More on Songwriting
by Bruce Homes

There are rules to songwriting.  And they are good rules, not at all arbitrary.  They’re based on what works, an understanding of how the mind hears and responds to a song.  But keep in mind, there’s the higher rule, the first rule, that says, if you find something that excites you and it breaks the rules, keep it anyway.  You’re allowed to break the rules.  But you are at a serious disadvantage if you don’t even know what they are.
The Hook
            A song needs one line that sums it all up and burrows deep in the listeners consciousness.  If it’s not obvious to you when you’re finished writing your song what the title should be, then you’ve got a weakness.  It’s hard to have a really great, memorable song without a strong hook.  You want a line with some resonance.  Something that stirs memories or associations.  I’m going to give you an example from my own songwriting.  I wrote a song once about a visit to St. Croix, Virgin Islands.  There wasn’t any truly memorable phrase in the song that cried out, “Here’s the title.”  So I called it “Christiansted,” after the name of a city.  (It’s actually not a bad title.  Notice how the word rolls off the tongue.  But would a listener ever be able to guess that as a title.  I think not.)  So here’s the original chorus:

We be waltzing in the moonlight down in Christiansted
With a steady island breeze to cool the dancing sets
But this breeze becomes a hurricane some now and then
And this paradise be shambles when it comes again

Before reading further, analyze those lines.  Strengths?  Weaknesses?  How would you make them better?  For a couple of weeks I walked around in love with myself for having written the song.  But somewhere in the back of my head there was this slight discomfort.  Something I didn’t want to look at.  Finally I forced myself to really study those last two lines.  Notice the word “it” in the final line.  Not a word with a lot of inherent weight to it.  What kind of image does “it comes again” create?  On the plus side, “Hurricane” has some heft to it.  What I’d call a power word.  I liked “paradise be shambles.”  I sort of liked “now and then” but it was still a pretty weak way to end a line.  Notice the images created by the first two lines.  To me they seem pretty vivid.  But I wasn’t seeing much imagery in the last two lines.  Here’s the rewrite.

But this breeze becomes a hurricane, the heavens churn
And this paradise be shambles when the winds return

“The heavens churn” brought to mind that image of circular hurricane winds that we’ve all seen.  “Winds return” felt more vivid than “it comes again.”  In fact, I now had a title for the song: When The Winds Return.  Are the new lines enough to make me famous?  No, in fact this turns out to have been one on the minor songs off the album.  But is it a little bit better?  I think so.  But then small little differences like this, (a slightly better line, a different melodic decision) are what separate mediocre songs from good songs.  You fight the battle one word at a time.

Start Well
If the most important line is the hook, the second most important line is the first one.  Grab their interest and you might be able to keep it.

Keep It Short
This is the most often broken rule and the most dangerous to mess with.  Any song can be mildly entertaining for a couple of minutes, a very good melody may be able to keep people wanting more for three minutes, if the lyrics are great maybe you can do four minutes.  Beyond here live dragons of the deep as the old maps used to say.  My point being, the listener starts out open to your song.  You start out at hmmm, this is nice.  At some point this changes to yawn, then OK, good time to end the song, then All right, already, end it, then you reach  Aw, just somebody shoot me, please be done, this is getting painful.  Finish before the loathing begins and you’ve got a convert.  Finish three minutes later and they will forever associate you with agony.  But, you point out, there have been successful 10 minute songs.  If Dylan did it, I can do it.  Yes, but was it really a success when Dylan did it?  I don’t think so.  But let’s say there have been long songs that have worked.  I actually did like “American Pie.”  You could probably find a piece by Yes that has so many musical ideas thrown in that you don’t mind the length.  But it is so rare to pull it off.  Most of the time you’re just going to bore people to tears.

Except, you insist, I’ve got 20 verses.  Well then you’ll have to drop some of them, won’t you.  That’s your job.  Part of your responsibility is to edit your efforts down to the bare essence.  But all 20 verses are essential, you insist.  I doubt it.  No really, I can’t say it all in anything less than 20 verses.  OK, for the sake of argument, I’ll go along.  In that case you may be breaking the next rule and trying to say too much.

Make Your Song About One Thing
Don’t try and solve all the problems of the world in one song.  Focus on one thing you’re trying to say and stick to that one thing.  If you’ve got 20 essential verses, maybe you’ve got ten different songs.

Structure
We unconsciously expect to hear a certain pattern when we hear a song.  We’ve been listening to songs all our lives and there are expectations in our head that help us sort out a song.  Since you probably haven’t heard songs on the radio that have no structure, you may be like the fish who doesn’t give a whole lot of thought to water.  But in my role as someone who listens to amateur songs all the time, I’ve heard some songs with bad (or no) structure.  It’s literally disorienting.  The mind rebels in confusion and some degree of annoyance.  Structure is actually quite flexible.  You can have intros and outros and prechoruses and all sorts of doohickeys.  But the basic song has a consistent verse at its core.  Ideally it’s also got a hook.  That is usually built into what we call the chorus.

So the most common song form is:
verse, chorus, verse, chorus, optional bridge, chorus
That bridge can be just about anything (a few lines that break out of the established verse and choral melodies or an instrumental moment) or nothing at all.  There’s an alternative form that forgoes the chorus and is simply a series of verses.  In this case you want your hook, that element which ties it all together, to be a consistently positioned line in the verse.  So your alternative form is:
series of verses with built in hook as one of the lines

All sorts of variations are fine, but make sure you’re clear about the structure you’re using.  By the way, the structure should be pretty obvious to the listener.  They should be able to tell when the verse is done and you’ve transitioned to the chorus.  In fact, that moment should be big and obvious.  You may consider this another rule: make the differences between the verse and chorus huge.  Don’t write a chorus that sounds like a continuation of the verse.

Structural Consistency
You’re writing music.  Each verse will use the same melodic pattern.  This means that the first line of each verse will have the same rhythm and same number of syllables.  All second lines will be identical in cadence and syllables, etc.  And if you’ve done things correctly the melody will feel appropriate to each line that uses it.

Motifs
I can remember at some point in my songwriting career wanting to be a “serious” songwriter.  I wouldn’t be writing simplistic songs with every melodic line the same.  So every line had a fresh melody.  But despite all my hard serious work, people weren’t loving my songs.  It was a puzzlement.  I wasn’t even sure I loved my songs.  And when you get to that stage, you know you’re in trouble.  Then a songwriting teacher (what, you thought I figured all this stuff out on my own?) taught me the power of motifs and the fireworks went off in my brain.

Do a little experiment to humor me.  Go to a piano and play five notes at random.  How’d you enjoy that?  Unless you got really lucky, probably didn’t do much for you.  Now play those five notes again.  Did it actually sound a little nicer the second time you played them?  Play it a third time.  Better yet?  Odd, don’t you think.

People are wired to like two things in music: repetition and surprise.  And if you’ll think about it a second, you can’t have surprises without repetition.  Now this is going to get a little simplistic, but bear with me.  Imagine you’re writing a song and instead of being a serious songwriter, like I was, you’re a commercial songwriter who understands how people react to music.  Instead of coming up with 4 melody lines for the 4 lines of the verse, you keep plugging at until you come up with one truly compelling line.  That becomes your first line.  You repeat it for the second line.  Now that you’ve created the expectation, start up the third line the same way for the first few notes and then go someplace unexpected.  You’ve used repetition and then surprise.  A good songwriter comes up with a musical motif (a series of notes that make up a musical idea) and then uses it in various ways: repeating it, stretching it out, compressing it, adding a note or taking one away, starting its shape on a different note, inverting it’s shape, repeating it multiple times and moving it down or up a whole step each time.  It’s not as if you create an entire song from a single motif.  But I have lengthy intricate songs I’ve created out of perhaps five five-note motifs.  Once you understand about motifs you understand songs differently and you write with more awareness.    I do not want to imply here that the only way to write a good song is to keep repeating previous motifs.  But at least understand how much the human mind enjoys hearing the repetition of a compelling series of notes.  And we subconsciously enjoy it even if we don’t completely recognize the motif because it’s been modified in some way.  Listen to the first line of Eleanor Rigby.  See if you can spot the repetition.  If you’ll start listening for motifs in the music you enjoy, you’ll be blown away by how often things are repeated in one way or another.  That’s probably one of the best pieces of advice I can give you.  Really listen to the music you like.  Analyze its structure, its repetition.  Look for motifs.  Understand why you like it.

Commercial – Getting Feedback
Every so often I run across a songwriter who doesn’t want feedback.  They write whatever comes to them in the moment, and that becomes sacred.  That’s what the song was meant to be.  They do not rewrite.  They do not want to hear if the song is working for you, it’s working for them and that’s all that matters.  They’re a pure artist.  There are some artists who have created delightful songs this way.  But they are rarer than you think.

I am not pure.  I don’t write for me.  I may be trying to express something that’s important to me, but I write for the listener.  I care desperately that they get something out of the song and enjoy the process of listening to it.  And since it’s very hard to be objective about my own work, every song I write gets played for a group of fellow songwriters.  Sometimes they tell me a specific line pulled them out of the song or left them feeling flat.  Sometimes I’m told the song feels like two separate songs rather than a truly unified song.  Sometimes they look perplexed and say they don’t get it.  When I hear such feedback, I do not argue with them.  I don’t tell them they’re wrong.  I don’t justify or explain.  If the song wasn’t clear, explaining it after you’ve played it doesn’t make the song a success.  Instead I listen, humbly.  I then take the song and rewrite it.  Sometimes only a few changes are needed.  Sometimes I tear the song apart and start over.  And that song I mentioned where my fellow songwriters said I had two songs?  I separated it out into two different songs.

It’s easy to write a mediocre song.  And there are lots of those in the world.  But if you’ll keep at it, past the moment when you feel you’ve finished, find the weaknesses you’ve been hiding from yourself, and make them better, you can turn a mediocre song into a truly good one.  To me commercial is not a dirty word.  It just means people will enjoy your music.

Tools
If you’re going to be a songwriter, you’re going to need an instrument to work with, ideally one that allows you to work out the chord accompaniment.  (You’ll be amazed at how much the chord choices you make can change the effect of the melody.)  The two best choices are guitar and piano.  I would also advise that you learn as much as you can about music theory.  You can be a good musician even if you can’t read music.  In fact, someone who can’t play by ear is in trouble.  But being illiterate doesn’t make you a better novelist.  Finally, the more instruments you can play, the more different sorts of music you’re familiar with, the better.  The more experience you can give yourself musically, the more interesting the music that comes out of you will be.

Lyrics
Lyrics are not quite the same as poetry.  First, if music is going to work it will have a structure to it, so modern poetry is out.  We’re talking old time stanzas and such.  Second, people won’t be studying what you’ve written on a page of paper.  Each line goes by quickly, and if people can’t get it the first time, there’s no going back to ponder your meaning.  Most songs people hear for the first time in concert don’t sink in.  If you want your song to mean something to the people hearing it, it’s going to have to be accessible.  It needs to sound like normal conversation.

Then there’s the whole issue of being fresh.  There are some rhymes that have been used so much that they’re getting old.  “Gonna have some fun tonight, Everything gonna be alright.”  When you write such a line, stop yourself and think about how many times you’ve heard that rhyme.  See if you can find unexpected rhymes.  And don’t rhyme just to rhyme, it’s such a drag when a line “strains to rhyme” as Paul Simon once said.  Lyrics should feel effortless, even if they weren’t in the writing.  And they should sing: internal rhymes, alliteration, all those tools you learned in school.  I’m going to throw some of my lyrics at you.  The rhymes at the ends of lines are obvious, but I’ll underline some subtle connections that are not so obvious, yet still affect how people hear the lines.

Juan hides what he’s done
Child died, hit and run
Juan dreams her each night
White face in his lights
You visit the priest
Wash blood from the beast
You touch up the paint
You pray to the Saint

Say something specific and meaningful.  I’ve had songwriters tell me they have no idea what one of their songs mean, and they’re OK with that.  I think that takes a lot of nerve.  Every once in a while, I’ll allow a line of mystery if I think it’s going to work at a subconscious level.  But if you’re whole song is mysterious, I think you’ll lose your listener.

Write From Your Heart
I have songwriting friends who always write about ideas: political issues, concepts, philosophical debates.  Every once in a while they’ll come up with a good song.  Hell, I’ve written about ideas as well.  But I think you’re better off honestly dealing with the issues of the heart that all of us struggle with.  Be willing to admit to your own flaws, hurts and struggles.  Be vulnerable and willing to reveal yourself.  In doing so you’ll reach the heart of the listener, because we all struggle with the same hurts and hopes.

Touch someone’s heart, and you’ve won yourself a fan.