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05-25-2020, 04:45 PM #26joelf Guest
Now you're broaching songs about songwriting. There's Dylan's Country Pie; the godawful (at least in the turgid bridge) I Write the Songs---and many more I can't remember just now.
Or how many times have songwriters written the line: '...so I wrote this song...'?
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05-25-2020 04:45 PM
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05-25-2020, 04:49 PM #27joelf GuestOriginally Posted by MarkRhodes
And I'm far from the only one doing it today. And what about Jobim, from the late '50s up til his passing in '94? Worked just fine for him. Or A song like Yesterday? Classic AABA...
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Originally Posted by joelf
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Originally Posted by joelf
I'm a nobody and I write things I enjoy playing. I have fun with it. "I don't want to set the world on fire." I hope that on my deathbed there are 2-3 hours worth of my songs I am happy I wrote. They will be all that ties together the whole of my life and makes the best of it.
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^ couldn't disagree more about hal david!!...he wasn't tryin to be hip..he was hip and he was backpeddling...to make hits...which he did!! time after time and time again!...
nothing better than dionne w singing a bacharach/david tune!
cheers
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
My favorite Christmas song, and I use that term loosely, is Coltrane's cover of MFT. I think his take was very far afield of what R&H had in mind writing it, but boy, it tickles me.
Like children, you have to go of a song sooner or later.Last edited by Thumpalumpacus; 05-26-2020 at 10:15 PM.
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Originally Posted by joelf
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Some songwriting tips, including quotes from songwriters from Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen to Tom Morello and Taylor Swift.
How to Write a Song | 10 Songwriting Tips from the Pros
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From a Time magazine cover story on Cole Porter's writing process. (From 1949)
Cole Porter at 125: Inside His Songwriting Process | Time
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Silence your inner judge until you have the essential body of the song. Don't stifle the process with ulterior considerations.
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Originally Posted by Thumpalumpacus
Anne Lamott: Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.
Shitty first drafts. I need to produce more of 'em.
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05-27-2020, 11:54 AM #37joelf Guest
You're both right---and songwriters from both points of view are, too.
Persistence will at least yield something you can develop, or like better later if it looks like crap.
Worry is more complicated: If you worry it means you care. If you don't, why do anything? But if it causes you to force, instant death of flow and energy. Leave it until the muse returns. The rough spots? That's where craft---or bouncing it off someone you trust, b/c we're often too close to our work---can save your ass.
My 1st song w/lyric was sent half-baked (lyric needed much more work, silly font, the vamp interlude I eventually used not yet there) to a vocalist I'd heard was looking for material. She sent a chilly, condescending email rejecting it---which taught me an unbelievably valuable lesson: don't rush!! I licked my wounds awhile, picked it up again, saw how good it'd be with a fix---now it's fixed, and I can hold my head up.
Another one (an instrumental) just didn't feel right somehow. Stayed in the file cabinet 10 years, til what it needed hit me. Now it's a good tune.
Don't rush; work enough to at least get the shape of all ideas, even if they don't seem that good. There could be gold later mined from that 'dog'...Last edited by joelf; 10-09-2023 at 08:52 PM.
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Originally Posted by joelf
As you aptly point out (as does Mark's article too), different approaches work better with different songwriters. I enjoy employing craft, but it's got to light me up, too. If it doesn't, I step away from it, work on something else, and then return to it another day.
Funny story: about five years ago, I was working on a pop song based on the major/minor tension between Emaj7 and Cmaj7, and had really good verses and choruses written for it, but it felt unfinished, it needed a bridge. I couldn't get one together. It just wasn't happening -- everything I tried sounded trite -- so I set it aside and moved on to another few songs.
So one day my girl was asking to play some songs that were in progress but not done, something I usually never do, but I humored her, because, well, women. I launch into this unfinished verse/chorus thing, and when I got to the part where the bridge belonged, instead of freezing up, I jammed in an arpeggio lick based on a stepwise (in F) Fmaj7 -- Dmaj9 layout (which I'd literally had laying around for 20 years), and surprise surprise, it fit and flowed. It was one of those very rare moments where I blew myself away, you know? It took the piece another place without sounding forced, and then I finished up the last verse and chorus and all was good.
When I got done playing it for her, she told me, "But that sounds finished."
I laughed a little and replied, "Well, it is now, thank you, hon."
It took me about an hour to put the lyrics together for it a day or two later.
The balance between inspiration and perspiration is a funny thing, so I don't try to force myself on the song, but I do stay alert to possibilities. I remember those little bits I've written that never got fleshed out, and don't waste a piece if I can help it.Last edited by Thumpalumpacus; 05-27-2020 at 09:03 PM.
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05-27-2020, 06:23 PM #39joelf Guest
'The human subconscious has an amazing ability to resolve problems on its own once the conscious mind leaves it alone.'
Bingo. Get out of the way...
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Originally Posted by joelf
Last edited by fep; 05-27-2020 at 07:01 PM.
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Exactly, don't interrupt the process with desiderata, just sit on it when you have a little stoppage.
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05-27-2020, 09:51 PM #42joelf Guest
Desiderat a ttitude...
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I enjoyed this discussion of one of my favorites:
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Originally Posted by fep
There's something about repetitive motion---which covers walking and for some, scrubbing floors or washing a car or baking cookies or shooting hoops---that seems to allow stalled ideas to move.
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Funny thing about Dylan. He sings his own songs though he's not considered much of a singer. Yet many others (including better singers) have recorded his songs.
Discuss.
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I'd say Dylan is a character singer. Back in the day folks were more accepting of voices that weren't studio polished and with unusual tone and more variance in pitch. I'm biased towards flawed vocalists, after all I'm one of those myself.
As far as others singing his songs, I'll just say, good songs.
Joni and Dylan hitting this thread today... Joni had opinions about Dylan, I believe she questioned his authenticity. Now there's something I find thought provoking both in that Joni would say that and whether it's valid.
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Originally Posted by fep
In Dylan's case, though, I think something needs to be said that rarely is said: he can write a catchy melody. "Blowin' In The Wind" and "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" are catchy. (They have been covered a few hundred times each.) Very singable tunes.
I didn't know Joni said that about Dylan. I don't know what "authentic" means here. Dylan is very much a writer who plays on tropes (musical and lyrical) from songs he knows. That's how his musical mind works. Here's one of his latest songs (based on one from the '50s) and I really like it (though I think it has too many verses.)
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Another thing I'd do is a change of scenery. Instead of sitting in my studio plugging away at a block, I'd grab an acoustic, or a portable keyboard, and head to the beach, or the hills overlooking Ventura, and let the surroundings work their way in, too.
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Originally Posted by joelf
Joni's not caring about the names of her chords doesn't seem to me to a matter authenticity (or its lack) at all. Lots of musicians with very good ears don't care about the names of chords (or notes, for that matter): it's all sound to them, not names.
Pat Martino was playing professionally in his teens (and at a high level) without knowing the names of all the chords he played. He said he picked them up off records---lots of Wes Montgomery records, IIRC---and they were sounds to him. Knowing their names would not have been a benefit to him. (He later needed to learn some of these things to communicate with other musicians but he didn't need to know it to play the music.)
Bruce Forman talks somewhere about playing with a pianist who used some tasty voicings. Bruce wanted to learn them and asked the guy about them. The guy had his own sorts of names for them, the only one I recall off hand was "baby doll". I think the others were a "doll" of some sort or other. That's how he thought about them. That's what he actually called them to another pro player. Those names meant nothing to Bruce, of course. He had to suss out the voicings, analyze them and then give them conventional names. But the guy who came up with them did not need that.
Either way, I don't see what this has to do with authenticity one way or the other.
What am I missing?
Was Pat saying she wasn't an authentic musician?
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05-28-2020, 10:09 PM #50joelf GuestOriginally Posted by MarkRhodes
I'm a huge fan of her work, and there are few more 'authentic'. But Pat does have a point---if I read him right: self-limitation of knowledge is anathema to artistic growth---or growth in any field. Learning bolsters intuition. Only the naive or very insecure---or simply misled---artist would disagree with that. You don't have to use every can of paint, just stock 'em and know at least something about what each does.
Learning is a life-long undertaking...Last edited by joelf; 10-09-2023 at 09:08 PM.
Vintage fuzz on "space" transistors
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