The previous post described the natural melody style that imitates the pitch of ordinary speech. The opposite style of melody involves carefully crafted shapes and patterns of notes. I sometimes call this style geometric melody, because on music paper the notes form neat geometric patterns that you can pick out by eye. The patterns are even clearer if you chart the succession of notes on graph paper.
At its best, geometric melody is catchy and engaging. It delights the parts of our brains that solve puzzles and recognize patterns. (Rhyme schemes provide a similar kind of appeal.)
At its worst, geometric melody can seem inane and childish, and it can wear out its welcome after a while. There are a limited set of pleasing patterns that can be formed with the seven scale notes, and all of them have been used before, so you might have to tinker with the notes until you come up with something that sounds fresh and original enough.
Many conventional songs use natural melody for the verses and geometric melody for the catchier choruses.
Take a look at your own songs. If you never use geometric-style melody, you should try your hand it. And if you never use natural, speech-style melody, that is equally worth exploring. If your melodies are always in the vague area between those two styles, then you have double the chance to improve your melodies by practicing both styles.
If your melody style seems too limited, try switching up the method you use to compose your melodies. Stereotypically, natural melody is composed by singing out loud, while geometric melody is composed while sitting at a keyboard.
Showing posts with label techniques. Show all posts
Showing posts with label techniques. Show all posts
Monday, October 10, 2011
Friday, October 7, 2011
Melody tip: The natural melody of speech
Melodies are shapes painted by musical notes. A melody line goes up, then down, then up again, and its particular shape helps make it unique and interesting.
Ordinary, everyday speech has its own shapes. Even without musical notes, the pitch of a person's voice moves up and down in the course of an ordinary sentence. Some of these pitch movements are universal expressions, some are characteristic of a specific language or region, some express specific emotions, and some reveal the speaker's unique personality. Use your songwriter ears to listen to the shifting pitches of everyday speech, and you'll find music everywhere you go.
When you have a new song lyric to set to music, try saying the words out loud in as natural a way as you can. Imagine that you're actually talking to someone, using the words of the song, and it's important that they understand what you're trying to say. Notice the pitch of your voice as you say the words. (If it helps, record yourself speaking, and listen to the playback.)
Often you'll hear three pitches in your speaking voice: a central pitch, a higher pitch for emphasized words, and a lower pitch at the end of a phrase or sentence. Try assigning those pitches to three notes, and see if that works as a melody. Adjust the notes as you need to so that they fit your chords. Sometimes that's all you have to do, and the melody falls into place.
Using the natural melody of speech is easy for you as a songwriter, and it also makes it easy for the listener to grasp the meaning of the words. You can't use this technique all the time — some songs demand something different — but go ahead and use it where you can.
Ordinary, everyday speech has its own shapes. Even without musical notes, the pitch of a person's voice moves up and down in the course of an ordinary sentence. Some of these pitch movements are universal expressions, some are characteristic of a specific language or region, some express specific emotions, and some reveal the speaker's unique personality. Use your songwriter ears to listen to the shifting pitches of everyday speech, and you'll find music everywhere you go.
When you have a new song lyric to set to music, try saying the words out loud in as natural a way as you can. Imagine that you're actually talking to someone, using the words of the song, and it's important that they understand what you're trying to say. Notice the pitch of your voice as you say the words. (If it helps, record yourself speaking, and listen to the playback.)
Often you'll hear three pitches in your speaking voice: a central pitch, a higher pitch for emphasized words, and a lower pitch at the end of a phrase or sentence. Try assigning those pitches to three notes, and see if that works as a melody. Adjust the notes as you need to so that they fit your chords. Sometimes that's all you have to do, and the melody falls into place.
Using the natural melody of speech is easy for you as a songwriter, and it also makes it easy for the listener to grasp the meaning of the words. You can't use this technique all the time — some songs demand something different — but go ahead and use it where you can.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Banish all difficulties
After yesterday's pledge to write songs quickly and easily for this month's songwriting project, I nonetheless struggled for at least an hour with the melody and chords for today's song.
I had some music in my head, but it didn't sound right when I played through it. First I slowed down the tempo and added some ornamental chords at the beginning of each phrase. Then I tried different, simpler ornamental chords. It all fit together well enough, but I knew it still wasn't quite right. Finally the verse clicked into place when I shifted the start of the vocal line from the first beat to the second beat, and I changed the chord structure from four 2-bar phrases to two 4-bar phrases.
I'm happy with the results, but I already fell short of my goal of practicing simple, easy songwriting.
How do difficulties find their way into the creative process? First of all, I should be clear that there is a certain amount of honest work in writing lyrics and music. My favorite example of this is the fugue, a musical form in which three or four layered melodies interact with each other and simultaneously happen to create a musically meaningful implied chord line. Writing a fugue is like solving a multi-dimensional number puzzle.
Similarly, in the lyrics I wrote today, I had to find rhyming words and still tell an effective story. English offers a limited number of words and ways of saying things, so it can take some real work to make the pieces fit together while keeping the story as short as possible.
There is also unavoidably an element of emotional risk in any creative work. If you don't put anything at risk, you won't create much of value.
But besides these detailed, mechanical writing tasks, and the risk that an artist must take, there are also more than enough creative difficulties that are unproductive, unnecessary, and (somewhat) avoidable. When you struggle with your material as I did today, it's a sign that you aren't going with the flow of your creative process.
What interrupts the flow of creativity? The top culprit is trying to control the outcome. It's a paradox of being an artist: in theory, you have total control of every detail of your creation, but in practice, if you try to exert that control, the whole thing can grind to a halt or fall to pieces. You need to use a very light touch as you play with your creative materials. The song has to take its own shape, and at best you can guide it, ever so delicately, in the right direction.
But then you worry about how the song is shaping up. I need this song to be good. I want to impress my bandmates. I need a hit, already! I need to prove that I can still do this. These worries are all perfectly understandable, but you can't afford to bring them into the creative process. It's like carrying ten-pound weights in your hands — but these are the same hands that you're using to delicately guide the creation of the song. These extra weights, your worries, make your work clumsy and heavy-handed. You can pound your lifeless song into submission, but it won't be a song you enjoy performing.
You might not be able to stop worrying entirely, but you must find a way to set your worries aside, just temporarily, so you can write. Some writers ritually put their worries into a jar before beginning to write, and promise to take them back out again as soon as they're done with their writing session.
Another closely related way to interrupt your creative flow is to try to do something that is beyond your abilities. Again, this is understandable. Artists perpetually underestimate the value of the things they do easily — their strengths — and overestimate the importance of the things that they don't know how to do — their weaknesses.
It's good to systematically exercise your creative techniques, to build your strengths and turn weak areas into strengths. But do that in the form of technical exercises. Don't bring it into your regular songwriting. When you have a specific goal and a deadline, it's not time to stretch your technique. It's time to use the strengths that you already have.
So if you've signed up for February Album Writing Month — or if you have a real album to record and you need to write some songs in a hurry — go with your strengths. Go with what you already know. Write about things that you already care about. Write in musical styles that you are already comfortable with. Write in your own natural voice. Set all your worries aside and trust your creative process to do its best work. (It always will!) Then, let it flow. Let it be easy to write one song after another. You already have all the power, the talent, the ideas, and the resources that you need. Go to it!
I had some music in my head, but it didn't sound right when I played through it. First I slowed down the tempo and added some ornamental chords at the beginning of each phrase. Then I tried different, simpler ornamental chords. It all fit together well enough, but I knew it still wasn't quite right. Finally the verse clicked into place when I shifted the start of the vocal line from the first beat to the second beat, and I changed the chord structure from four 2-bar phrases to two 4-bar phrases.
I'm happy with the results, but I already fell short of my goal of practicing simple, easy songwriting.
How do difficulties find their way into the creative process? First of all, I should be clear that there is a certain amount of honest work in writing lyrics and music. My favorite example of this is the fugue, a musical form in which three or four layered melodies interact with each other and simultaneously happen to create a musically meaningful implied chord line. Writing a fugue is like solving a multi-dimensional number puzzle.
Similarly, in the lyrics I wrote today, I had to find rhyming words and still tell an effective story. English offers a limited number of words and ways of saying things, so it can take some real work to make the pieces fit together while keeping the story as short as possible.
There is also unavoidably an element of emotional risk in any creative work. If you don't put anything at risk, you won't create much of value.
But besides these detailed, mechanical writing tasks, and the risk that an artist must take, there are also more than enough creative difficulties that are unproductive, unnecessary, and (somewhat) avoidable. When you struggle with your material as I did today, it's a sign that you aren't going with the flow of your creative process.
What interrupts the flow of creativity? The top culprit is trying to control the outcome. It's a paradox of being an artist: in theory, you have total control of every detail of your creation, but in practice, if you try to exert that control, the whole thing can grind to a halt or fall to pieces. You need to use a very light touch as you play with your creative materials. The song has to take its own shape, and at best you can guide it, ever so delicately, in the right direction.
But then you worry about how the song is shaping up. I need this song to be good. I want to impress my bandmates. I need a hit, already! I need to prove that I can still do this. These worries are all perfectly understandable, but you can't afford to bring them into the creative process. It's like carrying ten-pound weights in your hands — but these are the same hands that you're using to delicately guide the creation of the song. These extra weights, your worries, make your work clumsy and heavy-handed. You can pound your lifeless song into submission, but it won't be a song you enjoy performing.
You might not be able to stop worrying entirely, but you must find a way to set your worries aside, just temporarily, so you can write. Some writers ritually put their worries into a jar before beginning to write, and promise to take them back out again as soon as they're done with their writing session.
Another closely related way to interrupt your creative flow is to try to do something that is beyond your abilities. Again, this is understandable. Artists perpetually underestimate the value of the things they do easily — their strengths — and overestimate the importance of the things that they don't know how to do — their weaknesses.
It's good to systematically exercise your creative techniques, to build your strengths and turn weak areas into strengths. But do that in the form of technical exercises. Don't bring it into your regular songwriting. When you have a specific goal and a deadline, it's not time to stretch your technique. It's time to use the strengths that you already have.
So if you've signed up for February Album Writing Month — or if you have a real album to record and you need to write some songs in a hurry — go with your strengths. Go with what you already know. Write about things that you already care about. Write in musical styles that you are already comfortable with. Write in your own natural voice. Set all your worries aside and trust your creative process to do its best work. (It always will!) Then, let it flow. Let it be easy to write one song after another. You already have all the power, the talent, the ideas, and the resources that you need. Go to it!
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
K♠ Your masterpiece
K♠ King of Spades in The Rock Songwriter’s Deck: 52 Ways to Write a Song
The King of Spades asks you to demonstrate your mastery of songwriting techniques.
Write a song that stretches your songwriting skills in every way. Use all the most sophisticated musical and poetic techniques you can muster. Throw in everything and the kitchen sink.
This might be a long song that tries the patience of your audience, but go ahead, try their patience! If you want to impress the King, you must take big risks and hold nothing back.
You can't fake your way through this assignment with your usual gimmicks. This one will take real work and careful craftsmanship. But all your studies have prepared you for this challenge. So get into that music studio and show His Majesty what you are made of! Good luck!
The King of Spades asks you to demonstrate your mastery of songwriting techniques.
Write a song that stretches your songwriting skills in every way. Use all the most sophisticated musical and poetic techniques you can muster. Throw in everything and the kitchen sink.
This might be a long song that tries the patience of your audience, but go ahead, try their patience! If you want to impress the King, you must take big risks and hold nothing back.
You can't fake your way through this assignment with your usual gimmicks. This one will take real work and careful craftsmanship. But all your studies have prepared you for this challenge. So get into that music studio and show His Majesty what you are made of! Good luck!
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