Can you learn or is it a gift?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Agtronic
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If you are waiting with songwriting to come up with something utterly and totally original which has never been done before, well may as well give up now - it ain't going to happen!

Best you can do is put together bits and pices of things which sound a bit like something which went before, but the way in which you pull the pieces together creates something of your own.

I think of the analogy of like an artist taking pictures from magazines, cutting them up and sticking them together on a card to create a new picture. yes the new work is made up of work by others but they together create a new picture with little resemblance to the original source photos, but if you look carefully enough you can detect traces of the original sources. Song writing is like that.

BTW most artists do this subconciously, I'm not suggesting they deliberatley set out to copy things, they just do it naturaly as part of the creative process.

One songwriting 'technique' is just to copy an exisiting song chord pattern but put different words and tune to it and change the arrangements etc. Try it as an experiment, you don't have to put it 'out there' just treat it as an excercixse.
 
songwriting is a LEARNED craft.

The more knowledge you have of words, cliches, ironies, and writing in general, the better your songs will be.

You have to have a method of writing that works for you. My method is to write down phrases that would make a good title for a song. Whenever I come up with a good title, I write it down. I have several good titles written down that I haven't turned into songs yet. When I get ready to wite a song, I choose a title and get out the rhyming dictionary and make sure my end word has plenty of rhymes....if it doesn't, I either choose another end word or structure the song so the title dosn't need a rhyme. That will keep you from being "married" to a title that causes you to create stupid corny rhymes. You also need to get a handle on tenses: past, present, and future.....and decide what tense you song is going to be in. Ditto on "person": 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. Mixing tenses and going from one person to the other is the most common mistake of songwriters just starting out. Another thing to pay attention to is to make your song read like a story, each verse should say something different about the subject at hand.

One of the most valuble things a songwriter can do is to study great songs that have already been witten....learn from the all time great songwriters.
 
I think anyone can learn to be a songwriter, but I think there are people who for some reason or another have an advantage that they don't HAVE to learn. It's probably arrogant to say that I'm one of them, but I can atleast say that I have never thought about writing songs, I just do it. I'm now 15 and have written around 40 songs. For me, it's hard to explain, but I find it hard to understand the learning of songwriting, basically because I don't know what I do! I just do it :) I would estimate around 50% of songs develope out of the musician messing around and thinking "Hey what was that I just did, that was cool" or something. This is why I find writing the song lyrics so hard, because it's definately NOT by messing around, I have to work to get anything I like, and that's why I hate having to write em ;) Anyway, I think anyone can write a decent song, give it a go, and expand on it. Good luck :)
 
What Happened to writing fron the heart or atleast what is on your mind and screw the structure? Who decided one day that songs have to be wrote one way or the other? Do what you love and find your own signature!!! I promise there is something you have been through that somebody hasn't worded the way you feel, so find it!!!
 
A Gift to develop

I've been writing songs for most of my life, and have run a lot of songwriting workshops. When I was 24, I'd written three or four songs that I've been blessed to have completely forgotten. At 24, a lot still lies before you. At the same time, I've known many people over a lifetime who are far better musicians, understand theory (I barely can read music) and are real virtuosos on their instruments who've never written (or desired to write) a song in their lives. I bleieve that songwriting is a gift, as is musical virtuosity. Like all gifts, they have to be nurtured or you will lose them. Just about everyone has made up (if not written) songs when they were kids... often parodies of commercials.

I've written a lot of songs that have been recorded by others, and rarely receive royalties, and when I do, the checks are big enough to take my wife out to dinner. Maybe McDonald's. People can write great songs who are doing it for a living. But, the love of writing has to be there, I think.

If you're going to write songs, or melodies, to some extent, you need to let them come. If you write songs, live with them. You'll probably find lines that sound awkward after awhile, or realize that you didn't say anything. Anyone can make lines that end with words that rhyme. Saying something is a lot more than music theory, or lines that rhyme.

Like most things in life, if you do it for your own pleasure, and out of love FIRST you're more likely to produce something you're pleased with.

Jerry
 
Agtronic- Have you thought about collabration?

Every one here has different reasons for writing songs. Some for money, some for gratification, some just to be able to say they could and did, others do it because they feel it and its a way to express deep feelings.

I can write just from the hip. Some times its bad, some times its O.K. and occasionally its good. I can't score. But if some one needs assistance I can assist usually. This is not saying its great stuff. I have helped a few local musicians find their talant with in.

The band I am in mainly plays and writes very rarely performing. We are mainly a group of writers. I don't know if I would even say we were average musicians. But we desire to be creative. I often put myself in some one elses shoes and write from what I preceive to be their view point, of a situation or subject. Other times I get into deep feelings ( I'm very emotional and spontaneous). I can be driving down the road and get a 1 liner or a whole song. I have sat at work on a 500 ton crane and wrote 10 songs in a 12 hour shift. I have had up to 4 years where I didn't write a thing because nothing inspired me and at the time I " Didn't want to write crap or be a fake"!

I'm 50 now and a lot of the stuff I hear now I consider Major Crap!!! But hey, who am I ? I'm sure not buying the stuff or paying the players. And of course I am 50.

I say " Go For It !!". Find some one who has done it and rub elbows a while. Kind of like a fire. Sometimes it only takes a spark to get started. But then again some times the firewood is wet.
 
Re: Agtronic- Have you thought about collabration?

Dyson Steel said:
Every one here has different reasons for writing songs. Some for money, some for gratification, some just to be able to say they could and did, others do it because they feel it and its a way to express deep feelings.

I can write just from the hip. Some times its bad, some times its O.K. and occasionally its good. I can't score. But if some one needs assistance I can assist usually. This is not saying its great stuff. I have helped a few local musicians find their talant with in.

The band I am in mainly plays and writes very rarely performing. We are mainly a group of writers. I don't know if I would even say we were average musicians. But we desire to be creative. I often put myself in some one elses shoes and write from what I preceive to be their view point, of a situation or subject. Other times I get into deep feelings ( I'm very emotional and spontaneous). I can be driving down the road and get a 1 liner or a whole song. I have sat at work on a 500 ton crane and wrote 10 songs in a 12 hour shift. I have had up to 4 years where I didn't write a thing because nothing inspired me and at the time I " Didn't want to write crap or be a fake"!

I'm 50 now and a lot of the stuff I hear now I consider Major Crap!!! But hey, who am I ? I'm sure not buying the stuff or paying the players. And of course I am 50.

I say " Go For It !!". Find some one who has done it and rub elbows a while. Kind of like a fire. Sometimes it only takes a spark to get started. But then again some times the firewood is wet.
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Good post

It's hard to explain songwriting to someone who asks if it's a gift or not.

I just finished a historical song about 'Desert Submarines' - little huts that railroad guys would sleep in 90 years ago that worked kind of like a swamp cooler. Anyway, I had to drag myself through the whole process to make it happen and yet, after some fine tuning, it works in it's intended context. But that takes tools, and I had to draw on 11 years of historical research, 16 hours of recearch on the subject and nearly 40 years of songwriting to come up with a song. After that it was a process of defining and refining and rejecting melodic possibilities till something simple and clear came through and then I knew I had what a wanted.
 
Desert Submarines!

Thanks for the input. Being a newbie on this site I'm a little leary about posting. Doing more reading most times but some times I just gotta have a say.
Desert Submarines, now "That's Intresting". I'd like to hear it sometime. What style?

My wife has some times questioned my writings. I think she thinks I was running around on her when I write Drinking & Cheatin' songs. But the kids like it when I let go on the howling Roc-N-Roll stuff.

My most recent composition (man I like how that sounds and I can't even score. Now I'm gonna have to get notation software)
feels good. Real good. I had some radio DJ's give it a listen and critique it. I got scared when I saw the look on their faces at first. I figured I'd get thrashed. They got real quite and staired. When it was over they looked at me, then ask me where I recorded it?
I said "My House". Well I was pumped when they got done.
Its not even mastered yet but I'm gonna spend the $$$ needed to polish it.

My son tours and lived in Nashville 2 years. He is trying to help me get hooked up to get it in a movie. Hope we can. It'd be nice after years & years of trying.
 
Ships on the Prairies

Can't see any reason why there can't be submarines on the prairies. The covered wagons were called Prairie Schooners, and I wrote a song about the settlement of my home town with the line "Ships on the prairies, that never sailed the seas."

When you talk about how songs come, there are as many ways as the mind can imagine. I've had songs come to me in dreams that were half finished when I woke up, and I went back to sleep and got the rest. I've also done songs like the prairie submarine song that grew out of a lot of reading and research. The little town my Mother grew up in had a large central park area which was given to the town with the stipulation that there could never be a tavern in the town. So, they formed a suburb of the town (which was only a few hundred people, itself,) so that they could have a tavern. A hundred years later, a young lawyer went through the town records and discovered that the restriction was not legally binding, and someone built a bar overlooking the park. I was fascinated by the story and worked with the local historical society to get the complete background.

I write mostly folk songs, but also write a lot of old-time gospel, and an occasional blues. Even a rock and roll tune or two. I write because I don't know how NOT to write.

Jerry
 
Re: Ships on the Prairies

Razzgospel said:
Can't see any reason why there can't be submarines on the prairies. The covered wagons were called Prairie Schooners, and I wrote a song about the settlement of my home town with the line "Ships on the prairies, that never sailed the seas."

When you talk about how songs come, there are as many ways as the mind can imagine. I've had songs come to me in dreams that were half finished when I woke up, and I went back to sleep and got the rest. I've also done songs like the prairie submarine song that grew out of a lot of reading and research. The little town my Mother grew up in had a large central park area which was given to the town with the stipulation that there could never be a tavern in the town. So, they formed a suburb of the town (which was only a few hundred people, itself,) so that they could have a tavern. A hundred years later, a young lawyer went through the town records and discovered that the restriction was not legally binding, and someone built a bar overlooking the park. I was fascinated by the story and worked with the local historical society to get the complete background.

I write mostly folk songs, but also write a lot of old-time gospel, and an occasional blues. Even a rock and roll tune or two. I write because I don't know how NOT to write.

Jerry
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It's been over thirty years ago but I wrote a song called 'Ship of Stone' about the isolated little house in four corners area when I was living in Durango, Co.

Thats a heads up move on your part to work with your local historical society and to get their cooperation. I tend to get their feedback after the fact and now I'm looking at major rewrites of a couple of songs about Imperial County, Ca. in order to market cds at their museums and play at their schools and various funtions. Even though they conform to specific guidelines state requirements for history and social studies, they have to nit pick. It's not like it'll ever make a lot of money either. On the other hand, I keep most of the $8 a cd that I wholesale them for and it can sell for many years to come.
 
Marketing songs to Historical Societies

My experience with Historical Societies is very pleasant and didn't result in a dime earned. Historical Society Museums are notoriously poorly funded, and despite their greatest efforts, there is often a rapid turnover of staff. I put albums out on consignment at the Historical Society Museum in my home town where I had performed several times. By the time I got back out to my home town again, almost all the staff were new, no one had any record of the albums I sold, or even remembered them

The Hisotircal Society Museum i nthe town I wrote the song about an important part of their history went through several staff changes between the time I sent them a tape of the song and the next time I got to the Museum. My wife and I went into an orientation room to watch a video on the history of the town and much to my surprise (and even more to my wife's) the background music and opening and closing song over the credits was the one I wrote. The Director didn't even know where the song came from, and I wasn't credited for it (obviously.)

Nice people, and I had some good friends in Historical Society Museums. It's good if you don't have high expectations for making money..

Jerry
 
Re: Marketing songs to Historical Societies

Razzgospel said:
My experience with Historical Societies is very pleasant and didn't result in a dime earned. Historical Society Museums are notoriously poorly funded, and despite their greatest efforts, there is often a rapid turnover of staff. I put albums out on consignment at the Historical Society Museum in my home town where I had performed several times. By the time I got back out to my home town again, almost all the staff were new, no one had any record of the albums I sold, or even remembered them

The Hisotircal Society Museum i nthe town I wrote the song about an important part of their history went through several staff changes between the time I sent them a tape of the song and the next time I got to the Museum. My wife and I went into an orientation room to watch a video on the history of the town and much to my surprise (and even more to my wife's) the background music and opening and closing song over the credits was the one I wrote. The Director didn't even know where the song came from, and I wasn't credited for it (obviously.)

Nice people, and I had some good friends in Historical Society Museums. It's good if you don't have high expectations for making money..

Jerry
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What I'm writing is mainly going to go for educational situations and the songs are about California's history and each one has to meet specific points of the guidelines to history and social studies. I figure it'll take nearly a year to refine my performance and presentation. As far as marketing to PTA's, PTO's, performing arts groups and such, I have friends making good money doing this work and they should help speed things up. If done right, music can be a very good instructional tool......if it's entertaining.

I do have high expectations for making money at this. In 35 years in the music business I've made a lot dumb decisions career wise but none that didn't make money.
 
My take on songwriting is this:

the reason some people seem to have more talant in writing songs is because they have a broad knowledge of words, rhymes, ironies, and cliches. They also have a knack for knowing what works and what doesn't. Last but not least, they write alot...practice makes perfect. Most good sonwriters are very well spoken and most are great storytellers. I have written some good songs and some shitty songs. My method of writing songs is to come up with a title and a theme...write it down....and then come back to it later. Alot of times I will come up with a title and theme that I think is wonderful, only to come back to it later and it sounds stupid. Sometimes you have to give an idea time to breath....before you put alot of effort into it.

Its kind of like coming up with a name for a band. If you bang your head against the wall long enough you will start coming up with stupid sounding names, and if you come up with enough stupid sounding names, at some point everyone in the band will finally go "yeah, thats it!"

then a week later everyone hates the stupid sounding band name. Song ideas are simular....if you rack your brain trying to come up with a good hook or title for long enough....you will say "thats it!" to a dud.....give it some time to ferment in your mind...the GOOD song ideas stand the test of time. If you come up with a good idea for a song (title and hook) the verses usually come together very quickly....because the foundation is already in place.

my 2 cents
 
jimistone said:
If you come up with a good idea for a song (title and hook) the verses usually come together very quickly....because the foundation is already in place.

my 2 cents
Click to expand...

I like your style, Jimistone! You and I have a very similar philosophy when it comes to songwriting. You are dead on with above statement. I would add that one should always "block out" the whole story in song form, without rhyme or verse, before even beginning to write lines. That way you know exactly what you are trying to convey in each section of the song before you start struggling w/ words. For example:

Title: Blacktop Burnout

Verse 1: Johnny owns a '53 corvette. It's black and he thinks it can beat any other car it goes up against. He loves to peel out on the pavement.

Chorus: Black top burnout.

Verse 2: He agrees to race the oldest/toughest guy on the street, who owns a Mustang. The guy's been racing so long he's addicted to it.

Chorus: Black top burnout.

Bridge: Johnny loses it in a turn and there's a terrible explosion and he dies.

Chorus: Black top burnout.

--------------------------

Now that you know exactly where the story is going and exactly what parts will fill what sections of the song you can begin writing the actual lines. This way you're not struggling with the story and the words at the same time.

A
www.aaroncheney.com
 
Aaron,

I'm always a sucker for a good story, especially when told in the imagery of a good lyric. Sometimes though there are lyrics that say very little of substance and are driven around by the music. Nothing wrong with Louie Louie.

Still, you have those basic elements of public speaking to put across;
1. Tell them what you are going to tell them
2. Tell them
3. Tell them what you told them
 
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