Chapter 4 - Excerpt (pages 1-4 of 12)

Chapter 4 - Tools of The Trade
“If I Had a Hammer” – Trini Lopez / L.Hays. P.Seeger

1. Heart & Guts
2. Brain
3. Notepad
4. Binder - or computer
5. Tape Recorder - or computer/MIDI setup
6. Staff Paper - or computer software
7. Reference Books
8. Instruments
9. Private Place
10. Creativity
    

1. Heart & Guts

This isn’t an anatomical checkup. What we hope you have is the ability to be emotionally moved by a song, melody, or lyric.  If you can sense this in other songs, you’ll more likely know when your own work has value.  A song doesn’t have to have heart or emotion, but a good one will.  If you are so jaded and cynical that you are never moved by music, maybe you should stop right here and go get a job writing software.  It’ll likely pay better too.

By the way, I’m not limiting the range of emotional impact to the smarmy, sentimental stuff we usually associate with “heart”.  If the melody or lyrics make you feel joyful, angry, reflective, uplifted, sympathetic - it has “heart”.

Guts, as in “gut-feel” of knowing when something is really good.  Or conversely (in StarWarsian) “I have a bad feeling about this”.

2. Brain

Likewise, this isn’t just another item on a medical checkup.  I know you haven’t seen it lately, but does your brain appear to be there? Does it more or less function?  Good. Now feed it.  Listen, Read, Take Classes

“Feed your head   Feed your head   Feed your head”
  “White Rabbit” – Jefferson Airplane /G.Slick

• Listen to music.  I don’t mean put on some CDs while you're vacuuming the house.  Learn to listen critically and analytically (as well as with your heart/guts) and with 100% attention.  It is certainly O.K. to listen while vacuuming, driving, or browsing the Internet, as stuff you hear will register in your subconscious.  But you must set aside time to just sit, lie, stand on your head, whatever - and just listen!
  

• Listen to the melody.  Try to isolate it from all the sugar-coating the performer and producer added.  Does it stand on its own?  After the song is over, how much of the melody can you sing?
  

• Listen and identify the hooks. Are they strong (both lyrically and melodically)?
  

• Listen to the chord structure. It may be years (or never) before you can identify all the chords just by listening, but you can observe how frequently chords change, did they use a short cyclical pattern?
  

• Listen to the lyrics.  Are there some catch phrases where words were combined creatively?  Are there clichés? Are they used sparingly? Are they fresh?  What’s the overall point of the song?  What do you guess the lyricist started with?

• Listen to a wide variety of music.  If you listen to only country, you’ll probably write country songs.  Even if you have very limited tastes, listening outside your favorite genre can give you melodic, harmonic, lyric, and rhythmic ideas.  It all gets filed away somewhere in your brain (that’s where we started here), gets intermingled like some psychic stew, and will feed your creativity for many meals.  (OK, first lesson in poetic devices used poorly)

My listening (and buying) tastes include almost all flavors of pop/rock (except some of the really saccharine top-forty), folk and Celtic, Broadway shows, soundtracks, older jazz and swing, country and bluegrass, ethnic (world, reggae, ska, soca, South African, etc.), drum corps, Christian/gospel, marches, classical, and electronic/techno.  My son kind of filters rap and urban music for me, and shares what he likes the best.   So far his taste here has been excellent, he’s almost as eclectic as I am.  About the only things I’ve never developed much of a taste for are more modern jazz, East Asian music, and some vocal classical music – but I’ve still listened!

Read

We’re still on feeding your brain here….There are 3 reasons why reading is important to a songwriter

• It’s a great source for finding catch phrases (what we will call lyrical hooks) that might become song titles or subjects.
  

• The more you read, the more your vocabulary will improve.  Of course, this improvement will be significantly quicker if you actually take the time to look words up. (You might misconstrue the meaning if you always try to learn from context – use a recent dictionary.)  Why do you need a good vocabulary?  So you can stick words like “circumambient” or “matutinal” into your lyrics and impress the poop out of everyone?  No… , but the better your vocabulary, the more easily you’ll be able to find just the right word and use it in a way that doesn’t feel forced or pretentious.
  

• It may help you develop your “style” – Example: certain modern authors and poets have shown a unique way of combining words for new effect  (Douglas Adams, Tom Robbins and Kinky Friedman are a few of my faves).  Many older authors and poets certainly display this talent for word combinations but some of the phrases may prove kind of dated.  But go ahead and read everyone, not necessarily to directly "steal" something, but to teach your brain to look at words differently.  Remember words fill one of your 2 toolboxes (notes and chords fill the other)
  

• Newspapers, magazines (topical events and trends, "fast food", clever headlines, comics.)

Classes

• Music Theory (modern)
  Chord structures and progressions, melodic concerns. (If you don't know much, we'll get you off to a bit of a start here - but this isn't a book about theory)

• Poetry

• Singing

3. Notepads

One of the simplest and cheapest tools is a little spiral bound notebook - the small wallet-sized ones that would fit in your hip pocket or your purse.  If you can discipline yourself to carry it everywhere, you’ll be able to jot down those lyrical hooks and other phrases as they strike you.  Almost all of the songwriters I interviewed carry a notebook with them most everywhere.  A few carry a mini-cassette player.  I’ve even used my little spiral-bound mini pad to jot down little melodic ideas.  Draw 5 more-or-less parallel lines and mark down the melody – this skill does require some ear training. 

An alternative to the notepad would be a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) – I believe this is still the working acronym and description for Palm Pilots and their ilk.  If you already use one of these religiously, it’s obviously the best place to take these notes.

An alternative to either, is just to grab a writing device and whatever piece of paper is handy; write it down, stuff it your pocket and then try to decipher it after it went through the laundry.  I speak from experience.  All too often I’ve forgotten my notebook (I had a Palm Pilot for a while but we never bonded), and have written notes on just about every type of paper scrap imaginable.  Popsicle and gum wrappers, match book covers, receipts,  the back of someone’s business card, and on my hand; to name just a few.   I have never defaced U.S. currency, you have to draw the line somewhere.  I think I've lost a few bits but most get transcribed into my notepad, computer, or a binder.  Unfortunately, there are times when you just can’t find a pen and paper and so you end up running the line through your head like some kind of mantra, until you write it down.   So, do as I say, not as I do.  I hope you lean towards better discipline than I sometimes do; but whatever works for you.

4. Binder

For many writers, a larger binder (usually the 8½x11” spiral-bound) is a tool for working out the basic lyrical ideas, editing, re-editing and eventually completing lyrics.  We’ll look at this process in later chapters.

Others use just loose sheets of ruled paper or those yellow legal pads.

Some prefer to develop and evolve their lyrics using word-processing software (e.g. Microsoft Word).  This does give the advantage of Cut/Copy/Paste functions and immediate access to a Spell-Check and Thesaurus.

I personally don’t use the computer for working out the lyrics.  I’ll type the finished lyrics into the computer and do minor edits.  I like the “organic” feel of sitting on my couch with my instruments, reference books, notes, staff paper scattered around on my table, floor, etc.  I also don’t think that the Thesaurus in Microsoft Word has yet come close to being adequate for my needs, so that advantage evaporates for me.

5. Tape Recorder

If you just want to record those random musical and lyric ideas - buy the smallest and cheapest (or a compromise between those two) portable mini-machine you can find. 

Two main options:

Portable Cassette or Mini-Cassette - approx $20-30.  Allows you to save as many ideas as you want to buy (and label) tapes.   Again, almost all the writers I spoke to use a small tape recorder to capture melodic, chordal, and lyrical ideas (even those who don't carry it everywhere they go).

Portable Digital Voice Recorders - approx $50-60 (low end machines).  No tapes to buy, but most in this range are at present limited to about 2-3 hours - so once it's full - you can't archive older ideas unless you dump to another type of recording system.  Maybe some of these can dump to computers.

One of the two above would be the bare minimum requirement for a songwriter to be able to capture her/his ideas when they hit.

As an optional "second recorder" (you'd still want/need your portable) the next steps up:
1) A multi-track tape or computer system (4-8 tracks) - approx: $200-300 (include mike and headphones)  Suitable for playing with ideas - maybe drum part, guitar part(s), vocals. rough demos

2) A larger digital tape, hard drive, or better quality computer recording and editing system (12-32 tracks). - approx: $2,500-$10,000 (including better mike(s), processing gear, CD Burner. Capable of producing demos of your songs good enough to send out.

6. Staff Paper

If you know how to write melodic lines (you know the treble clef staff and can figure out the rhythms) a pad of staff paper, or a "shareware" software program for notation is all you'd need.  The examples in this book were done with a shareware software program - $30 to buy full version (After using it for a while, I found it was more tailored to creating arrangements and orchestrations, but I made do; since I had already done a lot of the shorter melodies in it).

If you don't know how to write melodic lines - you have two main options

- find a friend who will help you transcribe your vocal melody.

- get an inexpensive MIDI software program and keyboard that will allow you to play your melody and it will figure out the notes and rhythm (if you play it accurately).

Note: Having your melody on paper, with the chords and lyrics on it (a "lead sheet") is usually a necessary requirement (along with a decent demo recording) if you want to market your songs.

If you just expect to play them yourself (all by yourself, in solo performance or in a band) or if you just want some friends to record them, maybe they can learn the melody from a low-budget tape.  Only a few I spoke with scribe their melodies/chords on staff paper.  A few more use music scoring software.  The others use tapes and memory.

Personally, I like having the melody on paper somewhere - as sometimes I dig up a song to perform that I haven't played in a few years, and might not be quite sure of every melodic detail. 

7. Books

Main Tools - Thesaurus, Dictionary, Rhyming Dictionary
Other – Slang Dictionary, Quotation Books

Thesaurus (for synonym lookups)

I always thought there must be a good joke in the fact that Thesaurus sounds like some kind of dinosaur.  Haven’t found it yet.  Unless you hold the Guinness record for vocabulary, a Thesaurus can be a very valuable tool.

................. (continued)