Songs should be built around a universal theme, idea or feeling. You
want as many people as possible to relate to the material. The song
should beself-contained. No explanation or mind reading is necessary to
understand the story. If you have to say, "What I mean by this is" then
you need to rewrite the song.
The lyric and the melody belong
together. Its called prosody. Happy lyrics/ happy melody. The words and
music flow naturally. No forcing more lyrics into what sings easily, no
stretching out lyrics to fill in lack of ideas.
Controversial
topics should be avoided, but, if you do choose debatable subjects, make
sure they are presented tastefully. I don't think the listener would sit
still for a blow by blow account of an abortion, for example.
Does the song change time frames? Has the listener been prepared to go
from the past to the present or, one locale to another? An abrupt shift
will cause you to lose the listener.
Does the song revolve
around one main idea, or is the lyric scattered all over the place? It
is usually okay to go somewhere else in the bridge, if it adds to the
understanding with a different perspective on the same idea as the rest
of the song.
If your intention is for people to remember the
name of your song, then be sure to title it with a word or phrase from
the song that you use more than once. That's why most people will use
something from the chorus, if there is one, because the chorus is
repeated. If you're really stuck on a title, but it isn't repeated, is
there a way at the end of the song you can use it in a repetitive
fashion? One way you can do this is record it with the background vocals
repeating it between the lines of the chorus. Now, when you sing it in
public, get the audience to sing those background vocals.
Strong lines. The lyric should get better as it progresses through the
song. Many times, writers cop out on the second verse, and resort to
clichés to get through it. This is where rewriting may be necessary.
Song lyrics aren't the same as poetry. Are your lyrics
realistic in tone? Abstractions are hard for the public to grasp in the
immediate sense, which is where the song is accepted or rejected.
The song is an acceptable length for radio play. Probably, no
more than 3 1/2 minutes. The demo should not contain musical breaks.
The lyrics are honest, believable and heartfelt. Ask yourself, would the
singer want to be associated with the tone or message in these lyrics?
If the male comes across as weak or the female as a victim, the artist
will probably pass on the song. One big no-no is self-pity. I have also
been told by other publishers they don't like to hear begging songs,
though its' been done.
How many of these craft worthy details
can you point to in the song? The title is up front, the first line of
the chorus? It is repeated for memorability? The lyrics express a new
way of presenting the familiar? They are cliché free? The lyrics paint
vivid images with word pictures? The song/melody is short enough and
simple enough to catch the listener's ear and be recognizable the first
time it's heard? The song has a touch of suspense or mystery about it
that pulls the listener in?
Be careful of repetitive ideas.
Don't say the same thing over and over. Don't repeat an idea. Don't tell
us something you've already said. Unlike this tip, avoid redundancy.
Here's a checklist for you to use as you begin the re-work of
your songs. #1) do you have a memorable title? Your title should be
identifiable, memorable, and substantial for music, puts singer in
favorable light, and makes you want to hear it again. #2) Does your
song have a strong start? You need to pull your listener into song,
established who, what, when, and where, immediately. #3) your song
should progress in a logical, meaningful sequence. It should lead the
listeners to a conclusion, stated or implied. #4) the music should be
appropriate for, support and enhances the lyric content.
Strive
for clarity in your songwriting efforts. Make it absolutely clear who
is doing the talking/thinking, etc. Him, her, they, them, it, make it
clear; show any changes of time, setting, viewpoint in a transitional
line. Never assume knowledge on the part of the listener.
Here
are some thoughts that you can take straight out of a Freshman Comp
class. First, even the most complex of concepts can be expressed in
simplistic terms. Keep your plot simple. Stick to only one central
idea. Eliminate all subplots.
Pitch in
Songwriting: Before you begin to compose, establish the key by
playing and singing the scale of the key in which you wish to compose.
Then play and hold the tonic note in the bass and try to be aware of the
tonal implication of each melody note as it sounds against it.
Don't Use Shortcuts in Song Composition: When you're
actually composing the song, such shortcuts as putting in a repeat sign
after four measures in a verse section may discourage creative
possibilities and choices that might have existed had you allowed
yourself the space to realize them. (These could be as simple as
changing one pitch or rhythm or adding a couple of measures of new
music.)
When you're writing a lead sheet, keep the indications
to an absolute minimum. The lead sheet should represent the most
essential ingredients of the song. These ingredients can then be
embellished by the vocalist(s), the accompanist, the arranger, or the
producer. So don't clutter the lead sheet with arranging ideas or
instrumental sections that are optional.
Use Your Intuition Becoming
Versatile: Saxophonist Ernie Watts (Berkeley '66) has toured
and recorded with artists as diverse as Barbara Streisand, Earth, Wind
and Fire, and the Rolling Stones. Here he shares his advice for young
players:
"It's very important to go inside and see what you
feel. And see what you want to play. It's part of the development
process. When you're younger, you have people that you emulate. And
then at a certain time, there's that period of thinking, 'What do I
think? What do I feel? What do I want to create? I've heard how this
guy does it, I've studied him. Now how do I feel about this music?'
It's really important to get to that point."
If you use only
your rational mind when composing a song, you most likely will have an
undesirable result--a dry, unmoving group of notes, logically organized
but emotionally barren. A song that moves others must be written by
someone who has felt moments of inspiration, who has had an intuitive
experience in the actual process of writing. Writing for the Voice
It is absolutely essential to the craft of songwriting that the
writer sing the melody, feel it in the voice, reach for the high notes,
and focus on experiencing the relationship between the lyric and the
melody. Much of the melody writing done for instruments, especially for
the piano, is difficult or impossible to sing. The following are to be
considered when writing for the voice:
1. How disjunctive is
the melody? Too many intervallic leaps can cause the melody to be
difficult or impossible to sing. 2. Does the vocalist have time to
breathe between phrases? Is the phrase so long that it doesn't allow the
singer to breathe? 3. Is the vocal range of the song too great? Does the
range within a section of the song change too quickly?
Develop Your Skills: "To further their careers, young
composers should do anything they can. Participation in student-run
films, television, commercials, even local commercials, whatever they
can take. I would even suggest that they have their own computer
operations and take videos of some of their favorite and most
influential films, shut down the sound, and lay in their own music to
show how they would approach a project. And having a CD demo of film
music available is important." Patterns in Songwriting
Once you
start putting syllables into patterns, you are mixing a rhythmic element
with phrase length and number of phrases. Music is, by nature, rhythmic.
So you must arrange syllables into rhythmic patterns, either to prepare
them for music, or to match music that has already been written.
You will spend a lot of writing time trying to match
patterns--patterns of notes, or patterns you have written in earlier
phrases or sections of your lyric (for example, matching your second
verse with your first verse).
Using Unstressed
Syllables: When words work simply as grammatical road signs to
show relationships between words (grammatical function), they are
unstressed. The grammatical function is very important. Look at the
opening lines of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky":
"T was brillig,
and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe"
They seem
to make sense. Of course they don't, because sounds such as "brillig"
and "slithy" aren't connected to any ideas. So why do the lines seem to
say something? The answer is in the unstressed syllables. They tweak
our ears; tell us to get ready for certain kinds of words.
Controlling Phrase Length: Your goal as a songwriter
is not to make songs faster, but to control the speed of your songs.
The length of your phrases is one of your most potent speed controllers.
Speeding up and slowing down are relative ideas. Longer phrases must
be longer than something. Shorter phrases must be shorter than
something. You must establish a pace before you can speed up or slow
down. The contrast is what gives you control.
Sing
Verse to Balance Phrases: Contrasting one section with another
is a great use of balancing. When you already have a balanced section,
you can write another section to match it except at the end, where you
unbalance it, usually by adding another phrase.
This
unbalancing strategy is useful when you have two verses that lead into a
chorus. Make the first verse completely balanced, and then unbalance
the second verse by adding an extra phrase. This unbalancing will make
it move forward into the chorus. armonic Cadence and Its Use in Form
Various sections within song forms usually call forth typical
cadential patterns. For instance, a verse ending with a refrain will
usually cadence on a tonic chord, thereby, harmonically, closing it. A
verse leading to a chorus will typically use a half cadence; a bridge
(B) section of an AABA song would most likely use a half cadence to lead
back to the last A.
There are no firm rules constituting what
type of cadence belongs where, but keep in mind that functionally, verse
structures and bridge structures tend to remain harmonically open, while
refrains and choruses usually end song sys
tems and, therefore,
tend to close.
The Basic Structure of a Lead Sheet: The lead sheet
format reflects the importance of the melody. Harmonic voicing, texture,
and orchestration are not found in lead sheets. The lead sheet solely
contains the melody, the lyric, and the harmony notated with chord
symbols.
Take a very good concept and write several songs about
it. Each song should give a different twist or perspective to the concept.
This may very soon add up to a complete concept album.
Practice
writing lyrics that have absolutely nothing to do with anything you've
actually experienced. This could really add more variety to your lyric
writing. Was it something experienced by someone you know? Write about
it.
Try different rhyming patterns or formulas. Don't limit
yourself to making the last word of every line rhyme. How about making
the line rhyme halfway as well? On the other hand, sometimes lines fit
very well together and there is no need to rhyme.
Start by
writing down your thoughts as ideas or in the form of a story. It's not
always necessary to start with lyrics. You could probably write out your
thoughts as a story or a list of ideas. After you've done this, begin
transforming these ideas or story into lyrics and rhyme.
Don't
worry about finishing a song in one shot. You can keep jotting down
lines on a notebook, as they come. Don't pressure yourself. Keep adding
those lyrics and eventually you will be able to pick up the best ideas,
phrases or lines and complete your lyric writing exercise.
You
can get lots of lyric writing ideas by listening to conversations and
monitoring activities happening around you. Sometimes a simple statement
that someone makes can lead to that great hit you've been longing to
write. There are lyric ideas all over. The radio, television, movies,
magazines and newspapers are some of the many sources.
The only
way to attain vision is to have reworked and redefined your musical
style and ability to the point to where you become aware of yourself as
an artist. One cannot tell you what their musical vision is; they can
only show you. A musician with a vision has the ability to meld his
personality into his music. He/She knows his/her strengths and
weaknesses. Every factor is a building block to their music. When you
realize your vision as an artist, you will begin to understand what you
want, and where you need to go to get it. If you haven't found it yet,
don't fret. Keep making music and assessing yourself as a musician. It
will come in time. Will it help you grow as a musician? Definitely. It
will put that extra edge in your music that screams your name whenever
people hear it.
Don't forget to relax and breathe once in a
while. When the chips are down, get some ice cream. You've got your
whole life to figure out what you want to do. Just take it step by
step, and every so often you've got to get away. Do something
different. Go ride a bike. Go climb a mountain. Do something that gets
you out of your room. As a musician you should be expressing aspects of
life in your music. So go out there and have something to come home and
write about.
Never ever feel you have to be better than or
equal to or as good as anybody else is. Your job is to be yourself,
that's it. No one else can do this job. No one else can be who you
are, feel what you feel, say what you say. Therefore, even if you think
it has been said, you haven't expressed it in your own way, and no one
else can express "it" like you can, so don't be afraid to add your voice
to the chorus. What you are doing is adding to the world, not
subtracting.
Here's a neat little songwriter-ly trick. For
emphasis, use important words at the end of the line. Always use the
active voice in your verbs rather than the passive. Rhyme the words
that you are going to stress.
Strive for clarity in your
songwriting efforts. Make it absolutely clear who is doing the
talking/thinking, etc. Him, her, they, them, it, make it clear; show
any changes of time, setting, viewpoint in a transitional line. Never
assume knowledge on the part of the listener.
Here are some
thoughts that you can take straight out of a Freshman Comp class.
First, even the most complex of concepts can be expressed in simplistic
terms. Keep your plot simple. Stick to only one central idea.
Eliminate all subplots.
Make a goal to make
one new song every week, even if it is only 50 seconds long. It is the
fact that you are working your brain out. Once you begin the song, you
can latch onto ideas rather quickly. That is not the purpose of the
exercise. The purpose is to get your brain to find new avenues by
exploring different ideas. It's about trying something new every time.
Make a reason for why every part of your song
exists. Find parts in your lead passage that really hook you. Now delete
all the other parts. Now build off of the hook. Get it? Computers cannot
find hooks, but your ear can. If you can't feel anything interesting
from a part, get rid of it.
Sometimes just getting out of the
house and doing something you haven't done in a long time (or never
done) can open up the doors to musical inspiration. Open up a photo
album, read old letters, visit family, friends, go do an activity, do
anything but music. Read poetry, watch ballet, go to see a movie, walk
around in a museum, look at oil paintings and sculptures as these are
all different forms of art. Music is an art form too. Sometimes other
forms of art can be inspiring to the musician. Come back, after your
mind has been freed, and try to write a song about it.
As a
songwriter, we need to all understand that there is no "bad" or "good"
music. There are only songs people can and can't relate to. So don't
feel bad if your music doesn't reach out to everyone. There isn't any
one style of music that can. The trick is that you need to find people
who already enjoy the style of music you write. From there, you can more
accurately judge how well your music
communicates. When writing music,
try not to appeal to every single type of listener. Write the music in the style you
love to make, and write it for those people.
The second kind of
critique (grain of salt critiques) judge’s music by using their own
style as their frame of reference. These critiques do not make your
music better, just different. Usually, this will just change the appeal
of the different types of listeners instead of enhancing the experience
to the listeners who would have liked your music originally. They may
give you ideas to help your vision, but they are also tearing down walls
that you have identified as your style. You can learn from these people,
but you just have to be careful. Consider, possibly change and move on.
There are two kinds of critiques: The first
kind of critique, my favorite, shows you ideas to help you express
yourself while respecting the vision of the artist. These are the kind
of people that can really help us grow as musicians because we are not
being torn down and reconstructed to their image, they are building off
of our vision and riding it out from there.
Critiquers can give you a new perspective on your song, and your
Musicianship may even grow as new ideas will be presented to you. If you
get a bad critique, this can also prepare you for dealing with
rejection. Consider the advice that is presented to you, have enough
modesty to accept the advice (if you agree with it) and move on. Don't
respond back to the critiques telling them "they didn't understand the
piece". Your music just did not communicate it to them. You should never
have to explain your music. It should speak on its own.
The
lyric and the melody belong together. It’s called prosody. Happy lyrics/
happy melody. The words and music flow naturally. No forcing more lyrics
into what sings easily, no stretching out lyrics to fill in lack of
ideas.
Think about what the song needs as opposed to what you
want. The 'both of you' might have varying opinions. When you make the
music bigger than you are, then you'll understand what this means.
Great songs tend to have a mind of their own
When you think in
terms of the best interests in the song, you may have to rid yourself
some very good ideas that you wanted to do. All of us have come up with
very creative ideas that really didn't work with the song we were
composing. Don't mess up your song by trying to fit it in. If you can
fit it in and it feels right to put it there, great. If it doesn't,
then you have an idea for your next song to ready to go.
Know your listeners: Overcomplicated songs will lose
the average listener. Now, other hard-core musicians will greatly
appreciate your abilities and probably get more feeling from it- but the
common person will most likely not be able to follow. Once again you
should ask yourself when you write a song: Who am I making this music
for and will they be able to relate?
Never stop working
at your abilities: If our main goal as a songwriter is to
connect emotionally with our listeners, we should want to have as many
tools as we possibly can to achieve that goal. The more abilities that
we have, the more choices we can make musically. It's important to have
a wide arsenal of choices at your disposal, because if we keep doing the
same 'tried and true' methods, their emotional effects will wear off as
the songwriting becomes caged into a predictable movement.
Write a rough draft of the first verse of your song:
This verse should draw attention to your song and make your audience
want to listen. Don't worry about it being perfect at this point; you
will refine all the verses and the chorus later. Now, of course, you
will need to write the second verse. In this part you will need to
continue to tell the story and explain what the action is. Don't be too
detailed; this is a three-minute song, not an opera. Next comes the
third verse. Tell more about your story here, and add relevant
information to your story. You really want to enhance the story line
from verses one and two, because the next verse will close the song.
As in most endeavors, the songwriter has to begin somewhere.
And the best place to begin is someplace where you feel comfortable. Do
something (relatively) easy and then set out to branch out and grow.
Also, a songwriter has to have a motive. Why am I writing this song? Do
I have something to say? Something to share? Money to make?
Write down the subject of the song, the idea or the message you want to
convey, and the story the song will tell. The subject of the song might
be falling in love; the message might be that there is someone for
everyone; the story might tell of a man and a woman that meet and fall
madly in love with each other. This is a good time to write down the
words to the chorus of the song. The chorus is a bridge or connection
from one verse to the next. It must make sense to sing the words of the
chorus in between the verses. From the chorus, you will also need to
make-up a catchy title for your song.
The hook is the song's
thesis statement. Every essay has a thesis that encapsulates its central
idea; similarly, an effective song must have a hook that expresses in
just a few words and notes what the song is about. The hook must be
repeated several times throughout the song. If it isn't repeated, it
isn't a hook. It is that one line, both musically and lyrically, that
listeners will remember long after the song is over. It's that line that
they will whistle or sing in the shower and what they will ask for when
they call the radio station to request the song.
Copyright 2001 Berklee Press