Songwriting Links for the Week

A collection of links to chew on for the next week or two:

Creative Writing Resources
Groups of links for writers, such as character name generators and writer's tools.

Beatles Songwriting Database
Album by album annotated recollections by John and Paul, mostly about who wrote what and how they felt about each song.

Lyrical Ling Songwriting Articles and Songwriter Community Web Site
Several useful songwriting tips articles

Irene Jackson's Songwriting Tips

Lifehacker: Why Ryan Adams is so Prolific

Songbridge
A Canadian organization that puts out a weekly pitch sheet of songs needed

Submit your CD for review by the Muse's Muse

Common Song Structures

It never hurts to have a quick refresher on possible song forms. Today, I wrote a song (Soliloquy) and began by first writing the three verses. The first verse sets the stage and touches on the idea of an imaginary epic LOTR-esque narrative:

An illuminated manuscript, A sword of the finest steel
A mission fraught with peril, as I savor my last meal
And it feels to me It feels like my last
Breath should really be an endless soliloquy
So I better write it Better write it down

The second verse initiates another similar imaginary and equally familiar spaceman narrative, carving out the start of a larger context for the parallel verses:

The stars look so peaceful As I glide along through space
Looking for a planet That might save the human race
But it’s been years since I’ve been gone From the planet I called home
I miss my wife and family I wonder if they still remember me

For the third verse, I opted to be less "particular" and also to blur together the different references to narratives and performance:

The stories have no endings The speakers have no lines
The costumes all are borrowed and the music’s out of time
And when the final dancers stop to take their bows
It feels like that should be my final soliloquy
So I better write it Better write it down

Repeating the eponymous concept of the Soliloquy as a unifier. At this point, I considered making the song with only the three versions (at just under 3 minutes and with some instrumental extension ending each verse) but decided for the sake of contrast to add a bridge between the second and third verse, taking the oppotunity to mirror the parallel of the initial verses and refer somewhat subtly to the Soliloquy:

Someday I’ll go home
And when the dragon’s dead
I will let my weary feet head to the road

Someday I’ll breath that air that I need
And slowly start to read aloud
The words that for so long have been my silent reverie

Rewriting clinic: the double meaning love song

I thought I'd record here the process in generating a song I wrote yesterday and today. I began by leafing through my book of songs and demos, and looking at one older song (a popular live number many years ago) that I did a quick demo for that clocked in at a weighty five minutes in length ( AABAAB format ). I began singing the first line in an improvistory manner which led to the first few lines sung in a much slower tempo, and I worked out new chords behind what I was singing, taking some care to make them extra colorful using a droning open G string throughout a descending chord sequence (C minor, C11 no3, Bdim +6, A/F add2, F add2, Gs4->3).

I wound up with a somewhat depressing and cryptic first verse after banging on the words for a little while:

There’s a dark stain on the windowpane
That you can not wash away
Some thing in the morning light
That makes you turn and say
It makes you turn and say goodbye

Not wanting to write a downer song I came up with a more optimistic easy to get along with refrain:

But suddenly there’s a reason
Everyone seems so alive out on the road
If I knew what I could believe in
Could be my comfort someday when I grow old?

Though with a little unnecessary doubt in the third line, an unanswered question in the second (why is the person out on the road? this rates high on the cliché meter as well...). Proceeding along I wound up with the stock formal dilemma of what do about another AABAB song.

First I added a bridge, originally after the 2nd refrain. This came out as:

Every night I fall down on my knees
And slowly breathe
I can’t keep they sky from falling
I can’t improve on make believe
Every day I’m dreaming when I call you on the phone
When I listen to your message
And I know you’re not alone

Putting some deliberate double meaning in the verse. Being a big fan of Nabokov's Pale Fire, I continue to debate the idea of a narrator who is not what he seems at first, not a romantic pitch but possibly someone who just doesn't interpreting rejection properly. Is the woman not alone because she is with someone else or with the narrator per his feelings and imagination?

I made a few refinements to resolve the formal dilemmas:
- Bridge after the third verse and before the final refrain
- An extra line tacked on to the first verse that partly anticipates the bridge
- The intro is connected to the song by being used before each verse and is also the 2nd chord
- The outro Csus -> C at the end of the refrain is in a different meter
- The 4th line of the refrain contains a perfect cadence back to C, speeding up the harmonic rhythm of the last 3 chords

and then rewrote the song as a love pitch with points of double meaning intact:


There’s always hope in wanting
Always waiting on a dream
Some things I trust you’ll never understand
Always waiting patiently for our lives to agree
That you and I will make the perfect team

In your ten dollar shoes and your fifteen dollar hat
The world is yours to lose
But you never think like that
You never think that the world will happen to you

But suddenly there’s a reason
Everyone seems so alive out on the road
You are the truth that I believe in
So won’t you be my comfort when I grow old?

I often seem to change my mind
Refine my point of view
And some times when you speak to me
The words just sail through
But give me one more chance so I can make it up to you

Every night I fall down on my knees
And slowly breathe
I can’t keep they sky from falling
I can’t improve on make believe
Every day I’m dreaming when I call you on the phone
When I listen to your message
And I know you’re not alone

But suddenly there’s a reason
Everyone seems so alive out on the road
You are the truth that I believe in
So won’t you be my comfort when I grow old?

Now, what should the title be? The working title is "Be My Comfort" or just "Comfort".

Video Songwriting Tutorial

Larry Seyer, who has been writing songs for along time, decided to document his process of putting a song together by video recording himself in what he calls "Song Birth". Worth checking out...

Lyrics: Something Else

I've been working on three new songs in the last few days, one of which I just recorded a quick demo of and is of the poetic abstract sort. This second one is more of a character study / story about a girl returning home to her parent's house after many years when she left to the big city to pursue her dreams. Not exactly the most original story, I realize, but certainly one that is easy to relate to.

I've just been working with the lyrics somewhat and here is the current draft:

SOMETHING ELSE

Walking down that old dirt road
To the house in the woods
You remember from so long ago
Where you grew up fast and full of soul

Traveling home is a simpler thing
When your hands are empty, when all you bring are
Memories to the door
Though long forgotten everyone still adores you
In spite of what you put them through

You think you might say something
About a friend who lived near by
As you help them put their dishes on the shelf

Now fences are for mending
Not to keep the world outside
When you’ve left it all behind for something else

It’s nineteen years ago today
That you made your mind up and said OK
The city is the place to be
it’s everyone you want to be with
When you’re famous everyone will know why
You left, will they understand you best?

You think you might say something
About a friend who lived near by
As you help them put their dishes on the shelf

Now fences are for mending
Not to keep the world outside
When you’ve left it all behind for something else
For something else
When you’ve left it all behind for something else


July 16, 2008

Best of the Rest: Andrea Stolpe

I find Andrea's Stolpe's Career Songwriter blog is one of the most useful songwriting blogs. In this blog she offers up some ideas on how to avoid getting into ruts by subtly challenging some of your normal habits.

Literature and Songwriting

During the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, singer-songwriter Joe Henry participated in a panel on the connection between music and the written word. In this piece for the LA times, Joe elaborates on this question and writes about how literature has helped shape his songs.