Cheap Advice On Music

If you’re like me, when you finally write down the last line of lyrics for that new hit song you’ve been working on all weekend, the first thing you want to do is to run into your home studio and record the thing. Or maybe you’ll take it to band practice that night and have the lads spend some time working it up.

It’s the next week, with the song already demoed or rehearsed, before you realize that actually the bridge should repeat again after the solo, or the third line of the chorus has a clunky word in it, or the intro is too long, or, or, or…. So now what?

To avoid the pain of redoing a demo or making the band learn a new version of the song at every session, I recommend that you leave the lyric sheet and chord chart for your new song lying about in easy reach and play it through several times every day. As you play you can “sanity check” the lyrics, chords, and arrangement. You may be surprised at how many tiny changes you find yourself making! Once you’ve played it the same way without changing anything for several days in a row, then maybe it’s ready for the world.

[An expanded version of this Mini-Tip appears in my eBook, Cheap Advice On Songwriting.]

Beginning songwriters sometimes get stuck in the “3-chord stage.” Once you find out that you can write a normal-sounding song using just A, D, and E (or perhaps C, F, and G), it’s tempting to just write lots of choruses and verses using just those three major chords, in familiar sequences like A-A-D-A or A-D-A-E. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Plenty of great songs have just three chords.

What I want to suggest here is a way to move beyond the 3-chord stage by using appropriate minor chords in your songs. Ah, you might say, and exactly which minor chords are “appropriate” for my song? I’m glad you asked!

Read the rest…

Does your lyrical well ever run dry? Do you find yourself casting about for an idea, a notion, an opening line - anything to help you kick off a new set of lyrics? I have that happen a lot. If I just write down “whatever comes to me” without a specific idea or starting point, it tends to come out sounding like the same “talking points” (singing points?) I’ve been writing about for the last 30 years!

One good source for new lyrical ideas is the things people say in movies or on TV (or in movies on TV). Here’s something that I’ve tried that might work for you. Pick a movie, any movie, although for some reason the older ones (40s and 50s) tend to work better for this - maybe people talked different back then or something. Anyway, put in the DVD and watch the movie, with a pencil and pad at the ready. Write down everything anyone says that sounds like it might be a line in a song. There will be lots!

You should have at least 25 or 30 lines once the movie’s over. Check and see whether some of them seem to go together, or even already rhyme. See if there’s one that can be the opening line of the song, setting the tone for what it’s about. (The song need not follow the story of the movie, of course - that’s a different kind of project!)

Give this idea a try sometime - you never know what you’ll come up with!

[An expanded version of this Mini-Tip appears in my eBook Cheap Advice On Songwriting.]

Writing good lyrics is hard. Writing great lyrics is very hard. I’ve written hundreds of songs, with hundreds of sets of lyrics, and I can’t think of a single one that I would consider to be truly great. But hey, a good set of lyrics is OK too, and I have written a fair number of those!

Maybe you’re at the stage where you’re not even sure whether you’ve written any good lyrics yet. Maybe you’re not sure that the way you’re going about it is effective, or maybe you don’t really have a way of going about it and as a result haven’t actually gotten started yet. If this is you, what are you planning to do about it?

One possibility is to listen to a lot of music, paying special attention to the lyrics, including their structure and use of repetition, rhyming patterns, etc., then try to imitate what you’ve heard. Or, you can get one of the many books on the basics of songwriting and learn the theoretical underpinnings of successful lyrics. You could also “learn by doing” by just dashing off a bunch of quick songs without worrying about whether they are any good, just for practice. Actually, a combination of these approaches is probably the best way to go.

(Commercial message: My eBook Cheap Advice On Songwriting bags the theoretical approach, presenting 60 specific tips on getting ideas for lyrics, novel song structures, etc.)

Lyrics are typically not made up in order, from the first line in the song to the last. Like a movie whose scenes are shot out of order for technical reasons, the parts of your song may emerge in any sequence. The cool line you thought of first may end up being the third line in the second verse!

Read the rest…

You’ve heard of summer movies, summer vacation, and summer school - but are you familiar with the concept of summer songs? If you remember the Beach Boys circa 1963-67 you are! “Surfin’ USA,” “California Girls,” “Surfer Girl” - they even had an album called “Summer Days (and Summer Nights!)”.

But it isn’t just the Beach Boys. Here are some songs by other artists that are deemed to be true “summer songs”:

(OK, that last one was the Beach Boys again, but it turned up on so many people’s lists that I just had to include it in this one!)

Read the rest…

If you are writing a poem with several stanzas, you don’t want to have a lot of repetition of words and phrases from one stanza to another. With the focus entirely on the words, the poem will be carried forward only with new ideas and new formulations. The structure of a stanza typically is duplicated in the next, but that structure is now occupied by an entirely new set of words and phrases.

With song lyrics, especially for rock or pop songs, this rule does not necessarily apply. With musical elements as well as words to carry the song forward, repetition and parallel elements between verses can provide that sense of structural familiarity that listeners like at the same time as the music and arrangement provide a sense of “progress” through the song.

The presence of music and melody allows you to utilize word structures, like repetition, that would not be viable in a free-standing poem. The realization that repetition is actually desirable for certain kinds of songs can make the job of lyric writing much easier! With appropriate development and use of musical textures, the fact that large parts of the verses are the same will not even register.

Read the rest…

Usually, I want to put as much time into writing each new song as it needs, sometimes setting it aside for a short (or long) period of time and returning to it later, maybe a few times, before finally declaring it “done.” Even if a song comes quickly and seems to be “ready to go” an hour after you started writing, I would still recommend letting it sit and stew for awhile. You will likely find yourself making small fixes and improvements that, taken together, will make the song really great.

The trouble with this approach is that it’s so casual. Without any pressure to work on them, some songs never do get finished. (Perhaps that’s for the best.) The casual style is fun and easy. But oftentimes, people do their best work, including creative work, under a time constraint or other kind of limitation. It might be worth it for you to experience some pressure in your songwriting and see what results!

One way to set up some time pressure on yourself is to commit to writing and recording a complete song in one evening. You start right after dinner with a blank pad of paper, and before you hit the sack you have to have a complete song with instruments and vocals all finished and at least a rough mix produced. (I guess you can go back and remix it later if you must.)

Read the rest…

Probably the easiest thing to write a song about is our own lives. After all, we have all the info! And, we know exactly what emotions are involved and what they feel like. The only problem is that limiting ourselves to writing about our own lives leaves out an awful lot, namely the whole rest of the world!

We can expand our songwriting horizons by trying to relate to other people, whether they be friends, strangers, or even historical figures, and to tell their stories instead of just our own. (See my article Write A Song About Someone Else’s Life for some general thoughts on this approach.)

One specific source of “someone else’s story” is the daily newspaper or the TV news shows that now run 24 hours a day on cable. Some of the stories they cover are serious, some are trivial, but any of them could present an idea or even a specific narrative for you to develop into a song. I have even written a song based on one of the oddball stories in “News Of the Weird”!

You can write about big, well-known news stories like the Iraq War (whether you are gung-ho or gung-no) but once you get into politics or social commentary you do run the risk of alienating some people with your choice of words or subject. Again, a lot of us wrote songs about 9/11, but the whole subject is so fraught with baggage and a sense of “what more is there to say” that I would be hesitant to play mine for anyone.

The “features” or “human interest stories” that are always reported along alongside the real news are often more fruitful songwriting-wise than the big, major stories. Hearing about some guy who is riding his lawnmower across the country might give you a great idea for a song. Or maybe it’s the plight of farmers in Bolivia. Anything to break yourself out of your little circle of you!

I’m not really suggesting that you tell the stories that you come across in your songs, although that can sometimes work. It’s more a matter of describing the situation, or a reaction to it, preferably from the point of view of one of the participants in the story, or as someone reacting to hearing the story.

Read the rest…