Songwriting
I just recently stepped back into my recording studio the other day to continue work on my forthcoming CD, “Tears in the rain”.
You can hear some demo samples at www.myspace.com/markjohnsonsolo
I had taken a break from the project as I was running dry on creative juice. Doing these things all on your own is really hard work.
During the project I have received alot of messages from “non musical persons”, asking me all kinds of questions about the creative process, which prompted this article. So let’s look at the process as it’s affecting my situation right now.
The question I get asked most is, “Do the lyrics come first or the music?” This is a real “chicken or the egg” type of question. For me songs have popped up both ways. I’ve been making a sandwich in the kitchen and a “hook line” will pop into my head out of nowhere. Otherwise known as the chorus, this is the part of the song that will initially stick in the listeners head after a couple of listens. Sometimes it just takes one listen, which means it’s an exceptionally good hook line or a really annoying one depending on how you feel about the song. This sucker will stick with you all day and into the night when your trying to get to sleep, and possibly tomorrow morning in the shower as well. Basically it has “spoken to you” on some level.
Sometimes a melody will pop into your head out of the blue. For me this is the most annoying scenario as it will happen at the most inconvenient time. I’ve just dived into bed and am about to go into dreamland when suddenly, BAM, a great melody will start swimming around in my head. If I lived alone I’d just get out of bed and quickly run into the studio and put it down on accoustic to be dealt with in the morning, but as it is at my house, I’d wake everybody with the noise. I usually hope that if it’s that good I’ll still remember it in the morning. Nine times out of ten though, that will not happen. We dream every single night without fail. We just don’t often remember them in the morning unless the dream was particularly vivid, or overwhelmingly sexy. In the case of the latter, you have other parts of your body that will remember the nature of the dream you had the night before. With melodies, unless it was particularly sexy, it will just leak out of you ear during the night and possibly never be heard from again.
The solution to this is getting your hands on a little digital recorder that you keep close by wherever you go. That way, when inspiration strikes, you just hit record and hum your ideas into the mic’. Mark Gibson has addressed these little devices in another article.
Another way a song gets born is through my guitar or on my piano. I’ll just start messing around and something will leap out at me. I’ll throw that down in the studio and add a drum groove and a bit of bass and build from there. If I’m really excited about it I’ll record it in several different styles or grooves and see which one is really blowing my skirt up. After that, the tone of the music will set the lyric. I’ll usually start by playing the piece back over and over and try humming a melody over it. Then the odd disjointed lyric will pop out and then again, it’s built up from there by just filling in the gaps with words that hopefully make sense.
I find letting the music dictate the lyrics is a comfortable way to go because the music should put you in a relevant mood. Having said that, I have heard songs where the music and the lyrics have no business being together. An example of this would be from the movie, “This is Spinal Tap”. One of the guitar players was playing this lovely piece on the piano and describing all the horn parts and what the violins are doing etc, when finally the interviewer askes what the song is called, the guitarist replies proudly,” It’s called…Lick my love pump”. Hmmmm. Enough said.
Likewise, you don’t write a frantic death metal piece of music and sing about love in the Springtime. It goes without saying.
This article was written as a beginning to what really is an enormous subject and I will be going into more details in ensuing contributions.
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