Threads

 © I.Woloshen

A song critique I worked on recently reminded me of an approach I take with my own songwriting…tying a song lyric together using what I call “threads”. If you’ll forgive ANOTHER metaphor, a song is really like a weaving in that all of the threads rely on each other and wind around each other to give an overall effect. A song lyric with these common threads has a greater impact on a listener because they give a context and complete a story, even if there is no “story” in the song!

This ties into the effective use of metaphors in a song…when you mix up your metaphors too much, you give too many pictures for a listener to hang onto. But if you make your song relate back to the same idea over and over, you enforce the theme and create a powerful effect.

Let me preface this by explaining….I’m using my own lyric, explaining how I thought to tie everything together…this does not mean I think I’m the greatest lyricist! What I’m attempting to do is bring you through the thought processes I had, as I remember them. Let’s take a look at the lyric:

CHANGE OF SEASON
c1997 I.Woloshen

I’m here again
Down by the rivers’ icey waters
And I hold my breath
Simply remembering this place
Those bare-boned trees
Revealing rows of empty bird nests
And that cold, hard rain
Trying to wash them all away

CHORUS:
I’m down by edge of the riverbank
And I’m waiting, waiting
For a promise we made and a smile again
I am waiting, for a change of season

Well I see my name
Where you wrote it on the old post
And I hear your voice
Somewhere inside this bitter wind
And though I’ve kept to myself
Let winter come in stone grey silence
This chill will pass
Just as the world itself must spin (CHORUS)

Have I come this far
Only to find our cause abandoned
Just like those nests
Watching the rain erase my name
Or will you rise to a brand new beginning
And let winter go
Giving a chance to life again (CHORUS)

This is what I would consider a very typical theme. The idea of seasons relating to the ups and downs of relationships is a common one…nothing new there. So what was I thinking of when I wrote this? This comes from a real life experience, a real relationship and a real place. I remembered the images that came to me when I was at this river once in the winter. I live on the west coast (or “wetcoast”, as we like to refer to it!) in what used to be a rain forest. In the winter, rather than it being cold, dry and white, we are cool, wet and grey! The images are of loneliness (bare-boned trees, empty bird nests), and the relationship having chilled (that cold, hard rain trying to wash them all [the nests] away) just as the singer is feeling abandoned by the other person. The chorus, again, reinforces the past experience at the river, and the suspended state of the relationship (waiting for a change of season).

The second verse introduces the “you”…the other person. I could have done this in the first verse, but instead chose to have that be about the memory. In the second verse, the memory is reinforced with the line “I see my name where you wrote it on the old post”…implying something having happened there, and “I hear your voice somewhere inside this bitter wind”…again some kind of presence of a past relationship in this place. The lines “Though I’ve kept to myself, let winter come in stone grey silence” reflects the singer accepting the dark season of the relationship, allowing it to happen, maybe knowing it was inevitable. But the next two lines imply hope…”this chill will pass, just as the world itself must spin”…where the singer equates the certainty of the earth’s turn with the certainty of the relationship reviving.

In the third and final verse, the singer is more or less leaving it up to the other person. “Have I come this far only to find our cause abandoned, just like those nests, watching the rain erase my name?” Is it going to stay this way, is the singer going to “disappear” from the other person’s life? “Or will you rise to a brand new beginning, and let winter go, giving a chance to life again?” Spring!! New life…a fresh start.

Each of the verses is meant to tie into the theme of the winter of a relationship, its past, and what’s going to happen next. What I try to be careful not to do is repeat my ideas too much…this is not as easy to do with a song that is not really a “story”, but just a description of a state of being or an emotion. In a story, you have a beginning, middle and end. I made the coming back to the river the “beginning”, the discovery of the written name and the sound of a past voice the “middle”, and the hope for the future, or spring, the “end”. The “threads” are all to do with nature and the nature of a relationship.

Believe it or not, I was tweaking this song as I was writing this article! Hey thanks! You helped me make my song better 

IJ

Putting Music with Lyrics

Here’s an email I recently received:

“Dear Irene,

I play guitar (lefty), just started, and i find it sometimes abit hard to get songs i like (like, by famous people, from the radio, whatever) abit hard to play, because i can’t get the exact tune. So i wanted to start writing my own songs. So i sat down to write some, and i couldn’t. i mean, i wrote a couple, but i can’t seem to accompany my voice (which isn’t very good) with my guitar. i like chords more than notes, so i just go through all the chords i know, just the main ones, and try to fit it together. Anyway, the whole point of me writing, is to say thankyou, you’ve helped me quite abit. But could you please put abit more about putting music with lyrics.”

I began writing songs for the same reason you did…I couldn’t play my favourite radio hits! In fact, over the years I’ve met many songwriters who started for the same reason.

When I was in Grade 12, I was given the opportunity to write some music to several poems in the play “Through The Looking Glass”. The idea was that I would play and sing them during the performance with the cast…I was put up in a loft at the back of the stage with a sound system. But the first REAL challenge was writing the music. I had always come from a “music first” place in my songwriting, and never before had tried it the other way around, so when I first sat down with all of these strange poems, I had no idea where to start. After succeeding with one of them, the others came more easily. Here’s what I learned, and what I use to this day…maybe some of it will help you:

1. A song lyric should have a built in rhythm, or “meter”….which means when you read it out loud, you can sense a beat to the words. This will help you to establish the time signature…4/4 is most common, four beats to the bar. Simply speaking, the strum pattern on your guitar should reflect this time signature.

2. Before you even establish the chords, you need to find a melody that matches the lyrics. Don’t go near any instruments until you’ve tried just singing the lyrics accapella (without accompaniment) and found a melody. This takes practice! Look at the structure of the verses…how many lines are there? Are the lines the same length of syllables, or are they different? If you’ve got an even number of lines, say 4 or 6, try singing one melody for the first line, and then another for the second…repeat the first melody for the 3rd line and the second melody for the 4th…see how that feels. Keep it simple. When you get to the chorus, that should be a different melody. Try singing it higher up…the chorus is a kind of climax, if you will, so it needs to be more dramatic in some way. Raising the melody at the chorus is one way of achieving that. If there is a bridge…sing that differently too. Essentially, each part of the song has its own mini-melody, but they all fit together. Creating a great melody is not achieved instantly! Well, not in most cases anyway 

3. Let’s assume you’ve found a melody…now what are the chords? There are several ways you can go about this, most of them take time! First of all, you can randomly look for a chord that “fits” what you’re singing. Knowing a little bit about chords will take you a long way. Is it a sad song? Should the chords be minor chords, or is it upbeat? Do you hear chords around it already in your head when you sing the melody? If you play guitar and have a capo, use that as a means of getting into a key that suits your voice and the melody…you don’t have to play barre chords or fancy progressions, just use the capo up the neck until you find something that’s close. Get yourself a chord book and find out what chords are in a key…which chords go together, in other words. Try out some of the other chords in the key you decide on.

4. When should a chord change? This is where your “ear” really comes in handy. When you listen to a song on the radio, can you hear when the chord changes? If you can, you’re already half way there. Start out simply, by playing one chord all the way through the first verse, let’s call it “Chord 1″…when you hear that the melody doesn’t “fit” that chord, that’s where you should change chords! Okay, so now you need to find “Chord 2″…look in your chord book at all of the chords associated with and in the same key as “Chord 1″…and try them each out. Most likely, one of them will fit. So now we have “Chord 1” and “Chord 2”. Maybe your verse looks like this:

Chord 1
La, la, da da da, la, la, la

Chord 2
La, da da, la, da da

Is the rest of the verse repeating these phrases? Or are they different somehow? If they are the same, use the same two chords again. If they’re not, try another “associated” chord, or a chord in the same key. Now maybe you’re getting a feel to your song. Use the same process for the chorus, if you have a chorus, and the bridge, if there is one.

That is a beginner’s approach to writing melodies/chords to lyrics…remember to keep it simple! And when it gets “boring”, make a change! No one can write those melodies for you, it is something you learn to develop in yourself over time and with much patience (and sometimes none  Good luck!

IJ

Tools Of The Trade

 © I.Woloshen

I remember the first time I began to put together my little basement office. I had all of the major pieces…the desk the chair, the computer…but I was missing the little things. So it was with great delight that I made my list and ran off to the local Office Depot to find paper clips and pens and post-its to add to my collection of office supplies. I kept all the receipts for tax time and placed everything in neat little places, easily retrievable.

Nowadays, my office is a disaster area. I could care less about having an “In Tray”, there are piles of correspondence, lyric sheets, magazines, cheques and bills everywhere. Okay, so I’m not perfect.

There are some things that I can’t do without, however…I need them near me at all times, especially my songwriting “tools”!

1. First and foremost…lots of paper and pens! I keep a big red 3-ring binder with a thick supply of new lined paper in it…when I get in the lyric-writing mode, I don’t have to go far to find it, and a constant supply of pens too. I keep everything I write, which means for boxes of sheets of paper. I have some of the song lyrics I wrote when I was 15 years old! When the binder gets too full, I pull out the used papers, stick them all in a box, and refill the binder with more paper. I have at least 5 pens in various places, all within reach in case of a sudden brilliant idea :-), and usually a box of them in my desk somewhere.

2. I also keep a Hook Book, although I didn’t call it that until some other songwriters I know referred to it that way. A hook book is a small pad, essentially, that I carry with me whenever I’m away from home. Those ferry rides between Vancouver Island and the mainland are places when a line will just hit me. A must have!

3. I have a micro-cassette recorder that has saved a song more times that I care to remember. I’ve been lazy enough to assume that I’m going to remember something and two minutes later it’s gone! That recorder has tons of bits and pieces of music on it. I remember running off to the bathroom at work once, humming something into it. I’ve also gotten up in the middle of the night a few times, running downstairs to hum something into it. Once a few months back, I had to come up with a theme for a TV show and I was stuck! I decided to go for a walk and took the recorder with me, and sure enough, within a few blocks I had an idea. Just a quick glance around to see if anyone was looking…then I hummed it into the recorder and finished my walk with a smile on my face!

4. Probably the tool I’ve had the longest, as soon as I figured out how to use one, was a thesaurus. Undeniably, many songs would never have been finished without it. Sometimes I just have an essence of a thought or feeling I want to express and by looking up different words that come close to it, I will usually either find what I’m looking for, or get another idea as I’m searching. Even when I’m not stuck on anything in particular, I’ll look through it sometimes and get ideas…

5. Which brings me to the dictionary…nothing is more depressing than to figure out you’ve used a word the wrong way! Or, heaven forbid, sent a lyric sheet out with something and misspelled a word! Of course, if you’ve been using a word processor, there’s always spell check these days. But again, the process of just looking through a dictionary can bring you to places you’ve never thought of going, lyrically, before.

6. I don’t buy a lot of CD’s, but I do tend to listen over and over to the ones I do buy. If I’m enthralled with an artist or a song, I’ll obsess on it! And when I’m stuck for creative ideas, especially musically, my listening repertoire will always inspire.

7. Guitars…I have three of them, and a bass. Sometimes just changing guitars, going from acoustic to electric, or to my little Yamaha classical, will turn a song around for me. I will play my songs differently on different guitars! When it comes to arranging a song for recording, this can come in really handy! I want more guitars. Waahhh!!!

8. The Internet…so why the heck would I call that a tool? I can’t tell you how much the people I’ve met and the websites and newsgroups I’ve visited have inspired and encouraged me as a songwriter. The internet literally brought me out of the closet…you’d think that the opposite would have happened, but not for me! My website has attracted many songwriters over the last 4 years and because of it, my songs have had more exposure than I could ever imagine! BUT…the major boost for me has come from other writers. When you are flat up against a wall creatively speaking, chatting with another songwriter can ease it away. Someone who knows what you’re going through can help you get past anything that might be in your way. Your best friend can only stare at you helplessly, but another songwriter…that’s another story!

Okay, so there’s my small list. You might wonder why I don’t list songwriting books…I have only one! Songwriting books make me THINK too much. And for me, thinking can be a total disaster when I’m trying to write! Think about it 😊…then again, maybe you shouldn’t.

IJ