Cheap Advice On Music

Have you seen any of those “Director’s Cuts” DVDs featuring a slightly different version of an already-released movie? These “cuts” are almost always longer than the original film (sometimes much longer), usually because the director has restored beloved scenes or pet subplots that had been excised in the editing stage.

American poet Walt Whitman continuously revised his classic Leaves Of Grass from its initial publication in 1855 right through the “Deathbed Edition” of 1892. The original version had 12 poems in 95 pages. The Deathbed Edition contains almost 400 poems and runs to 488 pages.

In 1989, Stephen King released an updated edition of his classic 800-page novel The Stand. The new edition had over 1100 pages. King explained that the extra space gave him more room to tell the story he had in mind.

The 1968 song “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” by Iron Butterfly is 17 minutes and two seconds long.

I mention these examples to demonstrate two characteristics of highly creative people:

* They love to create (and create, and create, and create).
* They hate to un-create, i.e. to omit or destroy anything they have created.

The problem is that it is often difficult for the creative person to realize that the movie, or the book, or the song, has become too long and needs to be trimmed back before it collapses under its own weight.

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I have found that if I can come up with a good title, I can usually come up with a good song to go with it. I think it’s because having a specific title establishes the general subject of the song, freeing me of the “option glut” problem that arises when the new lyrics can be about anything at all. If I’m lucky enough to think of a title like “He Doesn’t Know Her (Like I Do),” as I once did, the song practically writes itself!

There are many sources of possible titles besides staring into space and dreaming them up. One little-known but productive approach is to simply steal the title of some book and use that! You can test this out by strolling through the “Fiction and Literature” section next time you are in Barnes & Noble and scanning the titles of the books. I’d be surprised if you didn’t find at least a few really good prospects!

Of course, you can find endless lists of titles online too, at Amazon or FictionDB or various other places. Here are a few titles I found online under “Romance”:

* A Little Bit Wicked
* Midnight Eyes
* The Trouble With Love
* Love Under Cover

See what I mean? Every one of those titles puts promising melodies into my mind. You too, I’ll bet!

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

Do you remember the poem Jabberwocky, from “Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There”? The first verse goes like this:

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Upon hearing the poem Alice declares, “Somehow it fills my head with ideas – only I don’t know exactly what they are!”

When I was in high school, I noticed that the student poems that won the prizes were not the ones about houses and trees and cars. The winning poems all had titles like “Purple Tangents” and lines about “the feral, livid hues of the banners of the blind” or some such imponderable image. I could never figure out what any of them meant, but I knew that they were Significant.

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Most songs we write and record have instruments and/or vocals, but nothing else. Let’s face it, the most exotic sound on most of our recordings is a tambourine. This is not necessarily a Bad Thing. After all, “instruments and/or vocals” takes in a pretty wide range, from Gregorian Chant to Smooth R&B and everything in between! But every now and then, just for the sheer novelty value, you ought to consider using some kind of sound effects in one of your songs.

Some songs, like “Yellow Submarine” by the Beatles, are positively filled with scene-setting sound effects. Birds twitter throughout “Blackbird” by the same band. More recently, digital mixmeister Beck and others have combined “found sounds” and other effects with musical samples to create audio collages in their songs. Of course, this is a technique where a little bit can go a long way. There’s no need to overdo it!

As a songwriter, you can specify what sound effects will be heard when by adding notations like (alarm clock here) to your lyrics sheet, or at least having a firm idea of what specific effects will be used where as you write the song. In this case, the effects would be considered part of the song. Alternatively, you can wait until you have your Producer hat on and decide whether and where to add sound effects when you mix the song. Here, the effects would be considered part of the arrangement. Read the rest…

For me, one of the hardest parts of writing a good song is coming up with decent lyrics for the dang thing. Oh, I can make up nifty chord sequences all night, jumping from one key to another, throwing in fancy suspended chords, finger picking, the works. But sometimes when I sit down with the pencil and the lyrics pad, the words just aren’t there.

So that means it should be easier to write an instrumental song, one with no lyrics, right? Well, not necessarily. First of all, some of the “melodies” that sound natural in rock or pop songs are not very melodic, simply following the chords up and down or occasionally even remaining on a single note. These songs are often “sold” mostly by the personality and vocal stylings of the singer rather than the melody per se. The lesson: you will need a solid melody (or better yet, several) for your instrumental song.

The absence of lyrics can also lead to changes in the way you structure your song. For example, in a typical vocal song the second verse has the same melody as the first, but different lyrics. It is heard as “something different and new.” In an instrumental song, if you just replay the verse melody it is heard as “something you already did.” Big difference! To develop the “verses” of an instrumental song, you have to play variations on the original melody, or simply move on to another melody entirely.

These same considerations occur in jazz and classical music, where singing, though occasionally present, is more the exception than the rule. Melodies tend to be played straight at first and then re-worked and twisted around every which way to keep things interesting. Then they’ll go on to something else and come back to the original melody much later in the piece. This is a good way to think if you want to write an interesting instrumental song in the rock or pop genre.

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Normally, each of my songs is strictly a “standalone” unit, music and lyrics-wise. Each one is in a little world all its own. If I make a CD of my recent favorites, the songs on the resulting “album” have nothing in common other than having been recorded in my studio. These days, the emphasis is increasingly on individual songs rather than whole albums, so this approach makes sense.

As a songwriter, though, I find it significantly more stimulating and enjoyable to write and record a set of songs pursuing a common theme or story, in the tradition of “Tommy” by The Who, “The Wall” by Pink Floyd, or more recently Green Day’s “American Idiot.” It might seem that this would “hem you in” and restrict your songwriting options, but I have found that I can be more creative and write better songs when I have a specific story to tell.

Your set of songs could number four or twenty, whatever works. I wrote a five-song set about an alien abduction. I have also written or co-written longer sets of songs based on a Bowery Boys movie and the life of Robert Louis Stevenson. Maybe there is something like these ideas that would resonate with you and inspire you to write and record your very own concept album!

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

When I sit down to come up with a chord pattern for a new song, I usually just start playing whatever pops into my head. When I hear something good emerge I keep playing that and gradually expand on it. Eventually I end up with the chords for a whole song. Great! You probably do this too. But sometimes I have a sneaky feeling of familiarity, like, how different is this really from that other song I just wrote? Could I be in a writing rut?

For me, the critical point is right at the beginning, the part where I play whatever pops into my head. The problem is, I tend to automatically start playing in one of a few “comfortable keys,” and as a result too many of my finished chord patterns are in A or D. But it’s not just the key itself that matters. There are habitual changes from one chord to another that I tend to follow if I don’t catch myself. After a Bm I tend to go to a G, and so on. Some of these personal habitual changes inevitably find their way into my songs.

What to do? Elementary, my dear Watson. Force yourself to start out in an unfamiliar key, like F#m or even just B. Then play whatever pops into your head. Deprived of your comfortable Bm-to-G-type changes, you will likely write a new song that really is new!

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

As a songwriter, you may sometimes feel like you’re in a rut, like you keep coming up with the same basic ideas and situations to write about. One way to break out of this endless loop is to purposely write a new song dealing with something lightweight, funny, or just plain strange.

Let’s face it. Most pop and rock-type songs are about one and only one subject: good old-fashioned LOVE. That’s right, in music it’s always boy meets girl, boy loves girl, boy loses girl, singing about it the whole time. There are songs about being lonely and songs about being trapped. There are songs about good relationships, and even more songs about the others. And then of course there’s the physical side of things.

Back in the Ancient Days (i.e. the 50s and early 60s), most of the songs were about love all right, but there were always two or three “novelty type songs” on the charts and on the radio. The very first song I remember learning to sing along with was “Witch Doctor,” by David Seville, with its evocative chorus, “Oo ee oo ah ah, ting tang, walla walla bing bang.” Good stuff. There was also “The Purple People Eater,” written by Barry Cryer, about a creepy alien who….well, you remember. And who can forget David Seville’s Chipmunks? (Especially since they’re apparently still around.)

Some songs were basically about love, but with a novel take on the subject. Does anyone remember Dodie Stevens singing “Pink Shoe Laces,” written by Mickie Grant?

He wears tan shoes with pink shoelaces
A polka dot vest and man oh man
Tan shoes with pink shoelaces
And a big Panama with a purple hat band

It’s a little hard to picture the guy she’s singing about, but you have to admit they’re novel lyrics! Read the rest…