PROCESS – Part I
This blog will be about the actual writing process, with all its peaks and valleys, frustration and elation. I’ll cover inspiration, beginning a song and crafting a song .
I originally had elements such as melody and lyric as part of the ‘craft’ section of this blog, but in getting to it discovered there was so much I wanted to cover that I realised they were asking for their own blog (I plan to post that one within a day of this, so you won’t have to wait another six weeks!).
The creative process differs hugely from person to person, and even varies from work to work, piece to piece. I am not theorising about everyone else’s process, I’m simply trying to unpack my own for the amusement of any who may be interested. Happy reading (hope you’re in a comfy chair!)…
1. INSPIRATION– “Spark / Seeing”
Bloody inspiration. I think it’s every lazy journalist’s default fallback question. “Where does your inspiration come from?”. Stepping back a bit though, I think the question used to irritate me so much because I really didn’t understand what they were asking, let alone how to answer it. For most of my songwriting life, I’d always just “feel” when a song was churning around in my belly and I’d go to an instrument and it would come. Or I’d be at an instrument mucking around, then a song would turtlehead and I would get to work chipping and carving and coercing and bribing it out. But which aspect of that was “inspiration” and how it had come to me – I find that impossible to pin down and I certainly don’t think it’s necessarily anything I did in that moment to have it come. If we speak of inspiration as the spark that lights the fire, I suppose much of what we do as songwriters or artists is like banging stones together – preparing, being aware of our internal ‘climate’ (see previous blog), reading, writing, scribbling, sitting at an instrument and playing and fiddling and noodling – and hoping furiously that if we bang our stones together for long enough, a spark will eventually come.
I’ve always identified with the Michelangelo quote: “I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free.”
As it relates to songwriting, the “seeing” is the inspiration (the churning in the belly, the spark, the thing that fires you up so much that you cannot keep it in) and the “carving” is the craft, the tools with which we set our “song” free.
2. BEGINNING
Finishing a song can sometimes feel like an insurmountable task, but beginning can often be just as daunting, sitting around waiting for a spark. Here are some ideas that might help you get off the blocks:
Beginning with Harmony (Chords)
The most common way for a song to begin for me is actually by finding some kind of harmonic bed (chord progression) which feels good to me… I will play around with capo positions if I’m on the guitar (for some reason I have a penchant for frets 3 and 5), different voicings, emphases and sometimes tuning (but I’m no guitar maestro so much of the time I don’t really know what I’m doing, which can often be helpful believe it or not). Often a melody will come to me when I find a chord grouping that resonates with me. “The Thief”, “Hymn”, “C.S. Lewis Song” are examples of this. I find the chords often can indicate to you where the melody should/could go, too… but I’ll expand on this in the next blog specifically dealing with elements of song.
Beginning with Melody
Sometimes a melody will come to you and lead off an idea. Some little line pops into your head in the car or in the grocery store or the shower, and with a little encouragement and context (chords) you can find a flow and follow it. Deciphering Me and Love is Waiting were like this. Lots of writers I know have that little mic attachment for iPod that they record ideas with. I’m not so advanced – my recording tools are my phone and Garageband (comes pre-installed on Macs). When a melody line pops into your head – RECORD it a.s.a.p.! I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve had great melodies come to me at an inconvenient time and I’ve thought to myself “I’ll remember that later”. And I don’t. Also with garageband, make sure you press ‘save’, not ‘don’t save’ when you exit the programme. Last week I got a chorus melody to a song I’ve been working on for ages, just as I was running out the door to a meeting. I quickly put it down in Garageband, quit Garageband, shut down my laptop and ran out the door. I came back to the file later and the chorus WASN’T THERE. Devastation.
Beginning with Lyric
Carry a notebook with you. Sometimes I’ll use the ‘memo’ function on my phone to jot down a lyric idea, but I find that a bit soul-less. I’m a pen to paper, lo-fi, kinda gal. I would be mortified if anyone ever saw the contents of the various notebooks I’ve carried with me over the years. They are filled with all kinds of notions, thoughts, phrases, quotes and crazy stream-of-consciousness weird stuff… but some of that stuff will spark a song later on, so I write it all anyway.
Beginning with Rhythm
One of the reasons I started playing the guitar at 15 (late starter) was because I was sick of writing slow piano songs (piano is my first instrument). It’s a rare night you’ll see me play without a guitar in front of me… part of it is a muscle memory thing, part of it is just that I love rhythm – it’s how I feel part of a song. Because melody lines/sung parts often flow over staccato rhythms (and I’d get quite bored with just participating in a song like that I think) I love being able to smash my guitar and be right there in the action of the song. Rhythm has been the founding factor of songs like “Hosea’s Wife”, “Lifeline” (off WTDWD) and “Albertine”. Have a play around with different rhythms and strum patterns and see if it helps a new idea emerge. Listen to music with rhythms that are different to those you might normally start with when you’re in autopilot.
Beginning with Story
I can’t say I do this a lot, but I have friends who write the majority of their songs by using a story (true or imagined) as a frame and then musically/lyrically filling it in, using narrative or first-person. My friend Ben says that he does this because then he doesn’t have to come up with a lot of clever one liners, he can just lyrically illustrate a character (really he is a genius and he’s just being modest). A lot of artists I admire use this method and it’s not something I am naturally very good at so I will probably experiment with it some more in the future. It’s good to work on your weaknesses. If you just work from your strengths all the time, you might start to think you’re awesome, which none of us are, and your songs will sound ‘samey’ and eventually you may hit a dead end. Plus you’ll be arrogant, which is never attractive. I think part of being a good anything, whether it be a writer, a musician or a good mum, is to develop and sow into the areas we struggle with.
(NB: People who are good at this: Joni Mitchell (my hero), Bob Dylan, Brighteyes, about a million other people who aren’t me)
3. CRAFT – “Carving”
Once you’ve begun… what do you do? Here’s where the chasing, sitting and distinctly unglamorous hard work kick in.
For me personally, once I’ve begun, I set about the task of getting to know the song. It probably sounds quite odd, but nowadays I see my songs as people. Once I meet them via ‘beginning’, I must set about asking questions – trying to “see” the song in order to “carve” it out (that Michelangelo quote again).
Does the song feel like a lullaby, a dirge, an anthem, a waltz, a power-punch, a ballad? It may be sweet at the beginning, but does it have a dark twist at the end? Or does it want to stay sweet all the way? I try not to impose my preferences on the song – I don’t want to make it someone it isn’t. This part is pretty much all instinct. Listen to your gut.
Part of the reason I am averse to co-writing is because often you find yourselves in situations where you are pressured to “finish an idea” or “find the killer hook” in a day or even a few hours. This may be good for commerce but I think it does art a disservice. Songwriting for me is only satisfying when it is personal, intimate and costly. There is the mystery and then there is the labour. They go hand in hand. We’ve dealt a little with the mystery/inspiration, now here’s some thoughts on the labour aspect of things:
3.1 Getting Stuck
Frustration is virtually inevitable, but so is elation once you’ve found the path around your obstacle.
Here are a few things I do when I get stuck:
Move to another instrument
I find a change of how I see the chords, i.e. moving from guitar to piano or vice versa can help me get past an impasse. If you only play one instrument, or don’t play at all, take your idea to someone who does play another instrument and see if that helps. However, I recommend to anyone who wants to write to take the time to learn some basic chords on a piano or guitar and use them! I have a friend who can’t play to save herself, but went and learned some basic chords and plays around with different voicings and variations of them. She has gone on to become an incredible writer, and I’m so grateful that she took the time to equip herself, because I as a listener am benefitting from the fruits!
Do something else for a while
Whilst writing with my friend William Fitzsimmons recently, I twittered this: “Warning: If you ever ‘co-write’ with me, it will involve long bouts of doing nothing, lots of cups of tea and pauses to enjoy youtube. It may seem at first like we are doing nothing… but we are simply tricking the song into thinking we are not paying attention so that it will quit its shyness and come the heck out.” Maybe that’s a little bit of insight into how I work, but I find getting stressed and throttling a song by the neck has never helped me. As with passing a bowel movement (refer to first blog ‘Climate’), you just have to relax, read a magazine, pick at your cuticles, ‘ped-egg’ the dry skin on your feet, whatevs. Go fishing or something, then come back and have another crack.
Work on a different idea
I am always working on a bunch of ideas at once. If I get stuck on one, I’ll move to the next, and the next, then come back to it, then onto the next, etc.
3.2 Perseverance
Oh how underrated is this virtue in our generation! iPods, iPhones, myspace etc… it’s all about me and what I want right this minute. But nothing of value comes for free. What’s true in life is true in art… PERSEVERE.
I started writing songs at 12 years of age. I can say with confidence that all the songs I wrote between then and ‘Better’ when I was 17 were utter crap. And there were hundreds of them. If you want to feel better about yourself, go look up some of my early B-sides. Absolute shockers. BUT those absolute shockers were the stepping stones to the better, acceptable-for-public-listening songs I would go on to write. Even now I’m still utterly embarrassed by a bunch of songs from my first record, but you know what? I’m grateful for them. Every song you write helps you become a better writer and find your own voice as an artist. The evidence of my journey so far is now immortalised on CD and hard drive, and as much as my pride would like to destroy the embarrassing stuff, hopefully it’s a testimony to perseverance and time.
3.3 Hard Work
I wrote “Albertine” in a morning after my return from my first trip to Rwanda in 2005 (it’s arguable that I’d already done the groundwork for the song with my eight straight hours of journalling on the flights home). Yet “Love, Where Is Your Fire?” was written in various hotel rooms in Tokyo, L.A., London & Australasia and took me more than two years to complete. “Love is Waiting” took about the same and was completed about 30 seconds before I had to go in and sing the final vocal on the record (and we left it until last). I am still not totally happy with the lyrics even today and wish I could have given it more time. It’s not my best.
Leonard Cohen’s famous 1984 song “Hallelujah” has been covered by over 200 artists – the Jeff Buckley version being perhaps the most widely known (Rufus Wainwright’s is impeccable too). It is still being covered in studios, bars and cafes the world over today. It sounds effortless, but the story goes that Cohen penned a massive EIGHTY (yes, 80) verses before he came to the verses that became the song.
Charles Wesley, the famous hymnist, wrote 6000 hymns. Six freakin’ thousand.
No shortcuts. Give your songs the chance to be excellent. Shove that in your cultural ADD and smoke it. (No offence to people with actual ADD intended.)
CONCLUSION:
Write and write and write and write! Spend the time, listen to lots of music, read about how other people create, talk to other people about how create, work hard, have fun, enjoy the journey!
