Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
It's easy to find sort of basic songwriting advice, so things like, how do I write lyrics,
or how do I start thinking about writing lyrics? It's easy to find music theory resources and
books online, whatever, there's sort of this basic level of songwriting, which I think
there's a lot of material that's available for the person who wants to look for it. That's
not to say that songwriting is easy or that if you read these things, suddenly you'd be
able to write great songs, or good songs, or songs that you like, or whatever you're
trying to do with them. In my experience, that takes hours and hours and years and years
to develop your own voice and develop the craft of songwriting. And to develop a way
to really put yourself into your songs. Which I think is a big part of music, the art of
the singer/songwriter and the art of music in general. There's not just learning the
craft but learning how to put what's unique about you into your material. That's all stuff
that I think just honestly takes years and years of hard work. What I thought would be
more interesting, both for myself but assuming also for any of you who see this, would be
to try to talk about how the process works for me.
I don't think any two artists are the same in terms of the way they approach things and
I think advice can be helpful, but I know that for myself, whenever I hear something
I like, if I hear a song that I like or I admire, what I immediately want to know is
how did the person go about that. Very specifically, very individually, very uniquely to them...What
was their process? What came first? Was it lyrics? Was it music? What set off a particular
thought? What set off a particular line? Again, to reiterate, I do think the basics and lots
of great ideas about how you can start writing songs is out there. What to me is always incredibly
mysterious, is an individual songwriters process. So I'm going to try to get you a little bit
inside of mine, in the hopes that can illuminate something for you. I know that for me, whenever
I've been able to learn very specifically about how somebody went about something, it's
been very helpful for me. So I'm going to try to do the same with this song for you
and I hope it helps. "I was a flower. And I was a petal. I was
a flower. And I was a petal. And it seems so unkind. No one paid me no mind. I was.
I was a fowl. And I was a feather. I was a fowl. And I was a feather. It seems so sublime.
I unwind. Casualty of time. I was. I was." So, first of all, the title. Every song pretty
much has a title, as far as I know, this is called "I Was". And in this case, you know,
some people write lyrics first as I was saying, some people write music first. Sometimes they
come together. For me, in this case, the music actually came first. Where the music came
from here and I think this is something that happens more often than people might admit
in a way. But, the music here came from a picking exercise that I was just running through
almost without thinking at all. If you're a player, you're constantly running scales
or constantly building your technique. One thing is someone who loves finger picking,
I'm always trying to find new patterns, new finger picking patterns. Sort of based on.
This one is sort of based on old kind of folk revival, 1960's stuff which reinterpreted
a bunch of earlier kind of folk styles of guitar playing. Travis picking, which is a
great one to learn. Which... Which has this great sort of alternating bass
thing with the thumb. Something I learned years ago and have used a lot of different
times and a lot of different ways. So I'm always thinking, how can I sort of reinterpret
or re-imagine finger picking? Because it's something I love the sound of, it's been done
a lot. So this was just a pattern. That sort of, by rote, I found myself doing.
Just playing or myself on the couch one day. And I was doing it and just spacing out, as
I usually am when I'm playing, and I was thinking this has a really nice quality to it. It reminds
me of water. That was sort of the visual I had in my head and water, it's kind of a cliche,
but I also was thinking, you know there's something about time passing. It's kind of
that classic, waterfall coming down and reflective mood and time is passing. Somehow these cliches,
which I guess still have meaning for me somehow. These were all sort of bouncing around, very
abstractly in my head. So... So that was my first chord. Just sort of spacing
out on this. You know C, I mean in theoretical terms, just in the first C major chord you
learn on a guitar. Kind of a major triad, root position. And I thought, where can that
go? Part of what I was getting from the pattern and what I was talking about with kind of
this water image, this time passing, is that something changes but something also stays
the same. This may sound sort of abstract, but this is something compositionally that
I think people do all the time. Not just in pop, rock, folk music, but classical, everything,
right? So, you're keeping something constant but you're also changing something musically.
So, this is just dealing with the music of the song.
So that was the second chord that my fingers sort of fell to it. It's not an uncommon chord,
it's an F major 7. But I keep the C in the bass. So that's sort of like the drone. So
there's something to me that I was thinking, time again, water. There's this constant.
And there it is. And so in these chords too, you got the lowest note, which is the C remaining
constant, and also the E on top is also remaining constant because it's an F major 7. With the
C in the bass. So to me, something about that was very symmetrical.
I started kind of, at this point, humming a little bit. Melodically, what might happen
during the verse. Almost a sort of, had an idea this is the way it often works for me.
Had an idea for the feeling of it. More than specific lyrics. But again, I had this image
of time in my head and I think I started saying "I was".
Didn't have specifics. But I realized at that part that I should probably record it.
Probably the most important thing about songwriting and writing songs, in my opinion, my experience,
is actually recording the ideas that you come up with. This is so obvious, but you need
to have something in place so that when an idea strikes you can get it down. Life takes
over, you'll forget about it. You need to have something in place, for me I have a protools
rig at my house. I sometimes use garageband, if I don't have any time to even set that
up. I can't stress enough how important, for me, that's been. If I have any idea. Musically,
lyrically, to get that down without prejudging it, without sort of doing editing in your
head. To me, those are your rough drafts that you can work with later. That was very much
the case with this. What I did was went over to protools, put a microphone up and got this
pattern and these lyrics. I didn't know where I was going with it. I liked the idea of "I
was". So that was the beginning of the song. I got that much down, life took over, did
something, came back to it a few days later. I liked it. So what often do, this is just
my process, I'll listen to musical ideas that I have. Also, with a word document open on
the computer, or a notebook, whatever, it doesn't matter. Whatever works best for you.
I start to jot ideas, often very abstract. This one came quickly, I didn't think it would
need that many words. In a way, I didn't want it to be too wordy. I didn't want that to
detract from the music and from the message which it was becoming more clear to me, that
I wanted it to be pretty abstract. To get something across about time moving or about
aging. That's something, I think we all think about a lot, as we get a little bit older.
I didn't want it to be too literal. I knew I wanted it to be abstract, again to take
a step out. I think it's a really important decision that any songwriter has to make.
You're balancing. Something that's completely abstract, maybe beautiful, but there may not
be enough to hold onto. Something that's completely literal without any sort of metaphor. Or any
sort of literary devices can just seem really square. To me it's not that interesting to
go that direction, though that works for some people and for some pop songs, and that can
be great. If you're just saying exactly what you feel. I think for the type of song that
I'm interested in is a little more intellectual hopefully and a little more, you know, artistic,
I guess in a certain way. In terms of its composition. I think there's got to be a balance
of the abstract and literal. This case, I was thinking, you know, this should be more
abstract. On the more abstract side. I was. I was playing around. Thinking. I was what?
I was saying, "I was a rose". I think I had that in another song of mine from years ago
and I thought, I can't reuse that. In a way that's actually too specific. So I thought
if I just say, "I was a flower"... A flower is so generic in a way. And that's
what I mean about, there's something with that. Where the listener can apply wherever
they're coming from and whatever they're going through, onto that. Something super literal,
it's hard to do in that same sort of way. When something is more abstract, again for
better or worse, I'm not saying one is better than the other. It depends on what you want
your song to get across. For me, when something is more abstract, you can really space out
on the song. Kind of take it wherever you want to take it.
We're kind of here in the first verse, right? So...
"I was a flower. And I was a petal." Why not repeat it, keeps it really simple.
"I was a flower. And I was a petal." Here, I was feeling like there needed to be
a change. Lyrically and musically. In terms of the theory of this, this is the relative
minor. Which is always pretty. We've heard it in 75 million songs.
"And it seems
so unkind. No one pays me no mind. I was." A couple of things that happened there, again...Classic
chord progression, A minor, G, F, you know, Stairway To Heaven and 500 thousand other
songs. I did the same thing here, which is that I left the high E string ringing out.
Which I think gives it some sense of continuity. Again, back to that kind of musically trying
to mirror what's going on lyrically and vice versa. I think that's incredibly important,
no matter what type of song you are writing or performing or singing, whatever. Is to
have some sort of connection between lyrics and music and it can be really subtle and
can be really abstract. If you're good, hopefully it is those things. Unless it's a pop song
which is not meant to be particularly subtle or abstract most of the time. That's a different
thing. I think there can be something really important in somehow trying to marry the feel
of the music to the lyrics. So that's what I was trying to do, whether I was successful
or not, who knows? Again, this is just my process.
"Seems so unkind." Lyrically to me, these are very melancholy
chords. A six chord is super melancholy and the major 7th after it.
"No one paid me no mind." You know, the image I had in my head was someone
getting older and time's just kind of passing and no one's really paying attention and no
one seems to give a s&*t. That's something I think a lot of people can relate to. Anyway,
that's where I was coming from. Next, there's a little instrumental break in the song.
"Seems so unkind. No one pays me no mind." Kept this going a little longer than I might.
"I was." So I don't know if you can see what I'm doing
or pick that up, but I'm keeping the same chords as in the verse but I'm changing the
bass notes. Instead of a C major triad, root position, I put the G in the bass. The fifth
in the bass. That would be called, to me, that's called variation on a theme. I have
my musical theme. I've already kind of set it out, it's in the listeners head. Here comes
a little break, what can I do to just slightly tweak that theme. Slightly change it enough
so that it remains interesting. It's familiar. We're coming kind of back home. But at the
same time there's something about it that's different, that speaks to you in a different
way. These were the chords I chose for that. C major over G. Then this low F which was
not in the other chord that I was playing in the verses. Then a C over G and then an
F major 7th over A. Which is a very sort of undefined chord. In theoretical terms. It's
the third of the chord. In the root but with the open E on top it kind of sounds like a
minor chord. Kind of sounds like a major 7th chord, you don't know what it is. Anyway,
I wanted it to fit in again lyrically very sort of abstract and melancholy, so there
it was. I liked what I had. I wanted to keep sort
of the same feeling going. "I was a fowl." So I liked the word fowl for a couple of reasons.
One is it played off of flower in the first verse. Just sort of poetically or lyrically.
That was something I thought people might not notice or pick up on but those are the
subtleties that as a writer, I'm trying to get to and hoping that it comes across in
some way. Also, fowl has several meanings. I like both of them in a way. I'd like the
listener not knowing. There's fowl, F.O.W.L, like a bird, like a chicken of whatever and
there's foul like a foul ball, and I'm a baseball fan so that's something I liked. I liked the
idea of someone calling themselves a foul ball. Something about that seemed poetic to
me, so. "I was a fowl. And I was a feather."
So there it kind of becomes clear. I had to make a choice lyrically. Am I going the foul
ball direction or going the chicken direction? I decided to go the chicken direction. Not
sure why. I guess it tied into the first verse too. Flower to petal, and then a fowl to a
feather. Sort of this de-evolution or something, I'm not sure. But then I kept that going.
Again, "I was a fowl. And i was a feather". So I repeated it again keeping it super simple,
and I'm getting at. "And it seems so sublime." Slight lyric change. "I unwind." And then
here, I felt like it needed something new. "A casualty." This, just musically. I mean,
that's been used in lots of songs too. It's a classic Paul Simon, among others, something
he'll throw in. "Casualty of time." Time's just passing. "I was."
Again, variation on a theme. Any songwriter, I think needs to be clued into this. From
pop to folk to classical to whatever. This to me is a key component of any good songwriting
or composition. Is that you're aware of what presenting to your listener kind of thematically.
Here's a C, the C chord is throughout the song. By making it a C major 7th chord, I'm
tweaking it just a little bit. It's that melancholy of a major 7th chord. Again, you're back home
because you're kind of on a C chord and you're back on base in a certain way. But there's
just enough change that you hopefully pay attention. This chord just sort of stumbled
upon. In theoretical terms, it's the F major 7 plus the sharp 11. It's got a B natural.
It kind of doesn't matter what you call it. It has a great rub in the chord, there's a
dissonance to it. There's that tritone. Anyway I thought that that sort of could set off
the listener in some different direction. So it's sort of back home, it's on this base.
But it's also dissonant and endings of songs, super important, you know. Almost as important
as how they start, probably. It's the last impression that the listener's left with,
so how do you want them to walk away from the song feeling, right? You want them feeling...Oh
okay, it's all tied up in a bow. There's nothing wrong with that. I knew for me, this song,
I would want to leave it very much hanging because to me that's on some poetic level,
that's sort of the nature of time passing, things unfolding, and it's very bittersweet.
It's very melancholy, even on a totally abstract level. Not talking any specifics about my
life or anybody else's life. Those were the sorts of themes I had in mind for this song.
These chords, to me, and ending on that major 7th, on a really hanging chord. That to me,
ended the tune in the way that I wanted and that I was thinking about which is, leaving
the listener hanging, and in a way, there being kind of a question mark at the end of
a song as opposed to in pop songs, it's always an exclamation point. Sometimes a period or
whatever, so to speak. You know what it is, it's the major chord, it's a minor chord,
it's this is done. I wanted this to be much more abstract, that's the nature of this tune.
It was an abstract kind of arty, folk tune. Hopefully it worked. It's very subjective,
I'm sure it works for some people more than other people. I hope that this glimpse or
look inside my process can help on some level. The questions multiply, they just get more
infinite. For example, when you're starting out writing songs, I think you are very concerned
with the basics. Such as, how do I write a lyric? What comes first, music or lyrics?
How do I structure a verse? How do I structure a chorus? The basic questions of songwriting.
When you start out, the same as with any art form, naturally you have to start from the
simplest sorts of questions. That stuff is incredibly important and stuff that I grapple
with every day when I write. What I hope that this did or does a little bit, is to give
a little glimpse sort of beyond that. I've been writing songs for a long time, decades.
Starting when I was a kid and those were the questions that I thought about then, I still
think about them now. But now, on top of that, there are all of these other sorts of questions,
which I think, maybe I'm fooling myself, at least I tell myself they're a little bit more
subtle. So those are questions of mood, of themes, of repeating themes, of altering themes.
Of, again an abstract versus literal. What sorts of metaphors to use. Musically, how
can I create a sort of ambiance or an environment musically that matches what I'm trying to
do lyrically, and vice versa. Because you cannot separate that. When someone hears a
song, they don't just hear a word abstracted out of time. They hear the whole thing, so
they're hearing the word or the lyrics and the music at the same time which, it needs
to be married. It needs to be one effect. It is whether you like it or not, so you might
as well put a lot of thought into it. In thinking about what you want to get across. Those are
some of the questions that I was dealing with in this song, specifically. Different songs,
it's really different. If I'm writing something that's more pop, it will probably tend to
be less abstract. If I'm writing something that is purely for me and I don't care at
all how other people take it on, then I'm not going to worry about a lot of things.
It could be stream of consciousness and something great could come from that. I guess what I'm
trying to say is that, the overall context is super super important. So really thinking
about the effect that you want to get across and using everything within your powers to
create that effect is what a songwriter does. I think. What a composer does. That includes,
this is kind of the whole point of this. That includes all sorts of questions that are not
addressed as simply as, how do I write a verse? Does the chorus repeat once or twice or three
times? I think those are incredibly important questions but without some more context for
it and more sense of what you're trying to do, they're not as important as a lot of people
make them out to be. I think a lot of that stuff is much more variable that is often
taught, that a lot of people that are teaching songwriting or talking about songwriting.
It's a lot more variable and really depends on what you're trying to get across.
What I was just talking about, that way of composing is in a way, it's super old school.
It's sort of talking about simply putting pen to paper, so to speak. Playing the instrument.
Coming up with lyrical ideas. That's what I'm discussing. In pop music today, the way
that production often happens or the way a composition happens, is through production.
There's no difference between the two. If you listen to anything kind of top 40, pop,
Rhianna, whatever, those songs, maybe there was an initial lyrical idea or somebody had
an idea for a chord progression. Usually it's just one cycling over and over, or a drum
beat or something. But more often than not, those songs are composed basically, entirely
in the studio. So what I'm talking about or have been talking about today, is something
different. This is sort of old school composition. That being said, there is another marriage
that takes place no matter what. Which is between the song itself, again whatever sort
of written, and the production. This is incredibly important. Think of any song that is a song
that you like, a favorite song, and it's all of a piece. It's all one thing. You can't
separate out, just like you can't separate out lyrics from the music really, because
it's all one thing. Neither can you separate those things out from the production, from
the band, from the orchestration, from the instrumentation. From the sounds of each instrument.
From the overall sound environment that you create.
In terms of the production of my song, "I was", this is before I even got to thinking
about production, I already had a certain mood established. Melancholy, abstract. It's
not a pop song. It's, I don't know what it is, a folk song, an art song, something indie
sounding, it doesn't really matter what you call it. I clearly had some direction that
I was already going. When it got to actually recording the song, this was something that
I was thinking about, of course. So what instruments will really bring out these feelings in the
way I want them to? What sort of orchestration? Etc. This is the general way I thought. It's
melancholy, sort of abstract. What are some instruments that add to that? I'm a big fan
of strings in rock or folk music, especially if they're not overdone. I especially love
the cello. Long runs on the cello to me are very beautiful and also have that sort of,
strings have that real watery, sort of time elapsing feel that I was going for. For this
tune, actually, we got a great cellist, Lisa Horn, and her friend Coco who plays viola
and violin. I think she just played viola on this and they put some beautiful harmonies
and basically long notes on top of especially some of the instrumental sections, which I
thought really sort of exaggerated in a good way, some of those melancholic aspects of
the song. That's one way I was thinking. Then in the studio, when recording this, the drummer
Mayer Horn had an idea for a drum beat. Just very simple, it wasn't something that I was
thinking of but this is part of the creative process. So in the studio all sorts of things
can happen and it can be for better or worse. In this case, Mayer put down a really straight
drum beat, as you can hear in the finished product and I thought that it really actually
opened it up and kind of the metrical provided some really nice markers in a way that I thought would actually give people
a little something more to hold onto. Just finger picking, I think in this day in age
is hard for a lot of people to stick with it. In this age of whatever ADD and all of
that. I think something about having a beat, a simple beat, kind of marking out the 2 and
4. It kept, for me, It sort of help keep the listeners attention or at least I hope it
does. Because it was such a simple beat, it didn't really get in the way of the finger
picking or of these long string lines, it just sort of provided markers. So those are
some of the things I was thinking of the last element that's on this is a piano, and I grew
up playing piano, I love piano. I think piano in rock music is, unless you're Elton John
or Billy Joel or a few other people, it's often best sort of as an atmospheric agent.
The way I was thinking of it here was just some really nice harmonies, that again, sort
of provide a new element if that's needed and bring out some of the melancholy aspects.
I chose some harmonies for this. I think the main harmony I'm using is a tenth, which is
kind of famous, it's the harmony from Blackbird, Paul McCartney tune. Used all the time in
lots of songs. It's just a very beautiful and melancholy kind of harmony. I added that
on the piano, as well, in a few very simple lines as you can hear in the finished product.
Hopefully, all of these things together create some sort of an effect that I was hoping or
maybe something slightly different, but hopefully something that is effective.