Author: IJ

You’re As Strong As Your Weakest Part

Posted on by IJ

© I.Woloshen

I used to be a lousy lyricist…maybe I had nothing to say, maybe I just let that part of my songwriting go, maybe I was just plain lazy! It was something I swept aside in my frenzy to write great music, especially when I was in my 20’s. I was impatient to finish…ever feel that way? These days, I have an endless supply of patience, but I digress…

When you get to the point of looking at the first draft of a song is when your weakness becomes most apparent. What is it that you’re skipping over in order to get the darn thing written? You know yourself better than anyone else, and this is when you have to be the most honest. When I say to be honest with yourself, I don’t mean that you need to be hyper-critical, just that you have to come face-to-face with the part of the song that isn’t “there” yet. This is the part of the song that will stand out to those who spend hours and hours listening to amateur songwriting, the people in the business. You can bet that they’ll pinpoint your weak point instantly!! You can’t hide it!

This weakness in your songwriting may take some time to strengthen, so be prepared! You essentially have several choices:

1. You can spend the time necessary to develop your skill in this area…for instance, because of my weak lyrics, I did a lot of reading and worked at writing a journal over a long time. When I would write in my journal, every now and then I’d come up with a line or phrase that stood out…that was the beginning of knowing I had my own point of view to express. If music is your weakness, push your envelope! Get out there and learn something…take a guitar class, learn some theory or join a choir and get a feel for how melodies and harmonies work together. There are endless possibilities.

2. You can skip the learning part and get yourself a co-writer. Find someone who has the skills you are missing…maybe they will be missing what you have! It isn’t easy at first to find someone suitable, but there are many, many songwriters out there who co-write. On Jeff Mallet’s site Lyricist.com you’ll find a huge list of songwriters broken down into lots of categories, including location.

3. If songwriting is your hobby, as opposed to a career pursuit, you have the luxury of time and little pressure 🙂 You may not be driven to change anything about the way you write, but even hobbyists like the idea of improving on the craft! Most of the books you’ll see on songwriting are primarily geared towards commercial writing, but there is a great book called “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron which focuses mostly on the creative side of yourself that you may find very helpful. It deals with “recovering your creative self” and although it doesn’t speak specifically about songwriting, I’ve heard many songwriters recommending it highly. If you are interested in other songwriting books, check out the Muse’s Muse for a whole list of ’em!

4. “Time…is on your side, yes it is…”…but for a great period of time in my songwriting “life” when I wasn’t focusing on improving it, I didn’t! There is no magic formula or pill. If you wanted to play better golf, you would probably consider taking lessons, or practicing as often as possible, maybe on a driving range…in other words you would focus in on your game and give it the time it deserved. The same is true of anything, including songwriting. When I focused in on my weaknesses, I learned to write better songs. Simple as that.

You will probably always feel more comfortable with one aspect of your writing, the part that comes naturally…it’s easy to ignore the rest when it’s too much “work” to fix it. But if you’re interested in getting your songs heard by others…it’s something you can’t ignore anymore!

PRODUCTION WEAKNESSES:

If you are considering sending your demos out to publishers…here are some problems that relate to production that you may not have considered (some I’ve heard and been guilty of from time to time myself). Seriously think about going to a professional studio to do a decent production on the song.

1. If you are a great keyboardist, vocalist, etc., etc., but you can’t program drums worth a damn…THAT’S exactly what the publisher is going to hear first…those lousy drums! Don’t you dare think you can hide them 🙂

2. Vocal buried in the mix…it doesn’t seem to matter how many times I’ve heard publishers, etc., say this, songwriters STILL forget that the lyrics are half the song and if they can’t hear ’em, they won’t listen any further!

3. Self-indulgent solo leads…come on, maybe your favourite part of recording is putting down that nice over-effected guitar lead that you just can’t play enough of…but that’s when the machine is going to get turned off. I’ve had demos sent to me when the songwriter raved about his guitar part, as if the song itself had very little to do with it!

4. Bad tempo shifts – I hate over-quantification, don’t get me wrong…there’s nothing that beats a “real” feel or groove in a song. But it’s got to be tight, it has to feel solid tempo-wise. Even if you’re just playing a simple keyboard or guitar and vocal, keep it on time!

5. Forgot to tune – oh, there’s no excuse for this one! Tune all of your instruments first…new strings on guitars if you can, don’t give somebody another reason to hit the “stop” button!

6. Lo-o-o-o-o-ng Intros – are for performing songwriters who can get away with it…if you’re pitching, don’t bother with much of an intro, get to the song as soon as you can! Equally true with long extros…nobody’s going to be listening that far into the song anyway!

7. And last but not least – REAL fancy production, but weak song. Let me tell you right now, you can’t hide a lousy song with great production. Somebody’s going to see that one right away. Make sure your song is “there” first before you even THINK of anything else!

Well, as I said, you are as strong as your weakest part…as soon as you figure out what that weak part is, you’ve got it made!

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Music Terminology

Posted on by IJ
Guitar Sheet Music
Image by *persiflage via Flickr

© I.Woloshen

If you don’t play an instrument, or only play by ear…OR you’re new to this whole songwriting thing…here are a few terms you may hear and what they mean. These are just a few musical terms, for songwriting terms, see below.

  • Bar – A piece of music or a song is broken down into sections called bars. If you’ve ever looked at sheet music, the bars are defined by dark vertical lines (hence the term “bars”) and between each bar is a set number of notes. You’ve probably heard the term “4 beats to the bar”. Bars help to define how long chords or notes are played (i.e. two bars of G).
  • Time Signature – This defines how many beats there are to a bar, and the value of each one. 3/4 time is recognizable as a waltz-type feel (ONE, two, three, ONE, two, three). The most common time is 4/4…in fact, it’s even CALLED Common Time!
  • Lead Sheet – This is a very basic kind of sheet music. Most lead sheets have only the bars written out and the chords within the bars and some simple notes. This is often used when you go into the record, and is used by each musician to follow along. Lead sheets don’t necessarily have lyrics written on them, although some do.
  • Sharp/Flat – You’ve probably heard the reference to singing “flat”…this means that you’re singing just a little lower than the note should be. Singing sharp means it’s a little too high. I won’t go into the theory of sharps and flats, but it helps to be able to identify which is which!
  • Octave – a standard scale has 7 notes (not including all of the sharps and flats) before it reaches the same note higher up…think of Doe Re Mi Fa So La Ti Doe…both “Doe” ‘s are the same note, but the second one is an OCTAVE higher than the first.
  • Vocal – the voice! There are “lead” vocals which is basically the singer singing the melody, and there are background vocals, singing harmony, etc.
  • Lead or instrumental – Sometimes in a song there is a section where an instrument plays for a few bars before the vocal starts again…this is called a lead or an instrumental section.
  • Fills – These are little bits of music that are often played by a lead instrument to “fill” in a space on a recording or performance. When you ask a guitar player to play some fills, he/she will usually weave some notes in and around the melody or vocal, just to add a little flavour.
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Songwriting As Storytelling

Posted on by IJ

© I.Woloshen

Most people don’t equate songwriting with telling stories unless it’s in the form of a folk song. Folk songs often have what is called an AAA structure, with “A” representing the verses and no chorus, therefore lending themselves easily to a story format. Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger and many of the 60’s folk artists wrote in this style, which is in fact one of the oldest songwriting formats around.

A lot of pop songs on the charts these days don’t rely very heavily on storytelling or even good lyric writing! I’m sure you can think of popular songs where you have no idea what it’s really about, but you can relate to parts of it and it has a great musical hook, so it’s on your list of favourites. Does that mean you can get away with writing nonsense lyrics? Nonsense!

As far as stories go, any good one will draw you in from the first sentence, hold your attention all the way through and satisfy you with a great ending…maybe even leave you wanting more! When you write a song, even if it isn’t in the folk or storytelling format, you need to remember to have the same elements…a beginning, a middle, and an end. But what if there isn’t a “story” in your song? How do you accomplish this task?

These days when I sit down to write lyrics, I often start with the first line before even knowing what the song is going to be about! As I add each line, an idea starts to unfold, and once I have a first draft I more or less know what the song is about. But not everyone approaches their lyric writing this way, and some songwriters find that their end product is lacking some kind of cohesion. There are several things to look for that may be contributing to this:

1. THE ‘HEAR’ AND NOW: Is your lyric taking place in the present, past, future, or a mixture of all of these? A listener can get confused pretty quickly if you jump from one to the other for no obvious reason. The most POWERFUL tense is the present, but as you know, many of us long for the past or hope for the future, and all tenses can all be used with equal impact if you know what you’re doing. A lyric that moves from past to future can also give a sense of continuity to your song. Look over your lyrics and clear up any inconsistencies in this area.

2. DRAWING A PICTURE: Some writers, when getting ideas for their lyrics, first sit down and actually write a paragraph or two about what they want to say. Having the full picture in front of you can help you to build the song lyric in a clear, intelligible way, and maybe even give you a better idea as to how to structure it. Think about grade school when you were learning how to construct a story. Remember the “5 W’s” (who, what, when, where, why)? This is a very useful tool when putting together your lyric. Who is this about? What is happening? When and where is it taking place? Why is it happening?

3. PURPOSEFUL SONG PARTS: Each part of a song has a job. The chorus is a summation of the song, the central theme or idea. The job of the verses is to flesh out this idea a little further, going into more detail and carrying the song forward. If there is a bridge, its purpose is to take a fresh look at the whole subject. Normally the music in the bridge goes into a different progression or melody from the rest of the song, and the lyric does the same. It’s a kind of “break” from the repetitiveness of the rest of the song. Use your song parts correctly and the rest of the song will fall into place. Don’t be afraid to change the parts around either. Maybe what you call your first verse is REALLY better as a chorus!

4. ‘THREADS’: Each part of a song should tie into the one before and the one after, in what I like to call “threads”. When you examine your verses, look for continuity of thought…are you carrying through on your central theme? To simplify the process, write out a one phrase description of each verse, the chorus, bridge and any other part of the song to see how each part works with the rest. Some people critique songs using this idea…they’ll map out each part of the song to see whether or not it flows.

5. RHYMING FOR NO REASON: Sometimes we get so caught up in finding a rhyme for a word, that we forget what the song is about…I KNOW that any of you who have tried to write a lyric have found yourself in this position before. In fact, I’ve seen complete lyrics that seem to be a series of unconnected rhymes, a play on words perhaps, but with no thought to anything else!

6. WASTED SPACE: I know you’ve done this too…filling in a line or a phrase with something that fits the meter, but has nothing to do with the song. I call these “throw away lines”, and I DO use them sometimes just to fill the space for the time being until I can come up with something better. When I’m in the polishing stage or the re-writing stage, is when I will pull these parts out and replace them. And when I do, I’m ALWAYS looking for threads.

7. TOO MANY COOKS: Another problem that can overwhelm a lyric is too many ideas! Don’t try to write seven songs in one lyric…take it apart and write about one element, or decide more clearly what that one element IS and then make the others work around it. Ever walked into a terribly messy room? Your eyes don’t know where to look first, and it can actually create stress in your body! The same thing can happen with a “busy” lyric…the ear doesn’t know WHAT to hang onto and a headache is just around the corner!

So there you have some ideas for making a story out of your song. And though even the most popular song lyrics out there don’t necessarily follow these “rules”, that only means there’s hope yet for all of us!

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Performance Tips

Posted on by IJ
Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest
Image by bfest4 via Flickr, Joe Cocker

© I.Woloshen

I was in Grade 5 when I first performed in front of a big audience…in the school gymnasium at Christmas for parents, teachers and students. I was picked in an audition to perform half of the Christmas song “Good King Wenceslas“. I’m not sure why the teacher had two of us share the song…I was ready to do the whole thing myself! It was a definite highlight of my childhood…the first time I heard that applause, I was hooked! It wasn’t until I was older that I began to deal with things like performance anxiety (more of that later), or consider the idea of how I was presenting my material. These days, I’m very conscious of the connection I make with an audience, and the way the songs come across.

I have performed at many open mics over the years, and I find them to be the most difficult performances! There is no time to warm up…sometimes a song or two is what you need to get comfortable with where you are, but then it’s over! If it’s an open mic that I haven’t performed at before, that makes it worse! So many things can affect the performance…the people there, the sound system, if there is one, the room itself, and the other performances ahead of you. Over time, I’ve managed to make a mental list for myself of the things I have to remember when I’m playing, and the things I watch for in others:

1. EYE CONTACT – When I watch a performer with his/her head bowed down staring at the guitar or the floor, I feel disconnected from them. Not only that, but their nervous behaviour distracts me, makes me feel sorry for them, and I don’t listen to the song! Some performers say that they can better focus on the song if they keep their eyes closed the whole time…but what about the people you’re playing to? A performance is literally an exchange of energy between the performer and the audience…if you cut the audience off, they have nothing to return to you! If you find it difficult to look at someone, there are two things you can do. You can either look for the person who is most obviously enjoying your performance and feed off of them, or you can make a person up! Just look out there as if you were looking at someone who was smiling at you, and smile back! I do this all the time, especially if I’m in a situation where there isn’t much of an audience, or I’m in a room where no one is really listening.

I’ve sung at two funeral services…just less than 20 years apart. I was 20 years old at the first service. I had trouble looking at the family who was sitting in the front row, so I stared blankly at a window at the back of the church. I felt my performance was disastrous and underwhelming…my nervousness was more prominent than my song! The second one, I made a conscious decision to look straight at the audience, right into their eyes, and connect the song with each one of them. I was given so many smiles, mixed with tears of course, but it was a beautiful, and ultimately uplifting, experience!

2. ENUNCIATION – You may be a “music” person, not as concerned with getting your lyrics across, but you’d be surprised to know just how many people LOVE lyrics! When the mouth is dry and the brain muddy with terror, even the most wonderful lyrics can be reduced to an unintelligible mumble. Before you even GET to that open mic, practice EXAGGERATING your lyrics when you sing them. Hit every consonant hard, open your mouth WIDE. At first, it’ll feel pretty silly, but it will keep you conscious of getting your message across. When you want someone to hear what you’re saying when you are speaking to them, you make your voice a little louder, look straight at them and enunciate. Think of the same thing when you’re singing.

3. DYNAMICS – If you’re a guitar player, you’re likely to pound away at the strings when you’re nervous, completely dominating your vocal. Practice doing this: when you’re playing the parts of the song when you’re not singing, let yourself pound. When you ARE singing, pull the guitar way back, soften it up, make it weave around your lyrics. Not only will it help your lyrics stand out…it will create quite a dramatic effect to your performance! Try it out!

4. EMOTE – If you’re singing a happy song, remember what your kindergarten teacher said the first time you sang in front of your parents at a school event. SMILE!! If the song is more somber, don’t smile! Nothing more confusing than dark lyrics and a grin. They’ll think you’re on a weekend pass… Performing is very much like acting. You certainly need to “be yourself”, but you are also emoting and re-creating the topic of the song to your audience every time you perform it. Listen to the words as you’re singing them, and try to remember where they came from when you wrote that song!

5. ENERGY – I was told once by my music teacher that I moved too much when I sang. She told me it was distracting. Most of it was, of course, nervous energy. If you move around like Joe Cocker, you’re likely to distract from your song (unless you ARE Joe Cocker, in which case you can do whatever you like :-). But, having said that, music is a full body experience! Sitting or standing with your body as stiff as a board translates into negative vibes for your audience. Move around a little and that will help you relax and also release some of that nervous energy. As Gino Vannelli said: You gotta move 🙂

6. BANTER – If there is a little story behind your song, tell it. Practice ahead of time just so you get the story straight! Two don’ts: Don’t tell the whole story, let the song say most of it. And don’t go on and on, umming and ahhing and losing your focus. But a little chatter between songs gives the audience a chance to connect with you on another level. It endears you to them beyond the songs. One of my most successful banters is when I talk about the nature of the bald eagle before I sing my song “Eagles Eyes”. People love to hear some of the facts behind this amazing creature. It relates to, but doesn’t give away the topic of the song. And almost every time I do that, someone will come up to me after and mention it!

7. GRACIOUSNESS – When you receive applause it is the greatest gift, so stay for a moment and soak it in! I remember a telethon I did once, where right after my two songs, I turned to run off stage. The host at the time was a VJ at MuchMusic here in Canada. She got a hold of me and made me hang around a bit…she asked me a few questions on air, and said “They’re applauding you! Enjoy it!” I’m sure it was my own nervousness that inspired the desire to turn and run…but what I was also doing was, in fact, snubbing the audience by not acknowledging their applause. I don’t “milk it” now, but I do allow myself and the audience a chance to enjoy those few moments! What else do we do it for?

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Threads

Posted on by IJ

© I.Woloshen

A song critique I worked on recently reminded me of an approach I take with my own songwriting…tying a song lyric together using what I call “threads”. If you’ll forgive ANOTHER metaphor, a song is really like a weaving in that all of the threads rely on each other and wind around each other to give an overall effect. A song lyric with these common threads has a greater impact on a listener because they give a context and complete a story, even if there is no “story” in the song!

This ties into the effective use of metaphors in a song…when you mix up your metaphors too much, you give too many pictures for a listener to hang onto. But if you make your song relate back to the same idea over and over, you enforce the theme and create a powerful effect.

Let me preface this by explaining….I’m using my own lyric, explaining how I thought to tie everything together…this does not mean I think I’m the greatest lyricist! What I’m attempting to do is bring you through the thought processes I had, as I remember them. Let’s take a look at the lyric:

CHANGE OF SEASON
c1997 I.Woloshen

I’m here again
Down by the rivers’ icey waters
And I hold my breath
Simply remembering this place
Those bare-boned trees
Revealing rows of empty bird nests
And that cold, hard rain
Trying to wash them all away

CHORUS:
I’m down by edge of the riverbank
And I’m waiting, waiting
For a promise we made and a smile again
I am waiting, for a change of season

Well I see my name
Where you wrote it on the old post
And I hear your voice
Somewhere inside this bitter wind
And though I’ve kept to myself
Let winter come in stone grey silence
This chill will pass
Just as the world itself must spin (CHORUS)

Have I come this far
Only to find our cause abandoned
Just like those nests
Watching the rain erase my name
Or will you rise to a brand new beginning
And let winter go
Giving a chance to life again (CHORUS)

This is what I would consider a very typical theme. The idea of seasons relating to the ups and downs of relationships is a common one…nothing new there. So what was I thinking of when I wrote this? This comes from a real life experience, a real relationship and a real place. I remembered the images that came to me when I was at this river once in the winter. I live on the west coast (or “wetcoast”, as we like to refer to it!) in what used to be a rain forest. In the winter, rather than it being cold, dry and white, we are cool, wet and grey! The images are of loneliness (bare-boned trees, empty bird nests), and the relationship having chilled (that cold, hard rain trying to wash them all [the nests] away) just as the singer is feeling abandoned by the other person. The chorus, again, reinforces the past experience at the river, and the suspended state of the relationship (waiting for a change of season).

The second verse introduces the “you”…the other person. I could have done this in the first verse, but instead chose to have that be about the memory. In the second verse, the memory is reinforced with the line “I see my name where you wrote it on the old post”…implying something having happened there, and “I hear your voice somewhere inside this bitter wind”…again some kind of presence of a past relationship in this place. The lines “Though I’ve kept to myself, let winter come in stone grey silence” reflects the singer accepting the dark season of the relationship, allowing it to happen, maybe knowing it was inevitable. But the next two lines imply hope…”this chill will pass, just as the world itself must spin”…where the singer equates the certainty of the earth’s turn with the certainty of the relationship reviving.

In the third and final verse, the singer is more or less leaving it up to the other person. “Have I come this far only to find our cause abandoned, just like those nests, watching the rain erase my name?” Is it going to stay this way, is the singer going to “disappear” from the other person’s life? “Or will you rise to a brand new beginning, and let winter go, giving a chance to life again?” Spring!! New life…a fresh start.

Each of the verses is meant to tie into the theme of the winter of a relationship, its past, and what’s going to happen next. What I try to be careful not to do is repeat my ideas too much…this is not as easy to do with a song that is not really a “story”, but just a description of a state of being or an emotion. In a story, you have a beginning, middle and end. I made the coming back to the river the “beginning”, the discovery of the written name and the sound of a past voice the “middle”, and the hope for the future, or spring, the “end”. The “threads” are all to do with nature and the nature of a relationship.

Believe it or not, I was tweaking this song as I was writing this article! Hey thanks! You helped me make my song better 🙂

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