 Most contemporary recordings of songs aren’t unaccompanied single melodic lines. They will sit in well-supported beds of chords played by supporting instruments or vocals, whose combinations can provoke deep emotional responses in us. Harmony is not just a musical metaphor - it really underpins the social aspect of what we’re doing.
From a songwriting point of view, having the ability to use a chordal instrument, like a guitar or piano – instruments that can play several notes at a time - is a powerful tool. The chords you use and the way they’re ordered (the progression) can point how a melody will literally come into existence. But before you flinch and say ‘but I’m a singer/drummer/saxophonist – are you saying I can’t write songs because I can’t play chords?’ – no, I’m not. I’m saying that learning chordal instruments even at a really basic level can enhance your understanding of what makes songs work. It introduces you to some secret infrastructure – let’s you look under the hood of your favourite songs and influences how you can write your own music more readily. If you’re a parent and your kid wants to play something, this is one of the reasons why learning either keyboards/piano or guitar is a really good musical starting point. They are one stop shops for creating rhythm, melody and harmony. If you’re a vocalist, singing harmonies is one of the most joyful things you get to do. And it’s no surprise that many of our most successful musicians come from backgrounds where collective singing was commonplace in their childhood, from church to amateur theatre to the marae. Creating chords from your vocals is also an interesting way to use what you’ve got to develop a song. Other entry points into what chord progressions can do are online chord generators like ChordChord and Autochord. But hang on a minute – won’t I be using the same chord progression as other songwriters? Quite likely, yes. You can’t copyright chord progressions, unlike melody and lyrics. Music education site Hooktheory.com undertook a detailed study of over 1300 songs charting on the US Billboard top 100 and found overwhelming that the most common pop song chord progression was: I –V- vi –IV The most common key was C major so this became: C-G-Am-F All over the internet are debates about the tyranny of this, the control that a handful of songwriter/producers have over popular music and the undue influence it gives them. I’ve linked two but you can google all pop music sounds the same and you’ll go down a rabbit hole for a while. What I want to do is show you how manipulating the ‘magic formula’ can quickly give you a myriad of combinations that can change the music you write by changing your chord progression, yet still use the same ‘alphabet’. I –V- vi –IV Look what happens when you alter the order of chords but still start with the tonic or root note. I-IV-vi-V I-IV-V-vi I-V-IV-vi I-vi-IV-V I-vi-V-IV If we stay in C major it looks like this, your options look more like this: C -F-Am-G C-F-G-Am C-G-F-Am C-Am-F-G C-Am-G-F The other thing you can do very quickly is vary the length of time you stay on a particular chord – there’s no rule to say each chord needs a whole bar of it’s own. Try two beats on the first two chords and four on the second two. Or whatever combination you may like to try. The point is not to feel stuck in a rut or trapped, but get comfortable shuffling chords around so they work for you and your songs to create the sound you want. Talk more soon Charlotte Yates ps To read more on chord progressions, here’s a more detailed article I wrote for Musician on a Mission pps To join me on a songwriting workshop, here’s a really great opportunity at Hanmer Springs, May 17-19.  So I'm working on a new song with French Kiwi producer Monsieur E and was excited to receive his first draft last week. The tempo was increased and this, plus a judicious edit, had lopped 20 seconds of the song taking it down from 3' 42'' to 3' 22". I liked the effect and commented that the 'sogginess' had been taken out. But exactly how long should a song be? Is there a preferred length for recorded music? While there is no doubt that songs are short form works in miniature, average song length has varied throughout recorded musical history and it is undergoing change right now. Firstly, songs are getting shorter. From 2013 to 2018, the average length of song on the Billboard Hot 100 fell from 3'50" to 3'30". Secondly, a significant number of hit songs (6%) were really short - 2' 30" seconds or shorter in 2018, compared with just 1% in 2013. Thirdly, this is happening across the genres. From rap artists Drake, Kendrik Lamar and Kanye West through Nicki Minaj and J Cole to current country artists Eric Church and Jason Aldean, the trend is well documented. The change in song length seems to be hand in hand with the change in music distribution with streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music claiming 75% of all revenue in 2018 compared with 21 % in 2013. Furthermore, Spotify pays the same fee per song - no matter what the length. Some artists are putting more songs on their albums, but that's by no means ubiquitous. There are arguments put forward about the diminishing attention spans of young people but delivery format has always played a part in popular music. The entire idea of an album of songs became really possible with the LP and when compact discs arrived at a whopping 78 minutes without a flip of the disc, album length increased. 1960's Motown radio mixes were short and to the point around 2' 30" or 2'40" so perhaps the reversion 50 years later to a more compressed song length has something to do with grabbing our attention now that we're inundated with content choices. And playlists maybe more critical than albums in the very near future. It is rare that I see newbie songwriters turn up with a bunch of tightly packed short songs. It's not unusual to have tracks of 5 minutes and more forwarded, and that's not the dance mix! While it's hard to be the judge of your own music, it's a good idea to learn how to get to the point in your song and not outstay your welcome. In fact, it's fashionable! Talk more soon Charlotte PS Had a blast working with these guys at Songwriters Retreat Akaroa!   I read this interesting article written by the American contemporary classical composer Nico Muhly on how he actually composes on a day to day basis. His work involves a great deal of travel, which can fragment concentration fairly quickly, but he also has to manage several projects at once, responding to commissions and their deadlines. While the commission is the 'prompt', first he starts by mapping out his as-yet-unwritten piece's 'emotional itinerary' to give his audience something 'challenging, engaging and emotionally alluring' to 'create an environment that suggests motion but that doesn't insist on certain things being felt at certain times'. He likens this plan to an inflight map which cycles between the overview (say London to Singapore) but then gives you the hyper detail of small towns of whatever country you happen to be over. Once he's got the map-document, it can 'be coloured in and detailed whenever you like'. But, fyi, this initial map or plan by design excludes the actual musical notes. His example was for a viola concerto he wrote which went like this: *Start with a familiar set of chords - a sort of musical home base *Then travel as far away from that as possible through rhythmic turbulence *Find the way back via a sense of music panic. Then comes in depth research, and then comes the notes and rhythms. What he wants is to create an emotional and sonic architecture that gives listeners 'simultaneous but radically different experiences.' The map-document might be on a table napkin or in a text but that, and all his research notes and whatever, go into a physical folder - a very specific type - three-flap folder that French school children use. On the top, inside each project folder is the original 'map'. There are computer equivalents but the visible slim folders accompany him everywhere around the world and act as immediate triggers to reflect on each project, generating ideas whenever, wherever. They're part of his response to what he call a 'certain poetry of discontinuity' meaning his focus is on the work, rather than the (his) constantly changing environment.  What I loved about this article is how specific this composer is about his process - it's definitely his own brand of physical and digital creation and storage, which deals with his own schedule, his artistic strengths and weaknesses. It reduces the amount of reinventing the wheel every time he needs to write music - there's no starting from ground zero, but most importantly, it defeats an important myth - the myth of the scattered genius artist, the 'wait-around-for-inspiration-to-hit' artist and the 'I'll-do-it-when' artist (when I'm not so tired, not so heartbroken, not so broke, not so busy etc etc ). It negates the myth that real artists aren't 'organised' or 'business-like' or 'good with technology'. This guy has planks in place to keep his music coming and growing and getting performance ready, despite his real life with all the dull and exciting demands it can have. He has a system that supports him, one that is bespoke, one that he has tailor-made so he doesn't waste precious brain space needed to make the good stuff up. What can you do to 'systemise' your songwriting so you can be more creative, when you want to be or need to be? Would love to hear your thoughts. Talk soon. Charlotte Yates ps Thanks to those who've booked for Songwriters Retreat 2019 at Akaroa. Excited to announce early bird ticket prices are staying open until 31 January 2019. Look forward to seeing you there!  At certain points of your songwriting journey, you're likely to encounter some fairly overwhelming feelings that can well upset your applecart. One of these is the fear of failure, and it's an important one to face off.
Sometimes, it manifests as the infamous inner critic - quite shouty, telling you to not to even bother trying because YOU'LL NEVER MAKE IT, so GIVE UP AND GO HOME! Or it's more nebulous, presenting as a sneaky feeling of worry or discontent, which produces a lethargic slump, quite effectively derailing any efforts you actually want to make with your songwriting. There's a reason we fear failure. Like many inbuilt fears, it's a protective mechanism, protecting us from the anxiety that comes with freedom and taking risks. But if you're trying to write new songs, or present new material to your band, a live audience or simply play an open mic, fear of failure can seriously limit us. It's 'safer' not to try anything new or different just because it might fail. It can strike major artists who have had significant success as well as rank beginners, and it's an enemy of creativity. We literally stop doing what we actually want to do, because we might muck it up. So how do we deal with it? I used to work with a festival director whose mantra if something didn't quite work was ' did anybody die?', and I think that's a pretty good place to start. The perception of what failure is is just that - a perception. Songwriting, like any other artistic practice, is full of 'failures' - ideas that don't quite work, demos that don't get listened to, competitions where songs aren't placed, bands that break up, funding applications that aren't successful, venue owners that don't return calls and albums that don't sell. 'Failure' comes with the territory, so get ready for it and reframe your perception of it. Artistic endeavour is also rife with countless stories of musicians and actors and writers who persisted through what could only be described as 'high rotate fail' to achieve their goals and dreams, from the Beatles to JK Rowling to Fred Astaire, whose first screen test at MGM read "Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Not handsome. Can dance a little." And Stephen Spielberg was rejected from the University of Southern California School of Theater, Film and Television three times! This is the second tactic. Be clear what success means to you by figuring out some goals. The more personal you can make them the better. A goal may be as simple as 'I want to write a song for our anniversary' or 'I want to enter my original songs in Rockquest this year' or 'I want to learn how to record my music' or more complex, like 'I want to tour the US next year' or 'I want to have my second album produced by ....'. This means you measure your outcomes against yourself, rather than the rest of the loud and noisy world, and your perception of success is intrinsic. Thirdly, songwriting demands 'failure' in many ways. The proportion of songs that are actually hits versus 'misses' is astronomical, but so are the number of choices available to us from chord sequences, melodic variations, vocabulary and production techniques. Give yourself the freedom to try as many choices as you can. Spending more time on songwriting with more 'attempts' creates an environment for incremental improvement, and success on your own terms. In the book Art & Fear, authors David Bayles and Ted Orland described this experiment made by a ceramics teacher. The ceramics teacher announced that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”. Well, grading time came and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity! It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work — and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat around theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay. And I rather like Thomas Edison's wry remark after 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. When a reporter asked, "How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?" Edison replied, "I didn't fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps. I failed my way to success. Rather makes the term for inspiration, a lightbulb moment, even more relevant! Talk more soon, Charlotte Yates ps Two opportunities for Song Doctor Mailer readers to learn more are 1. Use this code SONGDOCTOR10 for 10% off any Mainstage course on the online music education site, Soundfly. Great folks and great info on a wide variety of music topics. 2. Join us on our Songwriters Retreat Feb 5-9 next year in Akaroa for a deep dive songwriting intensive, fully catered and accommodated. Treat yourself! Early bird tickets available until Jan 5.  What does your audience want to hear?
Here are some questions to answer when you want to improve your material. Why do people like to listen to songs? What do they need from songs? What will make an audience listen to your song? How do you capture their attention and hold it? When many of us start writing songs, much of it is totally unconscious and self-expression is the name of the game. Rightly so! Sometimes, our songwriting is profoundly imitative, heavily influenced by our favourite artists. No surprises there! The audience is often the last thing on our minds. As a consequence, some songs might connect but others are way off the mark and we don’t always know why. While we have yet to identify a specific ‘music centre’ in the brain, there’s plenty of neural science that shows when we listen to music, there is increased blood flow to the areas in the brain associated with reward, emotion and arousal. Songs work when an audience is moved. When an audience feels something they care about deeply, you’ve made a real connection. Creating a strong and clear emotion with your song is a top priority for any songwriter. It doesn’t particularly matter what the emotion is – angst, joy, disillusionment, anger, sorrow, regret –we love them all, and at an intense level. Just don’t be boring! Choices you make about the chords you use, the trajectory of the melody, the groove and the lyrical content all contribute to the development of your song’s emotional appeal. Quite small shifts in a song’s construction can have a huge effect on the song’s impact. Anything from a slight tempo shift to changing just one of the intervals in the melody or simplifying the chord progression or adding that unexpected chord can heighten emotion. Of course, major surgery can help your song hit home too. Shifting the chorus to the front of the song for a change, dramatically increasing contrast in the melody between the verse and the chorus and adding (or deleting) a bridge can really spice things up. Substituting stronger words in your lyrics can up the ante in a song too. While erring on the side of simplicity, you can spot check your verbs – should you go or should you walk/stride/run/stagger/stumble? And your nouns – is she wearing a dress or a gown/skirt/bikini/shorts/jeans? Is she a Spanish lady/ a virgin/ a queen/ the girl next door? And adjectives can colour your world - is it a car or a little red Corvette, a big yellow taxi or your daddy’s Thunderbird? Once you start consciously trying to develop the emotional impact of your songs, test them on an audience who have never heard them before – open mic or your songwriting circle. You’ll soon know if your listeners are feeling it. Talk more soon. Charlotte Yates ps if you want to really deep dive into improving the emotional impact of your songs, join us in Akaroa for our Songwriting Retreat Feb 5-9.  Sometimes the ideas just stop. Where once there were multiple bursts of inspiration that you couldn't wait to scrawl on the back of a paper napkin, there's now a strange and eerie silence. At first, you don't stress. Could just be your GST return needs dealing to or one of the kids is sick. But then on it goes, and song-less days turn into weeks, maybe months. Never mind, you say. Summer will fix it - a good dose of beach/beers/bbqs and the tunes will start bubbling over again. But what if they don't? A special case of writer's block is the difficult second album syndrome. Your first release turned out to be a great debut - critically acclaimed, you are heralded as a worthy new voice and things really start to happen for you, but when the expectation of 'what's next' arrives, your pen stammers and your sessions are a little same old, same old. No matter what stage of your songwriting career you're at, at some stage you will experience some kind of stall in your creative process. What's worse than labouring at songwriting? Not songwriting at all. While songwriters are certainly not alone in this experience, there are more than enough one hit wonders out there to plead a special case. Here's a list of the things that many songwriters hit by writer's block have experienced.
This list comes from author Gary Ewer who has written an entire book on beating songwriter's block and I've included it because I took considerable heart from this list's specificity. It plots a multi-level landscape that many folks I know have encountered. While I'm not sure one ever actually avoids the block or stalls at some point, it sure helps to know what may be on the horizon and prepare to mitigate it. Forewarned, being forearmed. Exploring how to deal with songwriter's block - trying to start or to finish a song in this context – requires an understanding of the concept of creativity and this comes weirdly from a professor of business administration at Harvard University, Teresa Amabile, a researcher in creativity which she depicts as 3 intersecting circles - creative thinking, expertise and motivation.  The theory is each of these circles needs regular attendance and input to keep the wellspring of creativity full to the brim. Learning new chords or a new instrument, reading up on favourite artists, going to and playing live shows all up your expertise and capability as does a decent diet, enough sleep or just jamming with your mates. Feelings of positive self worth, resilience and just the joy and personal challenge (intrinsic motivation) of songwriting all contribute, but the least understood area is that of creative thinking - something that luckily, artists have in abundance - the ability to present novel, different and alternative solutions to problems or opportunities. It seems there's really is never one way to write a good song. And upskilling won't kill your muse - it will foster it.
best wishes Charlotte ps If you'd like to up your expertise in songwriting, there are still places available on the Wanaka Songwriting Clinic this coming Labour Weekend ( Oct 19-21). See you there! The number one complaint from aspiring songwriters I hear is that they struggle to finish their songs. There are so many folks out there with reams of lyrics and musical fragments languishing in diaries or on various recording devices just waiting to be completed….(cue music!) Some how. Some day. Somewhere. And here is the cure – write more. The cure to not finishing songs is to spend more time writing songs. It’s that obvious! The trick is to set yourself up so you don’t have to think or wheedle or force yourself to do this. Set yourself up so that you don’t have to treat yourself like a kid who doesn’t want to eat vegetables, and then feel bad afterwards because you didn’t write a song today, and therefore you are a REALLY BAD PERSON! The idea is to create a process that lets you write your songs. You give yourself permission, put some planks in place, and then, just like you clean your teeth, you write songs – as a habit. It becomes weird if you don't! None of this is hard – in fact, your life will feel a whole lot more better because you wind up doing something you REALLY WANT TO! It’s just about removing any vestige of will power that you have to summon up to write songs when you want nothing more than to faceplant drooling on the couch with Netflix. The process you create (and it’s pretty individual, even though there are some common themes) will support you to write more. When you write more often and you write more material, you give yourself the chance to deep dive into your songs, and you will finish them. You will write and rewrite, refine and create, critique and tweak. And I can, hand on heart, tell you that the profound pleasure that comes from finishing a song’s first draft – one you can show someone – is a mighty thing to feel. It is empowering.
When you read Pip’s story, you can see she has a long game, that she’s a realist, she’s thought about her goals, why she wants to write and the form she has chosen. But the very individual process she has set up for herself has supported her to treat writing as an ingrained habit, allowing a great deal of continuity. Note that what works for her may not necessarily work for you. Here are a bundle of processes and rituals that have worked for some of the most famous writers in the world to get you thinking what might! Without being formulaic, there are very practical issues you can consider to let yourself write more songs.
The point is that coming back to your process means that you will be write songs consistently, and that will build your ‘muscle’ and let you finish your work. What if you wrote one song a week? That's 52 songs in the next year. Or one song a month? (like Bjork does). That’s an album a year. Just saying. It's no surprise the first thing we cover in our Songwriters Clinic is how to set yourself up for successful songwriting. That's success on your own terms. It's something you can revisit at whatever stage of your career or lifestyle. And it's one of the kindest things you can do for yourself. Please feel free to share what some of your own process quirks are - I promise to keep them anonymous! Talk more soon. Charlotte Yates 021685 561 ps thanks for all those who have booked for the Wanaka Songwriters Clinic. Please note our early bird ticket price is only available until 22 Sep.  Melodies are made up of notes, in much the same way that lyrics are made from words. But like lyrics, it's how the notes are connected that is the trick. The way notes are joined together varies with the space (intervals) and time (rhythm) between notes. An interval is just the musical distance, or height if you like, between two notes or pitches. If you want to get from one note to another , you can go up or down or stay where you are. For example, in Somewhere Over the Rainbow, there is an interval of eight notes ( an octave) between 'Some' and 'Where', and because you go up in pitch, it's an ascending interval. But in Born Free, the interval between 'Born' and 'Free' is four notes and the melody goes down at the point, making it a descending fourth.  Some songs are instantly recognisable from the intervals they use. Some, like these examples, purely at a two note level. Intervals really start to invest music with a powerful emotive pull - it's no coincidence that these two particular songs were also extremely successful movie theme tunes. It makes sense for songwriters to work more actively with melodic intervals and see the impact it can have on making a fantastic unforgettable melody. There are a number of charts out there on the internet that are a good starting point to prompt you to try something you mightn't naturally use in your melody making, although I gotta say my favourite ascending minor second is still the theme to Jaws!  The issue is not so much whether you know all the technical terms for the intervals although yes, it's helpful to communicate but that you, (yes, you!) can use them freely. You can create leaps and bounds within your songs to enhance and emphasise the direction and contour of your melody and to underline the lyrical message you want to get across. Most of you will write reasonably naturally in steps and skips - the smaller intervals where there are differences of two or three notes and that's great for an easily singable contour, but using a leap or a drop of a fourth or greater can really send your song on its way. Don't worry if you can't sing it - play it! Don't worry too much if you can't notate it. Record your ideas on your phone and stitch it together from there!
More importantly, bring your ears into play. I found this great audio example list compiled by Ashley Evelyn Mazur. The examples are contemporary but she performs the intervals so you can tune in and then recognise them within the song examples. Enjoy! Talk more soon. Charlotte Yates ps if you'd like to incorporate more practical tips and techniques into your songwriting, join us at the Wanaka Songwriters Clinic this coming Labour Weekend 19-21 October.  I think we’re really lucky being songwriters. We get to say things that many folks will never say out loud in their lives. We can get people to sing them over and over, with every fibre of their being if we do it right. That’s the world we live in. Because a song don’t mean a thing if it can’t make you FEEL something. As a songwriter, it’s the emotion that you need to get right above and beyond pretty much anything else.
So, how do you get your songs to strike an emotional chord? 1. Write Like a Human - sometimes, a songwriter will show me a lyric that I will have no idea has been written by them, because it bears utterly no relation to how they speak. They use words they’d never normally use in everyday speech like old fashioned slang or weird sentence construction just to fit a rhyming template. At this stage, I’ll ask them to tell me IN THEIR OWN WORDS what they’re trying to actually say, and suddenly you get this really interesting or powerful story coming out. And I’ll say that’s what you should put in the song. This is often referred in copywriting circles as the bar stool test. Think of your song as something you’d tell a good friend in a bar - the tone is authentic, real, intimate, conversational, connected, passionate, interesting. Like a human. Make the song like that. 2. Groove Is In the Heart - the rhythm of your song has a powerful impact on how we feel - at a deeply physiological level. It can make us tap our feet, nod in time or dance the night away. In fact, musicians talk endlessly about getting the ‘feel’ right in songs. Partly it’s the tempo and beat you choose, but it’s also the elements you leave out - every 4th high hat, or not strumming constantly through the verse. Whether you ‘push’ the timing of the song bringing a whole bunch of drive or you lay back relaxing the tension can give a completely different feeling to the music. Remember, this is the most repeated aspect of your song and getting it ‘right’ counts - literally. Make us feel. 3. Spice Up the Chords - the chords that you use and the order you use them can hit you right in the heart from the minute the song starts. This can be profoundly simple Gwen Stefani’s Hollaback Girl uses just two - Eb minor & Gb major. The Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby uses E minor and C major. But the magic is in how the chords are used. Not always with the root in the bass. Sometimes with added extras - sixths and sevenths - major and dominant. Sometimes missing the third or with suspensions. But wonderful triggers into making us respond emotionally. Learning one new chord can give you a whole new songwriting seam to mine. 4. Contour - the shape of the tune has a huge impact on how songs make us feel. Not just the big money notes but the way a song builds or creates uplift can, well be, uplifting. And there’s comfort in the sound of silence too - making us wait to land on the chorus. I’m not saying every song has to be a box of fluffy ducks - far from it - but I’m more than happy to sing along with the chorus of Radiohead's ‘Creep’ because of the shut down on 'Creep' and the satisfying falling melody on 'Weeeir-do'. Just saying, The point is don’t tie yourselves up in knots under the microscope of ‘songwriting correctness’. If you create something that makes you feel good or sad or upset - in fact anything but indifferent, then set to and finish it. We need all the emotion in songs we can take! Talk more soon Charlotte 021 685561 ps we’re now taking bookings for both Wanaka Songwriters Clinic Oct 2018 and Akaroa Songwriters Retreat Feb 2019.  Last month, I mentioned amping up your creativity as part of dealing with imposter syndrome (I’m not good enough/everyone will find out I’m a fraud) or in songwriter speak, the ultimate throw your toys out of the cot tantrum, my songs suck! Well, newsflash! Lots of them will! Not every song you write will be a number one hit, or even a number 53 climber. In the same way no one picks up a guitar and plays a solo worthy of Jimi Hendrix immediately, neither does a budding songwriter have a number one on first attempt. (please someone prove me wrong!) Get used to the long haul, the multiple shots at goal and making incremental improvements with each completed song. At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, I repeat, completion is the enemy. Finish what you start. What that does is make you commit to a process and allows you to progress with each finished song. You may have started with a flurry of inspiration and got stymied by the sixth line of verse 1. You may have found an idea for the chorus but run down a rabbit hole with the melody. You may have set up a fantastic groove but not been able to come up with any powerful lyric. But by staying in the room, you will have had to face these problems and solve them, thereby developing your songwriting resilience, confidence and shock !horror!, even a sense of satisfaction. Your completed draft is now also available to show your collaborator, your band mates, your producer or whomever you make yourself accountable to, with the very clear possibility of further refinement and improvement. Note - it's a draft! Just how you deal specifically with the ‘problems’ in your songwriting process is part of what makes you a unique songwriter. It’s what’s in the personal toolkit you bring to the table. Everyone will have a slightly different take on how to come up with a great hook or smash out an unforgettable chorus. Everyone has different strengths for the curious recipe of a good song, which is partly why collaboration works so well. A better sense of harmony, an infectious rhythmic sense, a bent for melodic contour – each of these facilities is at a different level in all of us, just as our varied backgrounds in musicianship, vocal ability or vocabulary contribute. Finishing what you start also brings up the idea of constraint as a spur to creativity. Songs have form and expectations for listeners. Songs have multiple identifying features, which tells us they are songs, even when fabulous iconoclasts and innovators subvert them or fashion changes them. Songs don’t exist in anarchy. This contributes to the sensation that they have brick walls we sometimes bang against – arghhh! my lyrics don’t fit that eight bar phrase or I can’t sing that high – only Mariah Carey could sing that high or my song sounds like cheese…arghhhh! But constraint reduces scope to manageability and makes you focus on creativity with borders. I’m not talking about a crossword mechanistic type of formulaic approach but recognising here’s the raw material I can work with and here’s the rough sketch of what I need to build. Right, let’s do this. Time is one of those constraints you can easily apply – as a defined session - I’ve an hour to work on this – I’m going to finish that verse at lunchtime, or as a deadline – Song One draft by Thursday, ready to sing at Saturday’s open mic. Talk more about er, constraints next time but right now, I'm finished! best wishes Charlotte ps these folk completed their Songwriting Clinic at Akaroa. Fun much! (left to right) Robyn-Lynn, Cindy, me, Sol, Matt, Yve, Jake, Hanni, Lisa and we were joined by Neville on Songwriting Circle with his new tunes under production  |
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