Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Songwriting but Didnt Know Who to Ask
"Songwriting'due south like shooting fish in a barrel! It's non hard at all. Unless, of course, cypher's coming. And then information technology's hell."
– Tom Lehrer
"Performing'due south the easiest matter I practise. Songwriting is the hardest."
-Neil Diamond
"I've been playing guitar my whole life and I continue getting better. Songwriting just gets harder."
-Stephen Stills
Attention SONGWRITERS:
Have you e'er noticed that songwriting is hard?
Have yous had times when yous wanted to write a great song, and for some reason, were not able to come up with anything?
Take you been writing songs for years, and still oasis't had 1 hit?
Exercise you want to know the secret truth well-nigh songwriting? If so, have you ever searched online for that secret?
If you accept, I'm sorry. From contempo experience, I've learned how frustrating information technology tin can exist to search for truth on songwriting – or simply about any discipline now – hither on the Cyberspace.
If yous do, you will find a lot of sources which hope to deliver this truth. A lot! Unfortunately – and this applies to other sites online – many of these sources are useless, bogus, or worse.
It's life in the Misinformation Age. Seems like not also long ago when we first heard of the World wide web. That phrase with that cracking songwriterly alliteration suggested an ever-expanding compendium of wisdom and knowledge on every subject known to man.
It seemed pretty probable that after a few years with all this cognition, flesh would evolve as former divisions get supplanted past the true cognition of pity, and we'd be ultimately unified in a new age of enlightenment.
Right?
Sadly, information technology didn't quite piece of work that way.
Instead of a tool of ultimate enlightenment, we got a mushrooming compendium of all known knowledge as as well all unknown knowledge, pseudo-knowledge, non-knowledge, simulated-knowledge, misinformation, false assumptions, hatred, rage, delusion, pornography, paranoia and really bad advice. Rather than unify mankind with expansive intelligence, it's fabricated us more than confused and uneasy as always. Truth used to be something about which nosotros had some kind of a consensus. Non so much anymore.
A extreme example of this was found in Google statistics which rail the most Googled questions. Regarding the moon, the most asked question is, by far, "Is the moon existent?"
Is the moon existent? This is not a good sign. Humans have been arguing for eons. Yet the reality of the moon was i subject area nigh which there wasn't much fence. It wasn't a serious bailiwick, afterward all, to debate, like Climate Change, or if the earth is flat. (Information technology isn't. It's sharp.)
So if we can't detect out whether or not the moon is real, or possibly a hologram or the upshot of some mass hypnosis, finding the truth about songwriting is bound to exist challenging.
So: songwriters beware! Beware of any source which promises to make songwriting piece of cake, or teach you lot how to write a hit, or how to write a hit chop-chop.
Why? Because songwriting isn't piece of cake. Writing a hit is not a science. There is no formula, or fifty-fifty any repeatable method. If there was, any ane of those figurer geniuses around this globe who can hack into the Pentagon any morning surely would have written a string of hits past now.
So whatsoever source which offers you lot advice on how to write a hit song in xxx is doubtable. thirty minutes? What's the rush? It can take 30 minutes sometimes simply to become the coffee and start tuning the guitar.
But if a site offers bodily ideas, with practical examples, information technology'southward probably i written past a songwriter and/or musician, which makes all the departure. Just there are those out there. To find them, though, requires a lot of wading through the big dirty of misinformation. Wear boots.
These misinformational sites casualty on the natural yearning of aspiring songwriters to larn about this elusive process. Often they enquire and answer fundamental questions, as if the exercise itself is useful. Although the questions are all pretty good, the answers, well, not so much.
For example:
QUESTION: "How practise you stop a vocal that needs one more poetry and you lot accept no more?"
Reply: "To cease a vocal, but generate more ideas then employ those ideas to write the other parts of the song yous need." Oh! Simply generate. That is helpful. Merely where do we get these song generators? Costco?
QUESTION: How do you come with musical ideas?
Answer: Y'all tin can use chord progressions to inspire more musical ideas.
Chord progressions? Cool!
What are those? Can I get those on Amazon?
Fifty-fifty definitions of the most bones elements of songwriting – such every bit melody – get distorted.
"There'due south the melody, which are the notes you think of when you hum the chorus of a song. For case, hum the notes to these songs: 'Hey Jude…' `Somewhere Over the Rainbow…' You were humming the tune.
This is not helpful. A melody is more than than the chorus. It'south the whole tune. Likewise, as a few of usa know, the first line of "Hey Jude" is not the chorus. Information technology has no chorus.
Simple things they complicate, while over-simplifying what is complex.
The mission here is to add clarity, not more confusion. To provide expert answers as well every bit inquire questions. Questions about tune, for example, are not elementary. Every bit Dave Brubeck said, "The secret of a melody is a secret." And so whatsoever source which attempts to brusk-cut to the simple answer is suspect.
Such equally:
QUESTION: How exercise I write a melody?
ANSWER: In one case you have the showtime line of a melody, attempt repeating it for the 2nd line. Then go somewhere else for the third line and come back to your original to wrap it upwardly. Yous tin hear this pattern in the verse melody of "Every Jiff Y'all Have" by the Constabulary.
Can you? This leaves out an important ingredient: the chords. By repeating a melodic line while shifting the chord below it creates a beautiful effect. Simply repeating the tune without the chords is not the same at all.
QUESTION: How could it take over a year to write a iv minute song?
Answer: You don't have a procedure… having no sense of procedure isn't freedom. Information technology's anarchy…if you don't get stuck, yous get in all the manner to the stop of your vocal and realize it's resoundingly non good. This is because you don't have a process."
Okay, that helps. A process. Like what – a artistic process? A spiritual process? A process of self-devastation and reinvention? Just what have I got myself into here?
"Whatever processes piece of work for you, employ them."
Oh! But what if none of my processes work for me? They all seem to be working against me.
Yous go the thought.
If a site has good questions, only no real answers, await elsewhere. Questions are bully, but answers, actually, thing even more than.
It'due south not all bad. At that place are many adept, credible sources of information out in that location. They are few and far between. But there are those, such every bit SecretsofSongwriting.com, which offers good, applied, thoughtful ideas and communication. This is nigh ever an indication that the writer is a musician or songwriter himself.
In this case, it's right. I came to this site looking for other bad examples. And was heartened that there is adept information being shared out there. Gary Ewer is a musician, songwriter and teacher in Canada. He knows what he is writing about. He'due south idea nearly these issues, and shares ideas in a clean, piece of cake manner. His article 10 Tips for Writing Great Song Melodies is based on the real songwriter work, examining the ranges of melodies, the utilize of skips and leaps between notes, how to brand the chorus melody distinct from the verse, and other such relevant ideas. But someone who writes songs would consider these aspects, and be able to simply connect and so many considerations.
It'due south washed too with the understanding, which is central, that at that place are always great songs which do the very opposite. That there are no rules, only ideas that take worked at one fourth dimension. This is the centre of the thing. Songwriters learn every aspect of this art and craft, but remain ready at whatsoever moment to abandon whatsoever of it in order to get to a new vocal. And sometimes doing exactly the opposite of the manner it'due south normally washed, or the way you've done it a hundred times, is the best way to go.
Anything that works, works. Simply there's only one way to get there. That is where Function Two begins, which stars Billie Eilish and Finneas, and shares, at long last, the secret truth of songwriting.
fitzgeraldthoster1952.blogspot.com
Source: https://americansongwriter.com/songwriting-u-the-secret-about-songwriting-part-one/
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