It seems at the moment I’m hearing about the creative process of musicians, mostly surrounding how to start writing a song, so I thought today I might look at this more in depth.
To begin with I have been drawn towards (for your typical pop/rock song) writing the words first. This is useful as you get an idea of what to do with the music once you have your lyrical ideas, which can even been text or poetry. When you look at bands like BLINK-182 a lot of their hits started off as words on a page that were then put to music, which gives it this free sort of monologue feel that really makes their sound feel unique. It can also be seen in the hit White Room by Cream, when Peter Brown wrote a monologue about the room he was in that was later put to music by the band. This is an especially interesting form of writing as again, you have all your ideas set out on the table and after that you can begin to choose the tonality and texture in accordance with the words and their meaning/significance. The only issue I can see with this however is quite simply making the syllables fit, especially for people using poetry/words that don’t rhyme, however this is easily fixed and the pro’s of having all your lyrical ideas written down before you vastly outweighs the worries that come with making the words “fit”.
Another technique used for songwriting I quite like is the creation of the chorus first, with the verses and instrumentals built up around this. I find this is a solid technique for writing, especially with popular music as it gives you an idea of where the song is going before its even complete as you are focusing on the “hook” of the song. The infamous Strawberry Fields forever used this technique, as they started with what would become the chorus but however they then mixed two songs together rather than create something with the specific purpose of fitting with the chorus. I will not go into the fascinating recording process and complete backstory in this entry, however trust me – its coming!
Quite possibly my favourite at the moment however is starting off with your main chords, this is very common in 2000s pop rock and even some classical as you begin with your chords, which then leads you to ideas for the words. However, the most interesting part is when you come to the chorus you simply use the same chords, not changing them out for something new. The diversity is created quite simply by muting your chords during the verse, then striking/strumming during the chorus and instrumental. The reason I like this so much is there isn’t much complexity, but for musicians just having several chords in a pattern can inspire the lyrics, with little need to think about what is going to be used later in the song. Examples include another BLINK-182 song, “Josie” in which the use of the same chord pattern, but with varying playing techniques forms the basis for the entire song.
Finally, when I tuned into Jools Holland last night, there was an interview with Jimmy Webb, an American songwriter, famous for hit platinum singles and extremely successful collaborations, any of which I had embarrassingly never heard of before. One thing he mentioned during his interview was that he liked “to start with the song title, you can always change it later” … ”but it’s what I like to do.” This struck me as revolutionary in terms of my own compositions, as he went onto further explain that beginning with a title gives you an idea of what the piece is about, which has been my focus across the other three techniques, and with the addition of the ability to change the song name, it seems it is a much better approach when you wish to have starting idea which could potentially sum up verse, chorus, instrumental, lyrics and anything else.
It is always interesting to me to see the way you can pick apart a composer’s creative process, but as ever the best way to truly understand this is practice. This was just a quick entry to talk about my recent interest with a few examples for reference.
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Thank you and remember to always stay inspired!
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