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Who are your favourite songwriters to study?


davie

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Hey guys,

 

Haven't posted in this section of the forum in quite some time. After taking a long hiatus from writing/recording and struggling with an extensive bout of writer's block, I'm starting to get back into the hang of things again. Hoping to make some strides with my music soon. Recently started tackling songwriting and writing new song material. Also been to a songwriting workshop recently and trying to revisit my approach to songwriting. Anyway, I've been browsing through my music collection and been looking for some good examples of "good songwriting" specifically in regards to verse development, so I was wondering if you guys had any recommendations on which songwriters to study? Which songwriter's works did you find the most helpful for your own songwriting?

 

Thanks

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I just listen to my favorite music. I play instrumental rock so my main influence is joe satriani. i also listen to eric johnson, steve vai, and all those great shredders. then i listen to beatles, sting, and the most pop songs you hear on the radio. this is for my pop sense. i think pop sensibility is very important in making easy, likable music. lastly i listen to people talking. i find that making music is like speaking, you make sense and try to say something different everytime.

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Not a student of songs per se but Billy Joel and Elton John come immediately to mind; Phil Collins as well. No deep insight - just cool stuff. There's other band stuff like Toto/Eagles/Lionel Richie/EWF/ name 'em...but even though I'm strongly influenced by the compositional aspects of their hits, neither the mechanics nor the actual credits to these tunes seem to matter.

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George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Lennon / McCartney, Holland / Dozier / Holland, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Webb, Woody Guthrie, Carole King... there's a bunch of great songwriters that I really admire. I think there's a ton you could learn from just the handful I listed. :)

 

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I'm a magpie when it comes to copping ideas from songs and composers. The fairly simple kind of music I deal in - your basic pop/rock/folk/alt sortathing, is for me mainly based on what I think of as musical or lyrical "gestures". I collect them, then mix n match like strands of DNA and hopefully something unique and alive will result.

 

A vocal swoop from Stevie Wonder, a lilting melodic feel from McCartney, an amusing, dry point of view from Randy Newman, a grunt and a cough from Tom Waits, deep groove from Beck, a piano flourish from Leon, a finger-picking pattern from James Taylor, a synth pad from Aphex Twin, a cracking snare from Peter Erskine, a B-3 scream from Jon Lord - I've collected a million of them and I stick 'em all in my bag of tricks and after they've mixed and melded and mouldered for a bit, throw 'em into the soup.

 

nat

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I can't say I've ever studied anyone's music from the academic or artistic aspect, or even thought of them that away until your question.

 

I do remember reading something from Elton John who said when he was in a dry spell he'd play religious hymns. He was a huge listener of music and would spend hours in music stores in London and other places searching through their collections. He would arrange to do it after the stores closed. That's well before the internet allowed him to shop online. I suppose when you're in the business of making music you do that for both inspiration and to influence your own new music. As Bernie Taupin was his sole lyricist he only had to keep a repertoire of melodies at-the-ready, making the relationship very successful.

 

So, in that sense, I focused primarily on melody making and have ever since. It works well for me because I find most collaborations to be heavily loaded to the lyricist side by others but sparsely contributed to on the melodic side. Even when there may be an existing melody under the lyricist's work as a song, I've experienced rewriting them using my own melodies to ultimately become the original writer's preference. That's a win-win.

 

Otherwise, I do write lyrics and have minor accomplishments there but that muse does not visit as often as the melodic one does. Songsmithing is an art form that I see as a friend and a foe and you can't always spin the latter successfully. So, I turn to melody making where the fun never ceases and weather the lyrical dry spells there.

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I can't say I've ever studied anyone's music from the academic or artistic aspect . . . .

 

Davie might just be wondering who we think writes songs well. That's how I took it.

 

Davie, can you clarify? Thanks!

 

(Oscar Wilde once wrote that all influences are bad. That's why Jagger is good. He's a bad influence on purpose!)

 

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Songwriting I compose the words and when composing the words or verses I shape the tune in my mind. The way I frame my words can some of the time help shape what I call the influx of the melody. That is the stream of the song and words together. The genuine mystery to songwriting is doing make a decent attempt pick a subject you are aware of for a start and after that let it all out.

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George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Lennon / McCartney, Holland / Dozier / Holland, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, Elvis Costello, Bob Dylan, Jimmy Webb, Woody Guthrie, Carole King... there's a bunch of great songwriters that I really admire. I think there's a ton you could learn from just the handful I listed. :)

 

good lord man, you left out Jerry Goffin and Neil Diamond, but the rest of your list was almost exactly what I was going to post....I still like some Bernstein, Rodgers and Hart, Chuck Berry, the Glimmer Twinz, Roy Orbison, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant as well...

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good lord man, you left out Jerry Goffin and Neil Diamond, but the rest of your list was almost exactly what I was going to post....I still like some Bernstein, Rodgers and Hart, Chuck Berry, the Glimmer Twinz, Roy Orbison, Felice and Boudleaux Bryant as well...

 

You are obviously a man of sophistication and very good taste. :philthumb::D

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John Prine, Guy Clark, Jason Isbell, Townes Van Zandt, Todd Snider, Ryan Bingham, Neil Young, Gram Parsons,

 

But I dont study. Just listen to their use if phrases and words. I always write words first and let the song develope around them in my head.

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The songwriters I've been studying over the years since training my songwriting abilities. But the ones that I often go back to are John Mellencamp, Billy Joel, Lady Gaga, Lana Del Rey, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Green Day, Prince, Nirvana, Evanescence, Carole King and Jerry Goffin, just to name a few. Usually I find something I really like about the lyrics and take a closer look about what they write about, the structures they tend to favor,

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The first 25 years of playing I listened to and played everything I could get my hands on. Its an essential part of education you need to become a competent musician.

 

I started writing music very early on. Many of my early works were simple and the roots of those songs were easily traceable to the music I listened to most.

 

The second 25 years I switched to writing my own music and haven't even listened to others music much at all.

 

Music writing is something you learn by doing, not by copying others. Healthy competition writing and co-writing is always good but it too can become a crutch which is hard to abandon.

 

For me, I guess I crammed in so much listening and performing other peoples music during the first half of my life, I guess I'll never run out of ideas for my own music at this point. Not a week goes by I don't have 20 to 50 songs in various stages of development. The main themes and structures are pure thought but the details, the various parts that accompany the theme are invented as they are played.

 

The exception is writing lyrics. I approach them more like poetry. The cadence needs to match the melody but they are not always written to music. I get some kind of draft to work with then plug holes and rewrite them as I'm actually singing the part. I'm not always as interested in what is sung as much as I how its sung. Guess I picked that up from listening to Jazz and scat singers who treated the voice as an instrument instead of a poetry machine.

 

Of course the better songs have it all, the story, the message, the melody and the tones, I just find it easier to refine the lyrics towards the end of the process then be forced to fit the music around words etched in stone.

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Billy Joel was mentioned a couple of times. He brings elements of jazz composition into his pop songs.

 

Paul simon is also a 'pop music genius' who combines world rhythms into his music.

 

Paul McCartney's innate sense of melody gives him the advantage of being able to do whatever he wants with a song.

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Tom Petty, Elton John, Yes, E.L.P., Randy Rhoads, Jeff Lynn, Lennon / McCartney, J.S. Bach, Nicolo Paganini, Yngwie Malsteen, Grover Washington, Jimi Hendrix, Joe Satriani, Marillion, Allan Holdsworth and anything in between.

I'm very impressionable, sometimes there is power in simplicity and minimalism, some times more complexity is called for.

When it comes to music, I'm all ears and I'm always a eturnal student.

I recently joined a band, our keyboardist / co guitarist, a Ukrainian / Russian, we sometime go back to my place , plug in the Jam Hub and wail away at other material not done by the band. I think I found a great co writing partner. We played for 4 hours and recorded some things that may turn into songs.

He's very into Classic Rock, 70's Progressive Rock and 1980's Pop, 1980's Metal and Classical music.

Funny, how playing with others, influence you as much as the music that inspired you to play in the first place.

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