Tag Archives: where to focus when writing songs

Americana flagged

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What is it that bounds Alabama Shakes with the Grateful Dead? I’m not going to pretend I understand the distinction between Americana and alt country but it’s big right now. And it has been the ground for some great artists and songs.

There are some bands like The Knitters that I’m happy to be reminded of. And seeing them here is going to make me want to get at least a sample of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

While the name suggests that it, by definition, represents gathered cultural facts and observations about life in America, there is its further description of incorporating a mix of roots styles, which can – and inevitably do – leave the shores of the continental United States.

With all this hoeing going down, I’m ready to write another rural piece. What’s another piece of my childhood I can coopt? Well, while it’s not the experience of every farm kid, we had a bren gun carrier we used to play on.

We converted it to a cubby; the coolest cubby yet

This isn’t a story or experience that I’ve wanted to put into song as it is awesome all within itself. In fact most of the memorable tales from living on the farm were meant to be in that form; a simple retelling.

If we’re going to focus less on significant occurences and more on impressions then we stray from Americana I’d venture.

Roots music, even a combination thereof, suggests – as with the previous genres we’ve canvassed – detailing a narrative, perhaps even one based on real events. I don’t think this narrative needs to be based on a ranch or in some forest for it to ring true as the music will convey the sense of the genre.

It’s debatable, in any case, if cubbies make the list of topics covered by Bruce Springsteen or Bruce Hornsby. Even if they once played in one.

I’m not familiar with Hornsby’s ouevre but the Boss is very strong on storytelling; that’s his base. He also ‘gives us permission’ to use urban themes.

The Band, too, write about their experiences on the road. At first I wondered about Beck’s inclusion then it made me realise his imagery may be colourful but its captured from life

II

It seems I’ve strayed from both current affairs and personal reflection in looking at what reasonably constitutes Americana. I don’t know if Dylan is Americana in some phases, folk in others and rock in still more. Certainly, pondering these distinctions for too long gets in the way of the writing.

Since I mentioned it last week, I’ll pitch Pitch

Pitch

Black marks across the page
Acute curls at some stage
Editing edicts becomes addictive
The selling point is this predictive

Players plural and all Plus One
Business baseness comes undone
Pour out upon the track
Looks like alack

Consumer condition connect
Prude pride protect
Tamp down stamp down in the clampdown
  and tinny tunes in a tame town

Wretches reach for riches
But they're too big for their britches
Carried out in stretches
Leaving us in stitches 
 with their pitch

 

Loosened the plot

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Does a song have a plot? It doesn’t follow the same progression as a story, so there is no reason for a song to possess a plot.

You could see a plot in a traditional or folk song because this is the structure; it starts out describing the situation at one juncture and ends showing what happens as time passes. However, not even the old songs all follow this pattern, not by any means. It’s just as likely that a piece will dwell on how gorgeous one’s paramour is, or study a subject closely. If the narrative is timeless or static then it’s less likely to have a plot.

Look at “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers. Here the verses set the scene and then the chorus is the old man’s advice repeated so taking us away from the card table through reflection. The plot consists of a current day gambler using past pearls of wisdom to inform his conduct at the table and in life generally. This active use of metaphor tells a story with less filling than an actual short story or novella, because there is the other aspects of the song for the audience to appreciate: the sound and construction of the song, the performance, the way it fits into the milieu..

II

Let’s get into a little practice then, despite the fact that we’ve just recognised that a plot is a fairly unimportant component of song lyrics and may occur by chance, if at all.

It has to be said, even as we do this, that probably whatever plot one devises, it would be better utilised in another medium than song. Not if you decide to keep it simple though. For example, a plot for a movie or television episode might consist of a hypnotist committing murder through sleeper subjects and that’s a good chance for dialogue and set scenes, a fine opportunity for actors to show their chops, but does the process of illustrating this restrict the potential? Compare ‘Falling For You‘, the title of a song before it is that of a play or short film. Rather than just riffing off this title, because we want to look at plot potential, I have a plot in mind: each verse talks (in a poetic way) of how the narrator or protagonist falls; off mountains, off fences, off a motorcycle, and then how this is all still about the ‘you’ in the title. A particular fancy, I should fancy. This is too rudimentary for anything but a children’s book – the repetition, that is! – but perfect fodder for a song.

It might be a song with a plot, but that depends on how you write it. You see, after making the choice to talk about the person relating events, taking different kinds of falls, there’s still more than one approach.

You might decide ‘screw the plot’ at this stage, if the exercise has given you the material to write a good song using this title and theme. Why try to make this go somewhere in the way that “Bus Stop” by Manfred Mann does, where the act of sharing an umbrella blossoms into a full blown love affair. There might be some satisfaction in all the falling resulting in reciprocity or at least an appreciative glance down at your crumpled form at the base of the ladder. But if the falls are diverting enough and the images strong, the listener probably won’t notice.

III

Falling For You

I fell forward and I fell hard
on the path to your half
the length of your yard

I fell
out of practice
I fell
out of bed

Falling for this feeling
Propelled on by chance
The mind finds it’s reeling
Circled by circumstance

IV

What you may have noticed is how the poetry takes over, leaving no room for a proper plot. It’s still talking about “falling for you” but it isn’t doing so with the objective of seeing that the narrator falls into his or her baby’s arms by the end of the song. In one approach, you would be using serviceable language to tell a tale, in the other one is using visual imagery and lyrical ambiguity to weave a song that reveals further meaning over time.

Apart from as an academic exercise, I don’t see virtue in pursuing plot foremost. Allow the song lyrics to convey their meaning through their delivery and any inherent musicality, and things like ‘plot’ and ‘script’ and ‘narrative’ will sort themselves out of their own accord.

V

Here’s a different take on ‘Falling For You’ where you take that surveyed route of falling off different heights.

I had this falling dream
I can’t recall if it was some recent wall
that we clambered over calmly
that we called from as we climbed
I know how it sometimes seems
Falling for you

VI

Notice how, here, you start off telling the story right from the vantage of falling off things yet by the end of the snippet there are other things falling out as the lover tumbles headlong into the space of the desired one. I suggest you go with it, since letting the song tug the writer along could conceivably be more fulfilling than going with the original idea.
If you wish, you can scribble the other directions all this falling could take for use in other songs, or as a fascinating future curio for those keen to learn.

If anything, this works better in song than in anything but the most experimental novel or fringe theatre. And then you’ll be onto the next tune, which is about something else.

Opening gambit

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I think it’s a good idea to spend longer on openings. They are integral to the finished song in all but the most obtuse examples.

Let’s stick with songs of renown and consider “In the Ghetto” by Mac Davis. He wasn’t always this downcast and solemn. (His “Oh Lord It’s Hard to be Humble” was a regular among rural youth get-togethers.) but there is no doubt about the statement of purpose where narrative is concerned in this song. It has a place-setting title but consider how different a work it would be if it started with a gun incident or a mugging. “On a cold and grey Chicago dawn/and another little baby child is born/in the ghetto” The first line lets us know it’s a bleak situation and the following lines throw forth the startling notion that the birth of a baby is a catastrophe here, not a cause for celebration.

You’ll notice that whenever nonsense lyrics comprise the title or the central coda, they often start off that way. It’s as if why not, or maybe having decided on lyrics that can’t possibly mean anything to the casual listener, they figure they better maximise their chances of getting away with it by getting in early before the person listening has had time to form an opinion.

The choral beginning of “Ba-ba-ba- Barbara-Anne” is an approach that works as it serves to prepare the lead who can then come in and tell us about his encounter with the subject of the song. Perhaps proper names share a similar association between title and opening as do abstract terms, for there are a number in the vast vault of Christian name ballads and first name laments that start right in addressing the subject of the song.

There’s no hard and fast rule on whether you use the title in the first line or save it for the chorus. Or not repeat it in the body of the song whatsoever.
My counsel would be that you see what natural shape the song wishes to take. It will become apparent when you learn to read what is developing, just where to place the varying elements, including title and opening line.

Whether you wish to place your song in some locale in the opening line (e.g. ‘In Dublin’s fair city’) or use some point in time to set the scene (e.g. ‘When I was just a lad of ten’),  is as much a natural consequence of the construction as it is an act of volition.

In the above examples, if I want to sing to you about sweet Miss Molly Malone then I need to find some way of introducing her and I do this in ‘Dublin’s fair city’ ‘where girls are so pretty’. Now you may be writing your lines to fit in with the chords or melody you’re toying with, and that’s fine; it’s another approach, but that doesn’t stop the resultant words for serving the song well. Here we find the place – the big city in the case of an Irish folk song – to be full of pretty girls and so the narrator’s eye being caught by the song’s namesake is the more remarkable. In the best folk tradition, it doesn’t take long to tell us what the redoubtable MMM is up to. In this case, wheeling her wheelbarrow through streets broad and narrow hawking seafood.

In the case of “Lemon Tree” the narrator or songwriter, depending on your school of thought and/or critical focus is using the remembrance of the lesson he got at this father’s knee with the way this has panned out in his life. The simile of love and  a lemon tree needs a bit of authority as it’s not a ready image one thinks of in the many musings ‘pon the subject of amor. Knowing the tribute paid to fatherly advice when the song was written, it’s about the readiest appeal to authority there is. Even if we don’t always look to Dad for pronouncements on the subject; it’s a bit down the blokey calendar from other topics of discussion.

 

Let me show you what I mean

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Of course, those are just claims, not credentials. Credentials comes through the work.

To a certain extent it’s valid to keep a sheaf of your best poems, a book with scraps of lyrics, and a notebook of ideas. Some songwriters go through their whole lives being parsimonious and piecemeal. If you want the skill that can be used to write good songs, it’s better to cultivate the skill of being able to improvise. At least that’s how it works best with me.

I’ve gone through, and go through, different stages of either writing songs up to nine versions (or whatever) or writing a piece in one burst, but I have always found riffing to work better than sitting there, pencil in your mouth, puzzling over how to get across what you want to say.

Let the subject matter dictate the song.

If you try and rein in what may otherwise be a potent theme, you risk being too didactic and weakening the artistic or poetic effect.
Better to go with the flow.

For instance, let’s make this purposely hard, if I was writing a song of my own choice, I would find a strong title, one pregnant with meaning, and develop from that. But this isn’t about what individual songwriters do to prepare so much as it is providing skills that can be applied across a range of circumstances that might require some snappy rhymes or ditties. So let’s move on to a most unattractive region of writing praxis; the reducing of something that I, and many of my fellow minstrels, have habitually done throughout our youth without having any knowledge of this critical theory. I speak of postmodernism. And, yes, while I could proffer my song on the subject, “Postmodern Tension”, I want to do something illustrative and, gawd knows, it’s about time postmodern theory was made useful in this way.

So I’m going to ask you to cast your eyes down this blog and now, eyes downcast, imagine having to come up with songs entitled ‘The song’s about to start’ and ‘Ladies and gentlemen’. You don’t see any potential in that as it’s clear those post headings were chosen for purpose and are not promising as song titles. I agree with you, however, making the best of a bad lot:

If you’re a real novice, you could jot down the things that come into your head when ‘the first song’s about to start’. chatter, smoking, posing, nervous excitement

or you could start straight in at a faster pace, knowing you can do it as a a first draft if it doesn’t say what you want or is in some way naff

Depending where you are on the scale of lyricists, this can take a varying amount of time. You might first have to realise that ‘chatter’ and ‘natter’ are too close in meaning to dwell for that long, or you may have a bolt of inspiration and hit on a couplet that carries promise and you won’t apprehend it for it’s use of language and poetic device but by the fact that it drives you on and inspires more thoughts to come pouring out.

I think, when you get the rhythm, you instinctively know where the song is going to go. I’m not always down with the path of the narrative but as long as it stays faithful to the theme (which is nothing less than a meaning or set of meaning attached to the title in my songs) I don’t mind.

If you continue to hone your craft by insisting to your muse that you are writing a good song about this subject or scenario, then you’ll find it gets easier.

You probably wouldn’t stop to try on ‘shatter’ and ‘scatter’ and so forth as you know that you can get the idea of chatter over without rhyming it, or even including the word.
Sometimes it helps to then glimpse back at the reality of what you are writing about. Perhaps you don’t need to make it about a horror-themed event so you can use ‘splatter’, perhaps you just need to look at what is happening with the chatter when ‘the first song’s about to start’. It dies down; there’s an expectant hush. So, without stopping to survey the options, it becomes apparent that it’s an easier road to rhyme the ‘dying down’ and that’s the best way to phrase the line anyway. If you want to be stubborn ‘the content of their chatter/ceases to matter’ but that borders on prosaic whereas

‘How narrow the sorrows the crowd have half drowned
a sign of their awe is the chatter dies down’

Now, look, you can edit this as ‘a sign of their awe as the chatter dies down’ or whatever, but you now have a song that is starting to pull away from the literal meaning.
You may not even be aware of the implications of this wordsmithing but it’s a good thing it’s leading you on.

But, you wail, what can I do with ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’, especially when you’ve twigged that the code for those entries was that they were the kind of phrases that get bandied around at live gigs. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ is archaic and doesn’t sing to the current generation. It’s too mannered to be of much use.
But that approach is setting up barriers before you get started.
There are surprisingly few topics or turns of phrase that can’t be moulded into works of art.

“Ladies fan out and gents in the corner”

It’s one line. But here’s the thing, Now you’re referencing several things at once: a ladies’ fan, the ladies being more demonstrative while the gentlemen are guarded and huddled in the back, the allusion to amenities and where they’re located

You can read as much or as little as you like into it. Contemplate how you’re going to be more expansive so it’s clear that the ‘ladies fan out while the gents hang back [like the amenities]’ without putting it that way, and without causing problems with the rhyming schema.

Trust me, this isn’t a problem, not like those back trying to list top hats and mink coats and then find things to say about them. Thinking outside the box isn’t mandatory but it is a handy aid.

Now, just because you can see promise in your idea is no reason to get bogged down. In the early stages of my writing vocation I might be stuck with just those lines or the title and that line and I’d be trying to do what I could in the way of equalling it for the qualities it possessed.

An easier way is to jot that line down in a journal kept for that purpose, and explore some of the other ideas that might have come up. What about the fact that its very usage here is only introducing something else, it’s not the honorifics that are significant but what they herald.

Ladies and gentlemen
it is my pleasure
to reach this stage
and take your measure’

Again, this might not be where your thoughts were heading when you first decided to write a song called ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ but that surely sounds intriguing, yes?

If you want to do a close reading of this (I know it’s scrap of verse with perhaps not even the intention of writing more, but humour me) then you realise that it has a couple of balls up in the air: the fact that it manages second person to make the song about the ‘ladies and gentlemen’ after all.

The only problem with the novice jagging this kind of dual purpose is that they then need to create further verses to match and this can be particularly daunting, especially if they stumbled on this part.

It’s another reason to write a lot quickly so you don’t get stuck on how marvelous a certain triplet is

‘Ladies and gentlemen
I’m sure you’ll agree
The sect to neglect
is the cult of Me’

That probably doesn’t add much to the picture, in fact it takes something. But it might serve to inspire something that will work. There continue to be different approaches you can take at each juncture. This second verse was a result of saying “well, if I can’t use this gaze at the audience, I’ll change tack and think of other instances where “Ladies and gentlemen” introduces something. In this ‘I’m sure you’ll agree’ but as it stands it doesn’t follow on as now it’s proselytising and the idea of staying with the ones not up on stage is too interesting to abandon.

‘Ladies and gentlemen
may I introduce
a means to betray
an attempt to seduce’

This not only follows on from the first (if it ends up being the first) it takes it in still more interesting directions.