What Confucius taught about songwriting

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I have noticed that techno is getting less and less fringe... a jazz dancer/choreographer friend of mine uses more and more techno these days - and she's not terribly adventurous in her tastes. Lots of pop music is leaning more towards techno...

I bet what happened to rap could happen to techno - mainsteam acceptance, then total whore-dom of the genre until you can't tell it was ever anything other than blatantly commercial...
 
doctor_egg said:
nope
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I guess around my community just the "trendiness" factor of it has gone down. Now people are just used to it. I could see it going somewhat mainstream mtv too though. Linking park did some cool techno with their songs like "faint".
 
well people say that about alot of things. For example punk rock. Look at it now its the thing. Technos not goin anywhere, its just not the thing anymore.
 
What rules?

There are components that make up everything.

You have to know the elements, the building blocks of anything before you create something within that area. You can't make a decent molecule without the existing elements from the periodic table.

If a builder didn't like the rules, then what would he do build a house w/ no foundation? Or no roof? Run around saying, "F the roof, man, I'm sick of rules..." What about the painter who may say he hates the colors, hates the canvas, hates brushes. Or the Dentist who says screw the clean teeth, man I hate rules, lets hire a stripper to entertain them before them come in and I drill art into their teeth. Or the Piano player who doesn't like the 12 tones scale so he re-tunes his strings to a new 17 1/4tone scale. Or the computer geek who says F the rule that you need Windows, I'll install Linux for you and you just can't have Office running. Or anyone who uses the English language and says, F the rules, I hate sentence structure, I'm going to start speaking and writing in reverse word order, wait, F words, man I'm just using grunts and farts and spit and phleghm and spew.

The rules that you have to use are there so you can use them to begin to enter the area of songwriting. The rules don't say that you should sell your soul and give in and write sappy love songs with 4 chords, they say you need to use elements, components, composition style that have developed over 300 years into an art form that makes sense and allows people to express their new and radical ideas in a song form. The rules are here to free us, not to bind us. We must embrace the rules, love the rules for the rules are our medium, our canvas, our brushes, our colors. Dude, the rules set us free! I want the rules, I need the rules, rules rule.

;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;)
 
junplugged said:
What rules?

There are components that make up everything.

You have to know the elements, the building blocks of anything before you create something within that area. You can't make a decent molecule without the existing elements from the periodic table.

If a builder didn't like the rules, then what would he do build a house w/ no foundation? Or no roof? Run around saying, "F the roof, man, I'm sick of rules..." What about the painter who may say he hates the colors, hates the canvas, hates brushes. Or the Dentist who says screw the clean teeth, man I hate rules, lets hire a stripper to entertain them before them come in and I drill art into their teeth. Or the Piano player who doesn't like the 12 tones scale so he re-tunes his strings to a new 17 1/4tone scale. Or the computer geek who says F the rule that you need Windows, I'll install Linux for you and you just can't have Office running. Or anyone who uses the English language and says, F the rules, I hate sentence structure, I'm going to start speaking and writing in reverse word order, wait, F words, man I'm just using grunts and farts and spit and phleghm and spew.

The rules that you have to use are there so you can use them to begin to enter the area of songwriting. The rules don't say that you should sell your soul and give in and write sappy love songs with 4 chords, they say you need to use elements, components, composition style that have developed over 300 years into an art form that makes sense and allows people to express their new and radical ideas in a song form. The rules are here to free us, not to bind us. We must embrace the rules, love the rules for the rules are our medium, our canvas, our brushes, our colors. Dude, the rules set us free! I want the rules, I need the rules, rules rule.

;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;)
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Dude, you rule! (pun intended)

I love the way you put it, and I agree, we must embrace the rules.

I wont be surprised if the rules we know today have been more than 300 years in forming though. Even 12th century celtic music had a certain melodic structure to it.
 
I think the rules are really very simple when you break them down....

Let's see if I can sum them up here:

1. A good idea is a must!

2. You must use repition & hooks. The more hooks, the merrier.

3. The tune needs to be simple enough for your audience to understand it. Doesn't mean you can't have complex figures and ornementations.

4. The song must be honest.

Did I miss anything?

Sure you can break the rules...but will it sell? Probably not.
 
bsanfordnyc said:
...snip....
Sure you can break the rules...but will it sell? Probably not.
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Well, sell rules are different from songwriting rules, and I knew that when I pontificated, and actually, I think most people belive that it's those fake selling rules that are confining. Some A&R A-hole opens his stupid steak-filled mouth to tell the creative people that he knows something that he thinks he can sell to his boss in the mega-corporation so he can look good at the weekly meeting, then creative people hear it and say that his rules suck, and they're right. Those stuipd selling rules are the ones that get us sick. Maybe some of them have a jigger of value, but I'm beyond caring about selling anyway. I'm just interested in those rules that are really guidelines and helpful hints that will allow me to see clearer into my writing so I can get the point across thru the song.

And as far as those composition aides, (rather than repeating the R word again) there are so many, I can't make a list without quoting a lot from one of the 3 Davis books I mentioned around here once.

I'm currently working thru SLW. Davis' Successful Lyric Writing. It's even got exercizes to reinforce the text. This book is 250 pages and I hate how slow I'm going thru it. I don't want to do any exercizes and fill-in quizzes and make my mind work like I'm in school or something, because I want to feel like a free musician, man. So it's kind of a pain on the brain to do it, but then when I start to hit the ominous blank page, I am a little bit more prepared.

I used to write and I felt odd, like I have ideas and all, but I just wasn't sure exaclty how to approach it all. So I did write and study songs I liked, but it was liike I was in a hazy fog, trying to have a goal, but not sure even if the goal I had was right.

And then the old cliche that the song was from some Divine Inspiration. "I don't know what happened, I just woke up and I had this great song, it must have been some higher power that brought it down from above and I am just this lucky link to the heavens and I'm so blessed to be a sacred vessel to allow all you lower formed, unlucky humans to get this message from above thru me, as I slept after a drunken, wasted night of porn, stippers, hookers, sex, booze, drugs, smoke, firearms, running from the vice squad, pimping, and passed-out."

;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;)
 
Rules and Penalties for Breaking Them

The Rules are no more than ways to be EFFECTIVE as a writer. There is nothing inherently wrong with breaking the rules by discovering other (better?) ways to be an effective writer. If a writer creates without knowing what will be effective and what will not the chances are that what comes out will be inane mindless drivel. The penalty is that the writer will gain a reputation as a producer of inane mindless drivel and nobody will want to read (hear) your stuff. You will no longer be thought of as a writer.
 
I like techno but its; well to techno.
After a while all that looped shit just gets boring.
 
What about HIP-HOP???

Hip_Hop has the most rigid structural rules of any currently commercial form. Break 'em and guess what?? It ain't Hip_Hop nomo. Didi say Commercial?? Betchass> Is the intent to sell CDz 2 foo'z

chazba
 
you could make hip hop with real different structure if you wanted to. jsut keep some of the basic stuff that makes it recognizable as hiphop.
 
HEY APPLESMASHER....CAN YOU SAY "derivative" i DIDN'T THINK SO. LOOKITUP FOO
chazba
 
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