Are You A Good Listener?

Posted on September 16, 2010November 9, 2012 by IJ

We’re going to listen with a critical ear to the production and instruments in a recorded song. Even if you are not a musician, or not familiar with various instruments used in music production, being a good listener and recognizing the role each instrument plays in a song will ALWAYS give you an advantage when you are recording your songs or performing them with other people.

Let’s start with the basics of listening to a recorded song by picking a song by a band or artist that you like. Try to find a song that has a full band; quite often the instruments and the players are listed on each cut of a CD. The more instruments, the better!

One of the most obvious, up front elements of a recorded song is the drum part or percussion. If the song you’re listening to has drums, it’s important to note that they are what drives the song. That may seem obvious, but did you know that the drum part is often recorded first? The reason for this is that the rest of the instruments need to follow the drums, and not the other way around. So the drums are played at the agreed to tempo and every instrument recorded after has to maintain that same tempo as accurately as possible.

: Image via Wikipedia

So let’s discuss the parts of a drum kit first. The kick or bass drum (4) is the deep, heavy beat; the big drum that the drummer hits with a foot pedal. It is often hit less frequently than the other parts. The snare (5) has a higher pitch and is hit with a drum stick, as are the rest of the drum parts when they are played. The toms (3) are sonically somewhere between the snare sound and the kick or bass drum. They are usually played as part of a “fill”, when the drummer comes away from the snare to roll on the toms at the end of phrases or song parts. Then there are the cymbals. Crash cymbals (1) are also used for emphasis, sometimes at the beginning or end of a phrase, or emphasizing the chorus. They often referred to as the “ride” when they keep time during a chorus, for instance, and the hi-hats (6) are similarly used.

When you’re listening to the song you’ve chosen, try to focus only on the drums for the entire track. Listen to what they do and when they do it. Do they start at the beginning, or come in a little later in the intro? What’s the difference in the way they are played in the verses and then the chorus? If there is a bridge in the song, do they do something different? Pay attention to when they come in and when they pause and all of the flourishes throughout the song. When do you hear the toms, if at all? When do you hear the cymbals? Listen through a couple of times and make sure you are listening to ONLY the drums.

Now let’s focus on the bass. The bass guitar is closely associated with the drums and often recorded at the same time or just after the drums are. The drummer and bassist have a very close relationship and you’ll notice if you’ve ever seen a band play live, the bass player is often looking for signals or exchanging glances with the drummer as they move through the chord changes and fills. The bass is often the hardest instrument to hear because of its low pitch. Sometimes it plays very simple lines with long notes, and other times it might be almost rhythmic. Listen to the song you’ve chosen again, but only to the bass this time. Sometimes when I’m teaching my guitar students how to play by ear, I put on a song and get them to listen for the bass part, because that often determines what chord is being played by the guitar. So I know how difficult it is to identify. Occasionally you might confuse the sound of the bass with the low string of a guitar, but when you can zero in on the bass, listen through the whole song and pay attention to what it does. It will certainly change notes as the chords change, but does it change patterns at different times? Can you hear how it matches up sometimes with the rhythm of the kick on the drum kit? Listen through enough times that you are completely focused in on only the bass.

The recording you are listening to might have piano, or “keys’ as they are often referred to. They tend to stand out from the stringed instruments, even though they also have “strings”, but quite often they are electric pianos or keyboards with different sounds. The keyboard might be playing chords, or it might also have little melody parts or fills throughout the song. Listen to what the keyboard is doing and how it interacts with the rest of the instruments.

Guitars can be a challenge to listen to as well. There may be acoustic guitar and/or electric, and often there are both and maybe even more than one of each! Being able to distinguish how many guitars you hear is important and probably the greatest challenge. Often if there are two or more guitars, they are doing different things, but because they sound similar, it is hard for the ear to separate them at first. The electric guitar often does a solo or lead part somewhere in the song. This gives it some distinction because it’s playing notes and melodies, and not chords.

So focus in now on what the guitars (if there are any) are doing in the song. Is there just one guitar playing chords? Can you hear the difference between the electric guitar and the acoustic, assuming there are both? How do they interact with each other? Note that it is very rare, even if there are two acoustic guitars, for them to be playing the same thing. If you are a guitar player and you are jamming with others, quite often you’ll all be playing the same chords and progressions, but that rarely happens in recorded music because what would be the point of doing the same thing twice? So what the guitar players might choose to do is to play in one key on one guitar, and use a capo or barre chords to play somewhere else on the neck with the second guitar. Paul Simon used to have one guitar tuned normally, and another with the strings tuned an octave higher, so he had a very full acoustic guitar sound in his recordings.

There may be other instruments in the song you’re listening to. What are they? Extra percussion? Strings, like violins, or maybe there are electronic drums or beats, or sounds that you can’t identify right away. Quite often, recordings will have layers and layers of sounds, and others might be considered quite “sparse” in their instrumentation.

Learning to listen to other instruments and how they work together will be an important tool for you when you are thinking about what you might include in a recording of your own song. Sometimes when you’re thinking about your song, you might “hear” something that you’d like and being able to identify and articulate what that is will be a big help when you finally get in the studio.
IJ

Songwriting Without An Instrument

Posted on June 28, 2010February 26, 2015 by IJ

Recently someone commented on one of my blogs that they would like to know how to write a song without an instrument. You would think that because there is music involved, it would be next to impossible to write a song without any musical “ability”. If you are overwhelmed with the idea of learning an instrument, the fact is that many of us assume that we are supposed to become some kind of virtuoso on it which, as a guitar teacher, I can tell you is not true! Most guitar teachers can tell you that.

: Image via Wikipedia

Even if we are not singers, we can all hum. And if you’ve been around music all of your life, as most of us have, you’ve probably found yourself humming along or singing along with your favourite songs. If you already have some lyrics written, free yourself from your musical inhibitions by “singing” them in some sort of way that gives you a feel for the meter (rhythm) of them. Don’t worry whether or not it is GOOD, just do it! See if you can’t find some kind of melody that matches the meter and then just keep experimenting. You might find that you “hear” certain melodies with certain lines and not with others. That could mean that you just haven’t found it yet, or it could mean that the lines with no melodies just aren’t working. So keep working at it, change the lines or mess around with another melody…just keep trying. The more you liberate yourself from feeling like you CAN’T do it, the less inhibited you will become.

If you are overwhelmed with the idea of learning an instrument, the fact is that many of us assume that we are supposed to become some kind of virtuoso on it which, as a guitar teacher, I can tell you is not true! Most people learn an adequate number of chords within a few weeks or months, for instance, to be able to play a good selection of songs that they like. The fact is that many songs are rather simple in their chord progressions (a chord progression is a series of chords), and so they can be learned fairly easily. So you can probably learn enough chords in a couple of months to start trying to match them to your lyrics.

As a songwriter, you don’t have to be a master of an instrument to adequately come up with some chords to your song. So what I am advocating first is that you could pick up a guitar or sit at a piano and fool around with it by ear so that you can familiarize yourself with finding little melodies on it. It doesn’t have to be a massive undertaking, just a simple way of getting to know the instrument so that you can feel comfortable with it. Then if you feel ready, you can find some resources to show you how to play some simple chords, and then take it from there.

Your other option is to find someone who CAN play, and who can help you find chords and melodies. This might take some doing, but then again, there could be someone in your own backyard or circle of friends who already plays and might be willing to experiment with your lyrics. You can either give the lyrics entirely up to them, or you can sit with them and try to come up with some ideas together.

A third option would be to invest in some kind of software like Band-In-A-Box which is a clever computer software program that you can create backing tracks (music) to your melodies or lyrics with little effort. You can play with chords without knowing which chords go together, and you can pick styles and instruments, again, without knowing much about them, and still come up with a decent sounding “band” to sing your songs along with.

I was at a songwriting retreat once where one of the participants in my little group didn’t play an instrument at all. Somehow she had found someone to come up with chords to her melodies, so when it was her turn to perform one of her songs, she just gave the chords to someone who could play guitar and she sang along with him. I admired her for her dedication to songwriting even though she had never learned an instrument. And you don’t have to be limited either!

Now I know that some of you out there reading this blog might have suggestions of your own, so if you do, please add them below! Comments and replies always welcome :-).

Songs That Break The Rules

Posted on December 7, 2009November 9, 2012 by IJ

As soon as we start using the word “rules”, a lot of songwriters coil in disgust at the thought of having to conform to anything. So actually, I wrote that title to grab your attention in a negative way, but at least I know I’ve probably got your attention :-).

: Image by HA! Designs – Artbyheather via Flickr

The examples of songs I’m going to present in this article simply jump out of the mold, so to speak, and do things that aren’t conventional, but still work. In some cases, they are subtle, in others, not so.

My first example is of a song that breaks out of the song form mold. It’s a song by Sheryl Crow called Soak Up The Sun. Here is a rather standard song form, where “A” is the verse, “B” is the chorus and “C” is the bridge:

A A B A B C B

There are many variations of course, but while Sheryl’s song starts out pretty standard, with an intro, verse, chorus and then another verse, but she changes it around and instead of repeating the chorus, she throws in a bridge first. She goes back to the chorus and then another verse, but throws in the bridge again before the next chorus. So her song form looks something like this:

A A B A C B A C B

Below this article is a player where you can have a listen, it’s a great song worth listening to anyway.

The Beatles were notorious for breaking all kinds of “rules” and still having huge hits. They loved to throw in an odd chord change or time signature change, and their lyrics were often off the beaten track. I’m sure the haze of drugs had something to do with that :-). As an example, here is All You Need Is Love. Have a listen below and just try counting the time signature and you’ll see what I mean.

Also below is what some might consider a “novelty” song, but it was written by a prolific songwriter named Harry Nilsson. This song was #8 on the Billboard Charts in 1971 and what makes it unique is the fact that it has only one chord. The bass alternates, but essentially it sits on the same chord for the entire song, letting the story in the lyrics take the main stage. It’s called “Coconut“:

These are only three examples where breaking out of the mold works very successfully, and I’m sure you can think of some others on your own. If you do, post them here!

And, remember, you don’t have to write like anybody else 🙂