I was flipping through my most recent copy of SOCAN’s Words and Music and found some interesting songwriting tips from Matt Mays, a Canadian songwriter who finds himself on the road quite a bit. Check out his website.
Here is his list of tips:
1. “One thing that has really helped me is to be moving – whether it’s on a train, boat, or car, or even walking around my apartment while I’m writing, instead of sitting in one spot.”
2. “Try writing lyrics on newspaper. It rather distracts you because there are other words underneath. That means yours don’t seem so final. The words underneath may spark something else too.”
3. “Always change the key up. Learn the song in other keys, and that helps keep you from getting bored.”
4. “Change instruments. I’ll go to a ukulele, or piano, or try open tuning.”
5. “There is one tip from John Lennon: never leave a song until it’s done. You may never get that spark, that excitement, back. If you get an idea, finish the song, even if you have to miss your best friend’s funeral. Finishing that song is more important than anything else.”
Some excellent tips here…some of which I’ve encouraged myself, but some new ideas too. The newspaper idea is a good one, I’ll have to try that some day!
On a more personal note, I have come back to my old way of writing; on paper and without any technology (i.e. a computer) around. This was my “old” way of writing and it seems to be working again. Also, I’ve moved around the house to write in different places; not quite the idea of being on a moving train or boat as Matt suggests above. But changes places seems to have helped me too!
Best wishes to all of my blog followers for the New Year!
I recently began to coach a local songwriter on a weekly basis, and he has inadvertently re-introduced me to open tunings on the guitar. He writes some interesting songs, and part of what makes them interesting is his penchant for all kinds of alternate tunings that cause lots of broken strings, but plenty of fascinating compositions! Obviously, this post will apply more to those of you who write on guitar :-).
My favourite open-tuning artist Joni Mitchell
If you’ve never heard of open or alternate tunings, I’ll give you a bit of a run down first. Most of you know that when a guitar is in “standard” tuning, the notes from the 6th string down are E, A, D, G, B and E. The first tuning I will explain is “alternate standard”, which, in most cases, means tuning each string down 1/2 a step or more. The first time I came across this was with the band Nirvana, although I’m sure there were those who did it earlier than they did. Nirvana’s guitars were almost always tuned down 1/2 step, making their songs sound deeper. They were a pain to figure out unless you had your guitar in this alternate standard tuning. This has become a common tuning for a number of bands, mostly in the rock, metal or alternative genre.
Open tunings are a retuning of a guitar to a chord. One of the more common open tunings is to a D chord, where the strings are tuned as followed: 6th becomes D, 5th stays as A, 4th stays as D, 3rd is tuned down to F#, 2nd string is tuned down to A and the first string is tuned down to D. Listing them together, they are D,A,D,F#,A,D. If you look up a D chord, these are those notes contained within that chord. Continue reading “Open Tunings”
This is geared mostly towards guitar players, but could still apply in some respects to those of you who write with a keyboard. Are your chord choices and your chord progressions getting boring? You might find yourself always turning to the same chords when you’re sitting down to write…and let’s face it, you can probably only sing in certain keys so those chords work for you.
However, they’re not very inspiring after awhile, are they?
Maybe you need to introduce yourself to some new sounding chords, chords that have different extensions (more about that in a minute), but still work for your voice. There are many, many chords out there, but most of the time we stick to the common chords. It’s not that common chords are bad, but they are what we know. I get an awful lot of visitors to one of my articles entitled “Chord Keys” because people aren’t sure what chords sound good together. In fact, they often use the search terms “what chords sound good together” to find that article!
So if you aren’t sure about chord keys, that’s a good primer. However, beyond that, why not teach yourself some less common chords. Chord “extensions” are simply added harmonic notes that change the sound of a chord. For instance, a basic G chord changed to a Gadd5, gives it a fuller, more majestic (for lack of a better word) sound. A Gadd5 is fretted like this:
I did an article once called Songs That Break The Rules, giving some examples of songs that went outside the lines in terms of doing things that you are often told NOT to do when writing a song. Songwriters get a little riled up when it comes to the word “rules”, but I think there’s a lesson to be learned from understanding those “rules” and then going beyond them and finding your own songwriting voice in spite of them.
Certain things just don’t work, and there’s a good reason that they don’t work. Not very many people want to listen to crazy, unorganized noise. I suppose some do, but that’s beside the point :-). Once you figure out what works, you’re ahead of the game. The songwriters I often admire are those who take those rules and turn them upside down, and STILL come up with a great song.
Recently I was asked to work out a song for a guitar class called “Late Bloomer” by Canadian songwriter Sarah Harmer. I’ve heard her songs before and like her style, and she’s definitely got a distinctive voice. When I was teaching it to the class, one of my students commented on how it was tricky to sing because of the way Sarah emphasises certain words in it. You might think that’s a bad thing…because how many times have you been told (by myself and others!) that you can’t put the emPHAsis on the wrong syLLAble? In other words, you need to make the music work with the natural stresses of the lyric.
Well, Sarah breaks this rule all the time, but it works! There’s a line in the first verse “oh, late bloomer, the rumours were true”. The first time she sings it, her melody matches the stresses just as if you were reading the line; OH, late BLOOMer, the RUmours were TRUE. But the second time she emphasizes it differently; OH, late BLOOMer, THE ruMOURS were TRUE. And in the second verse, she does it again in the second line; to read it you would see “it was NOTHing to be ALways LEFT beHIND”. But her emphasis is “it was noTHING to be ALways LEFT beHIND”, putting the emphasis on the last syllable of the word ‘nothing’ instead of where it naturally occurs.
Now, many times when I’ve heard something by a newer songwriter where there is an incorrect stress in a word, I’ve heard it as a mistake. With Sarah’s song, I don’t. Why is that? My guess is that she does it on purpose and likes to play around with the stresses of words like that, and this has become her distinctive style. So she doesn’t sound like a “newbie”, instead she has created a sound for herself that makes her songs and her singing stand out.
And that is what we’re all trying to do, isn’t it? Find a voice that can be easily identified as ours and ours alone. Sarah Harmer may not be a massive, money making music star, but she has a following and continues to write great songs.
So what is the lesson here? Same as always; learn the rules, and then break ’em :-). Have a listen to “Late Bloomer” and consider buying one of Sarah’s albums if you like it. The lyrics are below:
Oh late bloomer the rumours were true
You know I checked your ID when you left the room
I didn’t want to see it coming, I showed off my heart
Now there’s a scar in the shape of a question mark
Oh late bloomer the rumours were true
Scattered leaves are all that’s left of you
I never thought I’d be the marrying kind
It was nothing to be always left behind
From the ship that would sail with everyone on it
I said ‘give me the land, I know what I want and where I’m wanted’
But you came in whistling ‘I’ll go if you’ll go’
And I was waiting around to play like an old piano
And honey I couldn’t see the trouble sleeping down deep
Where these lights won’t go
I couldn’t see the trouble underneath
I set my sights on what was alright
My will didn’t know, where these lights won’t go
I couldn’t see the trouble underneath
Who knew it would be you through the wall
Listening in to a voice on a call
And hearing the strings and a shoot ‘em up show
Little did I know then what little did I know
Long before listening forever
Was shot down before it was ever delivered
And honey I couldn’t see the trouble sleeping down deep
Where these lights won’t go
I couldn’t see the trouble underneath
I set my sights on what was alright
My will didn’t know, where these lights won’t go
I couldn’t see the trouble underneath
Oh late bloomer the rumours were true
You know I checked your ID what was it I knew?
I didn’t want to see it coming, I showed off my heart
Now there’s a scar in the shape of a question mark
Oh late bloomer the rumours were true
Scattered leaves are all that’s left of you
A guitar student of mine recently decided he wanted to get into songwriting for the first time. Having dabbled in it just a little bit, his first questions had to do with where to start. I have long since forgotten exactly what my process was (I was only 12!), but I do remember what caused me to sit down and write. I couldn’t really play very many chords, meaning I couldn’t play the songs I wanted to, so instead I decided to make up my own. It came naturally in that I didn’t spend too much time worrying about how it was coming out. I hadn’t yet developed an “inner critic” or a sense of having to get “somewhere” in terms of a finished product. The Brill Building in New York
And that is a really important point to remember. If you’re reading this article and you’re only just starting out, try not to read or think too much! You don’t write by reading about writing, you write by writing. It might take you a minute to get your head around that line, but essentially if you start loading your brain up on HOW to write, you may actually impede the process.
So I’m not going to tell you how to write in this article, I’m going to give you some ideas to get you in the mood to write. If you’re 14 years old, outside of school and homework and maybe some chores around the house, you’ve got lots of time to fiddle around with writing. If you’re 42, you probably don’t. Many songwriters will express the idea of only writing when the inspiration hits them (yes, and I’ve said that too!), however, it’s not always practical to jump out of your chair at work or out of bed in the middle of the night when inspiration hits and start writing. But you can write it down and work on it later.
