song even if you aren't thinking about it. Leave space for everyone else. Remember that the song may sound a little incomplete, seem a little empty, because a song is about the entire band working together, not you being cool. But Krystel, I'm a guitar player, and I'm good, and I want to make ME sound good. No, no, no. You are setting yourself up for only being able to impress people that don't know you or guitar. If all you think about is yourself you will never ever write music that people can appreciate. Now you may write some songs that are impressive to other guitar players just from the sheer chops you have. But that's not music. That's guitar exercises with a backing track. When you think about everyone else sounding good you take the focus off of your ego, and the music that you create as a result is actual music. People may not like the style but they will be able to appreciate that you know your style well and did a good job at it. When you are writing a solo section think about what the other musicians are going to be doing, give them a chance to sound good. You will sound much better because of it. I have more respect for a solid band, no matter how simple or complicated, than I do for a solo guitarist that sounds like he's playing to a lame backing track. Simple music can really impress me if everyone knew their place and did their job well, when everyone sounds good and sounds like they are an important part of the song. And the bands that can balance fast, technical guitar lines, complicated bass lines and busy drumlines, that to me is truly impressive. Krystel Becker 02.20.09 |
