Songwriting Exercise

There has been an interesting challenge on Facebook in the last while, one that I participated in myself and found kind of fun.  And as I did it, I thought that with a couple of moderations, it would make a good songwriting exercise to stir up your creative juices.

The challenge involved going to websites like Wikipedia and the Quotations Page and then Flickr to pick random names and quotes and photos to create an album cover.

So I’m going to put in a twist.  Here’s what you do:

1. Go to Wikipedia and hit random, here The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your song

2. Go to Random quotations page, click here. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is a phrase that has to appear in your song

Now here’s my addition:

3. Go to the HotFrets Chord Progression Generator. Pick a key, a progression and a style and generate a chord progression to try out on your guitar or piano

And that’s it!  See what you come up with. 
IJ

The Power of Observation

You’ll get the same advice everywhere (and you’ve gotten it from me too) about finding inspiration in reading or people watching…or by just planting yourself in a new place you’ve never been before.

This time, however, I want to take you one step further.

When police officers are trained, they learn a lot about developing their observational skills, remembering little details about events or people so that they can apply them later.  We take a lot for granted when we are out and about…we look past everything because we’re distracted by our own thoughts or inner conversations.  It isn’t until something significant catches our eye or our ear that we are jolted back into the present.

Buddhists practice something called “mindfulness” which can be an excellent tool for working on your powers of observation.  You don’t even have to be Buddhist to use it :-).  Simply put, it is about focusing in on the present…focusing your ears and eyes, all of your senses so that everything that happens, as minute as it may appear, is consciously observed.  But it is not easy to do!  Set an alarm for five or ten minutes and for that amount of time, try to stay completely in the present, giving your complete attention to whatever you are hearing or seeing, but ignoring any distracting thoughts at the same time.  It takes some work to do!

Once you have tried the 5 minute experiment, take it a step further.

Go for a walk with the intention of remembering as much as you can about everything you see and hear on your 15 or 20-minute walk.  The test will be when you get home…because you are then going to make a list of everything you can remember from your excursion, every observation you made.

Why am I giving you this exercise?  Simply put, you will realize how much you miss, many little bits and pieces of daily life that you may actually be able to use in your lyrics.  Exercise isn’t just for working your muscles, it is also for working your mind and your mind is a pretty powerful writing tool.  Once you have tried the walk, take it a step even further and put yourself in a place with a lot of people activity, like a mall or a park.  This time, do the same thing as your walk…try not to allow yourself to be distracted by your own thoughts and simply observe as much as you can.  Later, when you get home, pull out a piece of paper (or your laptop) and make a list of everything you remember.

This practice will help you to develop your powers of observation, just like the cop who’s in training.  A songwriter is always “in training” because we are always on the look-out for a new idea or something to stimulate our creative consciousness.

If this exercise works for you…let me know right here!

And keep your eyes and ears open…

IJ

Songwriting In A Lousy Economy

It’s hard enough for songwriters when the economy is humming along nicely, but what do you do when it takes a downturn as it has in the last few months?

Most of us don’t have any delusions of grandeur when it comes to writing hit songs;  in fact, many of us are only writing for our own pleasure.  But those of you who are still seeking that holy grail hit song, or just a one song publishing deal, might have to re-think your strategy these days.

Publishers stopped hiring new writers a few years back when the songwriting biz started to sour (blame downloading and mp3 players for that one), and now it seems that it’s almost entirely fruitless to even pitch to publishers.  The independent route appears to be the only way to go, which means a lot more leg work and an even longer waiting period for anything to happen.

Here are some ideas:

• If you are a songwriter who doesn’t perform, these days there are so many ways to approach lesser-known artists and bands online through their MySpace pages or homepages.  The first question always is, do they write their own material?  If they don’t, or if they do a mix of covers and originals, listen carefully to the songs they perform.  Is it what you write?  No point in approaching a band or artist in a completely different genre, and that seems perfectly logical, but I have heard of songwriters blindly offering songs with little or not thought to that!
• If you would rather meet them in person, consider going out to local venues in your area and getting an idea of what bands and artists are playing.  Once you’ve educated yourself a little, then approach them and ask if they would consider listening to your stuff.  And be prepared with a CD in hand!
• It seems that synchs (or synchronization contracts) are becoming more and more popular.  For instance, getting your song on a television commercial or series can mean a lot of money and ultimately a lot of fame…look at what 1,2,3,4 did for Fiest on the iPod TV spots!  A lot of TV series use artists and bands songs in their shows.  If you’re smart enough, you can find the person on a series who picks the music (usually called the Music Supervisor), and send them some of your music.  But…REMEMBER to do your research;  does your music match the kind of music they have already used?
• Make use of MySpace and any other music-related pages out there to show off your work.  You never know who you might “meet”

Okay, there are just a few ideas for you to ponder.  It’s hard to stand out these days, and even harder with economic times being so difficult and cut-backs happening everywhere.  But remember, in difficult times the general public turns to entertainment to make themselves feel better.  So all is not lost…hang in there!

IJ

Do Lyrics Need to Mean Anything?

For years music lovers who followed Elton John’s career wondered about the meaning of the lyrics in the song “Daniel”.  They argued back and forth;  some thought it was about the Vietnam War, others that it simply had to do with a relationship between two brothers, and another group thought it was about homosexuality.

I was very intrigued to see an interview with Bernie Taupin, the lyricist behind the song, years later when he was asked “So what is ‘Daniel’ really about?”  Bernie’s answer surprised me, and then again, it didn’t.

He shrugged his shoulders and casually said “I don’t know.”  And that was about it.

This issue came up again recently when I was teaching a Radiohead song called ‘Karma Police’ to one of my guitar students.  We sat there afterward and tried to analyze the lyrics.  At the risk of copyright infringement, I’m going to show the lyrics here.  Let’s just say it’s about the ‘art’, guys!

Karma police, arrest this man,
He talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge,
He’s like a de-tuned radio
Karma police, arrest this girl,
Her Hitler hairdo is making me feel ill
And we have crashed her party

This is what you get, this is what you get
This is what you get, when you mess with us

Karma police, I’ve given all I can,
It’s not enough
I’ve given all I can,
But were still on the payroll

This is what you get, this is what you get
This is what you get, when you mess with us

And for a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself
And for a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself
For a minute there, I lost myself, I lost myself

Okay.  I love this song, but not for the lyrics.  I love the chord progression and melody.  I hate the radio noise at the end of the song, but that’s for another article!

If you understand the word ‘karma’, in Buddhism it means ‘what goes around, comes around’.  That’s an over-simplification as any real Buddhist will tell you, but for our purposes let’s stick to that meaning.  So the line ‘This is what you get’ in the chorus, makes sense;  this is what you get when you behave that way, etc.  Even the title ‘Karma Police’ makes sense to me in this context.

At the end of the song we have a completely different section, an ‘extro’ or ‘outro’ or ‘tag’ depending on what you like to call it.  The chord progression changes and they repeat the line ‘And for a minute there, I lost myself’.  In Buddhism again, the ‘self’ doesn’t exist, so even this line makes sense within the context of karma.

However, the rest of the lyric seems to have absolutely no connection to anything.  What do they mean ‘her Hitler hair-do is making me feel ill and we have crashed her party’?  What does that have to do with anything?  ‘He talks in maths, he buzzes like a fridge’…what does that mean?

Now I am not a prude or snob, and I already told you that I love the song.  But sometimes I think bands and artists take liberties with their lyrics, especially those who write in the rock (alternative, if you will) and pop styles.  They assume that people don’t really care about lyrics.  I think they are right, to some extent.  How many songs have you fallen in love with but had no idea what much of it meant?

So what does this mean?  Should we be as flippant with our own lyrics?  Those of us who write in these genres tend to have the same attitudes…that the lyrics don’t really matter.  I think you should care more about what you are saying in your lyrics, in spite of what Bernie Taupin or anyone else thinks.  By all means, when you are first writing, as I’ve said many times, don’t edit yourself or you’ll put out your little creative flame pretty quickly.  But when you are at the re-writing stage (and there should ALWAYS be a re-writing stage!), look at what you’re saying.  Does it make sense in any way whatsoever?  Does it relate to the theme or the title of your song?  Is there a thread that goes through the whole lyric and pulls it together?

Maybe you don’t care, but you should.

On another note (little pun there!), there’s a famous story about the Beatle’s song ‘Hey Jude’.  It was written for John Lennon’s son Julian by Paul McCartney, and one of the lines is ‘the movement you need is on your shoulder’.  Paul was agonizing over that line, but when he went to John about it, John said something to the effect “Don’t worry about it, I know what it means.”  And so the line was left as is.

It’s true that we need to make our lyrics universal enough so that a listener can have some room for interpretation.  But there is a difference, a big one, between ‘universal’ meaning and ‘no’ meaning.  Think about it for awhile, and for pete’s sake, don’t get lazy!

IJ 

The Viva La Vida Plagiarism Controversy

If you haven’t heard, Joe Satriani is suing Coldplay for plagiarism.  Their latest single “Viva La Vida” does sound a lot like Joe’s song “If I Could Fly”.  But plagiarism is hard to prove, there is a lot more to it than just comparing notes, so to speak.  In the above video a fellow from a guitar website tries to analyze each song from a theoretical perspective.  Part of it is (yawn) a bit too theoretically dull for me!

Many of you newer songwriters worry a LOT about people stealing your songs or lyrics.  The fact is, of course that it is possible to do so once you expose your music by posting it on the internet, on YouTube or in forums, for instance.  But much of what newer writers come up with is rather sophomoric and cheesy at first, until they hone their craft and find their own voice.

Much of what a plagiarism lawsuit is about is proving that the song could have been heard in some form or another by the plagiarist.  Giving that Satriani’s album was released to the public, it doesn’t take a huge leap of faith to imagine that it could have possibly been heard by Chris Martin, the main songwriter in Coldplay.  Even if he had been exposed to it, it’s also possible that his memory of it was very subliminal and repeating it in his own writing could have been quite unintentional.

In 1997 when the Rolling Stones were about to release the single “Anybody Seen My Baby”, they realized that the melody of the hook in that song was almost identical to kd Lang’s “Constant Craving”.  Mick Jagger, being the smart guy he is (who wants to spend a lot of money on lawyers?), called Lang up and offered her a portion of the royalties and songwriting credit.  This certainly wasn’t a case of intentional plagiarism, and they just decided it was smarter to share credit, etc., than go through the whole mess of a potential lawsuit.

Personally, I think Coldplay should do the same.  They all have lots of money, so it’s probably more about ego than anything else.  Put the ego aside, share the credit and move on!

What do you think?

IJ

Update May 7/09 – Apparently Cat Stevens, who is now known as Yusuf Islam, is also contemplating a suit against Coldplay for plagiarizing his song. “My son brought it to my attention and said: ‘Doesn’t that sound like ‘Foreigner Suite?” the musician told Reuters.com. “The song definitely sounds like it. It has such logical chords and the melody has to be what it is…“.  What is it about that song??  – IJ