The Fine Art of Songwriting

When we talk about musical skill within the context of popular music, we tend to focus on performance: which drummer can keep the tightest beats, which guitarist can play the fastest solos, which singer can hit the highest notes.

But there are also so many fascinating aspects to the songwriting side of things. Writing songs (music and lyrics, that is) is a fine art which is difficult to master. The desired end result is a song which is, in some way, enjoyable to listen to. Usually, you also want your song to be emotionally charged - you want to make the listener feel cheerful, sad, angry, or whatever. Before you achieve this, there are many challenges to face:

• Music
  • Coming up with cool riffs, chord progressions, and melodies.
  • Welding them into a coherent whole. A few years ago, I wrote a lot of songs which started like this: Cool Riff 1 - drums-only breakdown - Cool Riff 2... While this form can be done well, it's hard.
  • Balancing originality and accessibility. Stick too closely to the conventions and your song will sound bland and unimaginative; stray too far from them and you get an unlistenable mess.
• Lyrics
  • Avoiding Painful Rhyme. Let me tell you, this is harder than it sounds.
  • Being poetic and abstract, but not too poetic and abstract. Very literal, straightforward and/or Anvilicious lyrics quickly become grating - but so do Word Salad Lyrics. An example of a song which goes too far the former way is "Hurricane" by Bob Dylan. An example of a song which goes too far the latter way is... just about any other song by Bob Dylan. An example of a song which I think gets it completely right is "Jackson Cage" by The Boss himself - while it is more or less impossible to figure out what is actually described in the lyrics, they definitely do evoke a certain atmosphere and mood.
• Combining music and lyrics
  • Making sure your lyrics and music fit well together - or not. In my experience, it's best to write music and lyrics more or less simultaneously; trying to write lyrics to a piece of music you wrote earlier, or the other way around, seldom produces good songs.

So, let's talk songwriting! Which songs do you think are exceptionally well- or badly-written? Do you write songs yourself? What are your strategies/techniques for songwriting? What do you think is the hardest part of it?

edited 10th Apr '12 7:22:35 AM by MidnightRambler

Well, I have written many songs, most of the good ones being ones that I've scribbled out rather than the ones of which I deliberately planned out the lyrics...bizarrely. What I've found, though, is that even if the lyrics turn out to be amazing, it does not work if the melody or backing music is crappy.

Usually if I come up with a riff or chord progression I like, I try to write around that, fitting the words in as well as I can, but most of the time I like to come up with the music and lyrics at the same time. This is a problem when I'm nowhere near anywhere where I can at least record the basic melody so I don't forget it. Sometimes I write lyrics to the tune of another song or two (e.g.: one song I wrote had the tunes of ELO's "Confusion" and Tony Orlando & Dawn's "Knock Three Times" playing simultaneously in my head while I was writing it, as well as the melody of the verses of The Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations") and figure that if I tweak it enough no one will care...but I still notice and it bugs me. And that's not even including when I don't notice it until long after. There was one song I wrote (which I think turned out awesomely, not to toot my own horn or anything), that I eventually realized ripped off part of the melody of the chorus of Cage the Elephant's "Back Against the Wall" in its own chorus (and it's not even like it was a commonly used melody or anything), and I never noticed it until at least a month later.

edited 10th Apr '12 8:26:39 AM by 0dd1

[citation needed]

But seriously, listen to Don Caballero or Henry Cow. To hell with song structure!

That said, my song-writing style is basically thus:

1. Accidentally come up with a vocal hook or melodic fragment.
2. Pair the above to some weird, intricate chord progression.
3. Expand both until there are 2-5 sections and/or instrumental parts.
4. Come up with appropriate title.
5. Present to confused band-mates.
6. Work on song with confused band-mates.
7. Rehearse.
8. Write lyrics to compliment/complement chosen title/sound.
9. Rehearse more.
10. Play.

edited 10th Apr '12 11:52:51 AM by JHM

There isn't much more to songwriting than learning as much of music theory as one possible can and then possibly following up with studying music done before you.

After that you are creatively free AND you have a vast array of knowledge and musical language to put to use in your creative processes. If you have them. Not everyone can actually create. I am not sure I can for example, even though I probably have enough musical knowledge.

Music theory doesn't exactly help with lyrical content.

And too much focus on theory can make your music the equivalent of a paint by numbers. Or not at all interesting.

Songwriting is such a subjective thing, though. I think technical skill is focused on because to some extent it can be objectively measured in terms of notes per second, vocal range etc. whereas there's myriad approaches to songwriting and everyone enjoys different kinds (disregarding the fact that mainstream music tends towards the same song structures and purely diatonic tonality).

I personally enjoy many kinds of songs be they sprawling hour-long prog opuses, melodic verse-chorus poppy stuff, drone-based wandering without any real melody or structure, hip-hop tracks that consist simply of different verses over a single repeated beat, or four-minute explosions of blastbeats, death growls and wanky riffs. And that's all just music - you can go in as many directions lyrically as well. Just write what sounds good to you.

That said, what Yachar says is very important. Once you know music theory, you know the rules of musical tradition and consequently how to break said rules if you want to. It's not strictly necessary, but it's immensely helpful.

Anyway, I normally follow one of two songwriting approaches:

• Come up with a riff/chord progression/melody while screwing around on guitar or piano, or just have one spontaneously pop into my head, then endeavour to write further musical ideas that match or contrast the initial one in pleasing ways and organize them into a piece.
• Plan what kind of composition I'm writing, come up with a song structure beforehand then use the aforementioned guitar/piano/brain noodling to fill in the various sections I want to have.

Vocals and lyrics are normally things I write to match the music if they're present - they're the last stage of writing a song.

One last point: I don't think it's important to worry about repeating other musicians so much as it is to worry about repeating yourself. I know I get hella bored of both writing and listening to an album's worth of the same thing (unless the music is just that good, or it's in one of my favourite genres). You don't have to go wildly experimental or anything, but avoiding formula is generally advisable.

edited 10th Apr '12 1:53:49 PM by AsTheAnointed

See, I don't play any instruments, so I can't really write music on staff. But I have plans for a whole bunch of songs (some of them much better than others). I just need people to record them.

edited 10th Apr '12 1:56:59 PM by Erock

Learn to play a synthiser.

Like meeee!

Oh god I couldn't do that.

Yeah, learn to play something with keys. Piano, organ, harpsichord, clavinet, synthesiser, anything. That really, really helps in understanding music theory - the keyboard is such a direct visualisation of Western music theory that it almost seems like the theory was written to explain the keyboard, rather than the keyboard being designed to make music within the theoretical framework.

That's a lot of work that I don't have the energy and time for.

Besides, I'd like to use the xylophone creatively.

edited 10th Apr '12 3:26:14 PM by Erock

One idea I have,

1:Get Pro tools

2:get an Electric guiitar.

3: Plug the electric guitar into your computer and set Pro Tools to record.

4:Randomly play the guitars strings until you have accidently managed to get the chords you want.

5:Start Pro Too,s editing feature and assemble theguitar chords into an actual guitar part.

6: Get drums,bass and whatever other instruments you want and repeat the previous steps with them.

7: Mix thoose part together so as to make your song.

I wasn't talking about song structure, more about chord progressions and riffs. Just some notes thrown together without regard for the conventions of songwriting will not sound pretty - these conventions became conventional for a reason.

edited 10th Apr '12 3:54:57 PM by MidnightRambler

That really depends upon what you mean. There are plenty of bands that got along fine without even knowing chords.

I... don't think I want to hear those bands.

How exactely is the possible?

Noise Rock?

I like to think of that classic Lou Reed quote in these types of conversations: "One chord is fine. Two chords is pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz."

I love that quote.

Also, Einstürzende Neubauten: