A Good songwriter to study? Dylan? Paul Simon?

I have decided I might want to study from the ground up the songwriting of someone I DONT know too well, who I'm only familiar with... someone I respect but don't have any awe or emotional attachment to.

I am really just trying to go back-to-basics, learn how to spin interesting melodies on top of more or less simple chords.

I came up with a mental list:

Bob Dylan

Paul Simon

Bruce Springsteen

Beatles (they might be too complex?)

Stones (if I am feeling bluesy)

Led Zeppelin (if I want to learn riffs, etc.)

Any suggestions for who's good to start with? Again... I just feel I need to get better at singing melodies over chords, feeling the scales so to speak, etc.

My plan is to buy a "complete songbook" and like 4 CDs and get working.

I'd appreciate your suggestions/insights to this approach.

Based on what you've said about wanting to go back to "basics", I would start with early Beatles, or most rock 'n roll from the late '50s early '60s. That was the age of the 3 minute pop song. If you can write a great hook, no matter what direction you go from there, or how much you experiment with the form, your music will always have that "pop" sensibility that the majority of people will be able to connect with.

I think that's why much of the Beatles more experimental later stuff still connected with people (besides the fact that they were the Beatles); no matter how "out there" the music got, they never lost the hooks and the melodies, because they'd already mastered how to write a solid, 3 minute pop song early on in their musical careers.

So yeah--early Beatles, or any early rock 'n roll such as that of Elvis, Buddy Holly, etc. is a good foundation to build off of.

Then you can branch off into Dylan, or Simon, or Springsteen, or wherever your muse takes you.

Of course, this is just my opinion.

It all depends on what you want to come out with. If it was me, I'd go with Paul Simon. He's got the deepest roots, and is the most song-conscious writer you've got there. The beatles and Dylan went off the chart a lot of the time, and only got away with it because of their talent/reputation. Simon is a more pure songwriter.

I'm with Chicken Monkey on Dylan. You'd be studying raw talent and there's not much you can learn from that. Now that he's become willing to talk about what he does with some level of sincerety, even he admits that he can't do what "Dylan" did.

The Beatles, however, are wonderful -- even with the "off the chart" stuff. I think it's important to be able to pick the winners and to understand why something works -- and why something else doesn't. They used simple chords and, even in a lot of the weaker songs, are more melodically interesting than most pop songwriters.

Paul Simon is a songwriter's songwriter. His best stuff is at least as complex as the Beatles, though.

The Stones and Springsteen are great storytellers and use simple chords but, for the most part, don't have very interesting melodies -- most rock'n'roll doesn't provide a lot of melodic interest (often, almost no melody at all) -- arrangement and production provide a lot the interest and emotional impact.

Led Zeppelin?

Your list only includes songwriters who perform their own material. Have you considered writers whose songs are widely covered with commercial success?

kurdy's late '50s early '60s suggestion is good -- King/Goffin, Leiber/Stoller, the entire Motown Pantheon, and a lot of others. These writers' songs were even covered by the Beatles and Stones. Simple chords, actual melodies.

I like listening to a bunch of covers of a particular songwriter's work to dig around for whatever magic spoke to all those performers so strongly that they decided to play those songs.

I'll recommend someone off your list: Hank Williams.

Complete Songbook & 40 Greatest Hits will both set you back about $40. That's a lot of learning for very little.

Williams is about as back-to-basics as it gets. Three chords, great melodies and lyrics, simple arrangements. I wouldn't doubt that any songwriter on your list hasn't learned something from ole Hank.

Having said that, I'd say go with the songwriter(s) that are calling deeply to you. And instead of 4 CDs, why not just get a greatest hits compilation from four different songwriters and their "best of" songbooks? That way, you'll be on your way to building a solid songwriters home reference library.

Later, you may want to dig into Gershwin, Porter, Berlin and all those other Golden Age of Song guys. I don't know any songwriter of considerable merit who hasn't studied them. Most of the chord changes look terrifying: but if you reduce the chords to their basic major & minor forms, you'll find that they can be relatively simple to play. At the very least, learn Gershwin's "I've Got Rhythm," which has one of the most widely used chord progressions in songwriting. The only one more often used is the blues changes.

By the way, most of the Beatles songs are pretty straight-ahead; the arrangments can get complex, even on the early stuff. Most their stuff still sounds great on just an acoustic guitar--which is really the test for me of any great song, can it sound great with just an acoustic guitar (or piano) and a voice?

Whew! Long-winded post. Good luck! Keep writing!

Hey thanks for all the info. Hank Williams is definitely worth checking out, I had not considered him at all.

I think anyone of these guys will do, because I still can go a long way in terms of developing melody. I think my biggest problem is "hearing" the scale hidden within a chord; being able to sing and get it to "fit" inside the chords. I can sing songs OK but I haven't devoted time towards playing and developing a melody of my own.

I am not opposed to going off my "list", that's just the people who came to mind at first.

I have also thought about the 1920/30's songwriters but I cannot find a good book of them on top of a matching CD collection (I don't want to buy a book of 100 songs for 15 songs that might overlap with 2 CDs of material, etc.)

+1

So yeah--early Beatles, or any early rock 'n roll such as that of Elvis, Buddy Holly, etc. is a good foundation to build off of.

+1

I'd hold off on the Golden Age guys; they're worth studying, but are probably not a good starting point. Hank Williams is a great idea, although his duds are a lot less interesting than Simon's or the Beatles' duds ("Mind Your Own Business", I anticipate, would not be a fruitful study). If we're not opposed to country, Willie Nelson is easy to find, and he has a crowd of stellar tunes that should show you alot about how a song should work. Crazy, Hello Walls, etc., and then you could get his Stardust album and songbook as a gateway drug for the Golden age stuff. Wow--circular post!

What kind of music you enjoy/want to write? Depending on your interests/instrument any of the Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Buddy Holly, King/Goffin or Motown songbooks would be an excellent place to start.

That being said, I certainly spent/wasted a lot of time studying the songs of people on this list (as well as the ones on your initial list), and while I learned some useful techniques and approaches what I ultimately got out of it is that great songwriters are great on their own terms and you need to find your own voice and define your own terms if you want to get anywhere at all.

Thanks for everyone's advice.

Yeah I know one must find the original voice... and that's certainly a challenge for me. But the reason I'm thinking of doing this is more to increase my ability to play better and really feel how the chords and melody inter-relate.

When I first started I had a "punk" attitude that I should not bother learning any songs and just practice chord changes and theory. Of course, the melodies would "magically" come later. I am no academic but, relatively speaking, my theory is a lot better than my intuitive feeling for the music. This is somehow the result of growing up and having your friends tell you Nirvana and Nine inch nails are the best bands to ever exist.

If it's a band I don't have any deepseated attachment to, I think it will be easier for me to learn objectively (instead of saying, Geez I don't sound nearly as good as idol #3), plus it will be a breath of fresh air, so to speak.

That is why I was thinking, someone who has interesting melodies on pretty basic chord changes, like Paul Simon, would be good for that. The music I hope to make is "pop" although not in today's sense of Justin Timberlake. Just good concise songs at heart, to start with at least.

i don't think i've ever really "studied" any songwriters. I've learned the tunes of some, but what do you mean by 'study?'

i got a lot of ideas from learning stevie wonder songs to teach to my students to sing.

I think what SD means is to take a more analytical approach to listening, and figure out the elements that make a song effective, rather than just learning the chords and lyrics.

I would suggest also picking up some books on the subject. There are tons of books available about songwriting. Two I've found tremendously helpful are "Writing Music for Hit Songs" by Jai Josephs, and "88 Songwriting Wrongs and How To Right Them" by Pat and Pete Luboff (the chapters on pitching songs and publishing are pretty outdated now, but the ones on songwriting are still some of the best I've read). Of course, reading about music is not as effective as actually listening to it, but one coupled with the other can't be beat.

As the books will tell you, rules are just guidelines, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with breaking the rules and being creative. But if you at least start with a solid understanding of the rules, it allows you clearer judgement later on about which ones to break and which ones to follow.

My recommendation would be to spend some time with Hank Williams or get a book/recording of some traditional ballads and songs -- I've got an old everything Hank ever wrote book and an old Joan Baez songbook I picked up at an auction and they're a fabulous wealth of information about songform and lyrical tropes.

Also, the melodies in these books are direct and indellible -- unlike say Dylan, Springsteen, or the Stones who are all very rhythmic, delivery-oriented songwriters who shift their melodies at will.

your only a product of your influences... in the end you'll probaly end up sounding like a melting pot of your influences so study music you enjoy listening to

Curt Kirkwood

John Denver

I'd consider Ray Davies of The Kinks. Start with a compilation of the early hits and then explore Something Else, Arthur, and beyond.

I would recommend learning your scales... where it ALL started from.

Vocally i mean.... thats why they finally enlisted recruits from the vocal world into the musicians unions. for a long time it was a war but come on if u play it u sing it too. and the vocal is an instrument too...

like open E on a bass or gtr is like singing from your chest cavity and the high open e on gtr is from the head cavities....

so when u have to sing a hi pitch think head and hi and it should hit on the money right out of ya voc chords. and of course same thing with low pitches think chest and low.

Jacques Brel

Seriously... how to turn a few simple chords (in many cases, literally 3 or 4 chord songs) into grandiose and impassioned pop music that can stand along folk, 50s/60s pop, AND classical music (and somehow seem in the same vein with all of them). Maybe not quite the style you're going for (which is actually the important thing here... don't "study" someone just because you feel you're supposed to, like it's guitarist law [and feel free to admit that Led Zeppelin ACTUALLY really does suck])... but still, he was a huge influence on Dylan, Bowie, etc... If you take the songs down to the bare bones (chords and melody), it's amazing how byzantine yet universal essentially simple songs can be ("Ne Me Quitte Pas" is a classic example).

John Lydon

Oh I know you ditn't just say that a band sucked.

BRB, I'm gonna go whip up a 3 page reply as to why you can't say a band "sucks."