songwriting ISN'T mechanical

[kaolin]

Hiya all,

 

i have been lurking around the board for a while but havent posted much. I have been reading alot of posts in the songwriting forum and i was wondering why everyone is making songwriting so mechanical.

 

I have read posts saying

 

1) do this

2)do this

3)write this

4) you have a song YEAH!

 

I could not imagine any of my songs not comming from pure inspiration. Most of my lyrics come when i wake in the middle of the night and write a full song. Or when i was overlooking the ocean, or sitting in class ect.......

 

Is it just me or something is getting lost here, perhaps i am just nieve.

 

thanks for listening

 

strange

[jonosing]

I think you've hit on the fact that song writing is different for eveyone. I try not to fall into the trap you mention of saying "Do it this way or that", but just to say "here's something you might try". You're right, there is not a right way to write.

 

If you're lucky enough to have it just happen for you, great. Not everyone has that particular gift, some of us have to work for it I would caution you not to look down on people who need to have methods to write. Some people have developed their skill through years of practice, and when they started, they may have had inspiration, but sometimes that's not enough.

 

If you've got great lyrics or musical ideas in your head, you have to get 'em out somehow. If you're one of the lucky ones who hears entire songs in your head and then you just write them down, well hats off to ya!

[Hee-Man]

Of course song writing isn't mechanical, although you could certainly write a program that would spit out passable songs. But there are a lot of tricks and rules you can learn and then use (or disregard) that make songwriting easier.

 

Like writing poetry, you can write a bunch of stream of consciousness words on a piece of paper, but that's only one subset of poetry. You can learn lots of things about forms and meter and rhyme schemes etc. that will help improve the craft of songwriting. Disclaimer: Poetry and Songwriting are totally different art-forms; what works for one probably doesn't work for the other IMO.

 

Really great songs are usually a combination of songcraft (which can be learned) and inspiration (which is a lot harder to pin down). There are lots of ways to work on your craft (the skill part), and lots of ways to capitalize on inspiration, so it's interesting to hear what people have to say on both subjects.

[kaolin]

perhaps i was a little harsh, b/c looking at my own personal experiance, i have listened and practiced many rhyming schemes. So i guess this deeply influences my music, and songwriiting. Don't get me wrong, suggestions are great, if they weren't i wouldnt be reading all these posts right.

 

I am sure we can go back to the ol' cliche "Different stokes for different folks" but just reading some (some not most, some; alot of the writings on here are much better than mine will ever be) of the lyrics on here seem liike the author is writing about something that he/she is not familer with or has no experiance in but it just fits the writing scheme. Perhaps this is what catches my eye the most, but i never put down anyones music.

 

I do it [write music] for self-fullfillment like a lot of people that i know, so to each his/her own, right.

 

have a great day

[BryanMichael]

The funny thing is, everybody thinks that their songwriting comes from "the heart"- Songwriting is an art AND a craft.

Crafts (craftsmanship) are skills that can be learned, honed, and still given the individual creativity of the creator. Like building a cabinet.

-B

[kaolin]

^^^^

 

very good point there BM, but the thing is that in woodwork one still needs an imagination to go along with working with his/her tools. My father being into woodwork would have never made the stuff he did without an imagination. This is what i am getting at, of course without my knwledge of chords and rhyme schemes i would not write songs the way i do...

 

It is a combination of inspiration and craftsmanship, but i beleive that many of the songs that we are forced to listen to on the radio (if we choose to listen to the radio) are.....well not genuine and are forced out.

 

Look to your favorite songwriter (be it someone else or yourself) i am sure you will know what i am talking about when i say that songs should come from the heart or soul...

 

just my thoughts

[WattsUrizen]

Well, was the way that Bach and Beethoven and Mozart manipulated form and melody mechanical?

 

Like Brian says, music requires craftsmanship.

 

Intelligent craftsmanship and genuine emotion are definitely not mutually exclusive. In fact, often they are one and the same thing.

 

In a way, songwriting is mechanical, and I do think it is naive to think otherwise.

[kaolin]

i think we are arguing the same point here, all musicians have to start out with something and then build on it....

 

Lets look at it this way, how can you use your tools and your craftsmanship if you dont have wood to work on. We all need a little piece of wood to build on, just like we need a lyric, a riff, a simple note to build on. I believe it starts with inspiration and then it builds.....

 

I know that there are better songwriters in here, better than i will ever be. I am not trying to change minds, but to find answers (i guess) to improve my music. Isn't that why we are here?

 

thanks

[WattsUrizen]

I agree, you need some inspiration to start with. You can't construct inspiration using mechanical or systematic methods. It sounds convoluted.

 

But once you have that inspiration, you must use all your intelligence, feeling, and craftsmanship to use that inspiration to create the whole song.

[Brain of J]

It's like anything else you do a lot. You have a certain style, you set certain rules for yourself and you always write within that. It's not mechanical, it's a style.

[BryanMichael]

OK guys- I'm not saying that songwriting IS mechanical, but that their are mechanics involved. Like the use of language for example, or structure. Can you write a song without either?

Sure-go ahead-no one is stopping you. But "most" of the songs we know and love (in general) are based around a certain structure or variations of that structure which help make them seem "complete" when working in this particular idiom. (i.e. Western culture pop music -Don't go off on a tagent about all the varieties or genres of rock, country etc. I am using "pop" here in it's truest form-popular music-in other words, music that is embraced by people in it's more basic forms that is relatively simple in composition) This includes metal, pop, rock, alt, emo, country, etc...... just about anything theat people visiting this forum is listening to. I am not including instrumental "songs" in this because those are merely "compositions" as a song in the general accepted sense contains lyrics.

Having established that, I understand that we as a society have embraced abstraction within the arts at every level during the twentieth century and everyone feels that they are entitled to their "art". While I won't disagree that anyone is entitled to their creative outlet, I will state that this has caused a great deal of confusion on how to criticize (in the classic sense of the word) and understand any given work-thus context has become more important than content. Now-

having said that, I feel that most people coming to a songwriting forum in general are wanting to improve their "traditional" songwriting skills for working within the "pop" idiom.

If you want to compose 15 minute instumental passages and paint word pictures with language, go right ahead-that may be cool. But in the true sense that isn't "songwriting" and I don't understand why someone would visit here expecting that others could contribute to their "skills" if they are intent on doing whatever they want and claiming that anything goes.

While I will concede that various genres will allow for varying exceptions to established general songwriting forms, most...in fact I can't think of one that doesn't...writers in the pop idiom are following traditional songwriting mechanics. Everyone from Bono to Incubus to Sting to SOAD to Shania Twain. And improving those skills is why most people are here. So is songwriting mechanical? well, an earlier poster made a good point about a computer just spitting out lyrics, so NO it isn't, but there are mechanics involved. if you want to advance a storyline, you can do this: OR if you get stuck at the seconf verse try this: OR if you need to rhyme something here, you can try this exercise: ETC....

 

Peace,

Bryan