How much does a songwriter need to know about music?

It's a reasonable question, especially for a writer that doesn't have aspirations to be a performer. If you've got a basic level of skill on your instrument and you're writing your songs, haven't you got what you need? After all, you don't have to be a great singer to write a great melody....so do you have to be a great musician to write a great song?

The short answer is, no, you don't. But I think the real answer lies in how we choose to define "great"....and in my opinion, the qualities that make a great musician can absolutely help you be a better songwriter.

We can probably all agree that the ability to play blazing fast scales doesn't necessarily help your songwriting. But more thorough knowledge of your instrument and its possibilities absolutely does, because it gives you more options to choose from. So when we talk about technique.and skill, we're talking about the ability to conceive and execute a wider variety of musical ideas.

On the guitar, this might mean knowing six or seven ways to play a C chord instead of just one. Or knowing how drop-D tuning changes the way you finger your basic open chords. (A topic for an entire article in itself, of course, but you get the point). If you're a pianist, maybe it means learning some new left-hand patterns that "drive" your songs more. Or learning a classical etude (literally "study") that develops finger dexterity and therefore allows you to reach chord voicings that you couldn't reach before. On any instrument, it could mean knowing the difference between a blues shuffle and a Western swing feel (hint....listen to the drummer!), or what a band does to make a power ballad lift at the chorus (it's all about dynamics and texture). Any time you can increase your musical vocabulary you give yourself more creative options for songwriting, and having more options will probably make you a better (or at least, more versatile) songwriter.

There's a lot to be said for the classic country song model, and part of what makes the classic old-school writers so great is their ability to make moving, memorable music with a limited number of musical options. But modern pop, rock, and country music has room for a wider vocabulary, and the modern listener has come to expect more different sounds. I look at the variety of music my average teenage student has on their I-Pod, and I see everything from Timbaland to Sugarland, the Beatles to Bocephus. They aren't confining themselves, so why should we? This is a major slice of the audience we want to reach, and a writer with a wide musical vocabulary probably has a better ability to reach them.

So how much should a songwriter know about music? In my opinion the answer is, as much as possible...that is, if you want to be a professional writer with the ability to reach a wide and diverse audience. So that means learning to listen for new sounds. Learning to know your chosen instrument better, whether you take lessons or just open your ears and explore. Learning to identify what makes a song compelling, whether it's a dramatic chord change, a driving rhythm, or fluid melodic phrasing. One of the amazing things about music is that there's always something else to learn, no matter how much you know. And that also keeps us engaged, challenged, and stimulated as writers and artists....and that's as worthwhile a goal as that number one hit.

Are You In The Groove?

Duke Ellingon famously wrote “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing”. Swing is not a term we hear a lot in modern music, but we do hear proof of what the Duke meant every day.

If you listen to musicians talk to each other, you might hear them use words like “groove” and “pocket” to describe how they play. Those terms are the modern equivalent of Duke’s swing. Country music certainly does swing when it’s played well, and sometimes it grooves or even rocks. What does all this mean, and especially what does it mean to songwriters?

Of course, we’re talking about rhythm, and how music is played to make it feel good. We’ve all had the experience of being caught by the feeling of a song before we’re even clear what the words are. “Groove”, “swing”, and “pocket” are terms musicians use to describe what happens when the music feels the way it should....when all the parts are in balance and each element plays its appropriate role without overshadowing the others.

Understanding this concept is important to any songwriter whether you are a performer or not. To many that do perform, it’s second nature and part of what makes being onstage so gratifying....the visceral sense of making and being moved by music on a physical, gut level. But even if you never set foot on a stage or in a recording studio, as a songwriter you want to know what your song FEELS like.....how it grooves.....and the more you know about how those sounds are produced the easier it is to play them or to communicate them to someone else who might play for you.

At the heart of this is quite literally what we might call the heartbeat of the song, the pulse. Is it fast or slow? How does it feel in your body? A hard-hitting uptempo tune might quicken the pulse, while a ballad might feel spacious and relaxed. The pulse is a constant presence through the song, and whether it’s being actually played or not it is meant to be felt.

That pulse becomes the foundation of the rest of the rhythm of the song when it is divided up, generally into pairs in which one pulse is stressed and one isn’t. A drummer alternating between the bass (kick) drum and snare drum would illustrate this nicely: two different sounds, one low and one high, with one accented more strongly than the other. Many if not most different rhythmic “feels” can be ultimately broken down to this simple alternation of stressed and unstressed, low pitched and high pitched sounds. When those two parts sound balanced and “feel” natural, we’re in the groove.

Now think of a piano player playing those alternating sounds with the left and right hands producing the lows and highs. Or imagine a guitar strummed back and forth, and hear the difference in tone and stress between the down and upstrokes of the arm. These are the essential elements of groove. Different kinds of grooves are created by changing the pattern of accents, shifting beats around, or simply adding or subtracting beats or subdivisions of the pulse.

This is of course a very general overview, but you will find that the concept applies to virtually any style of music or any kind of feel you might want your song to have. Listen for these elements when you hear music, and listen to how different instruments and instrumentalists use them to bring a song to life. Then see how this knowledge might inform and impact your songwriting.....and get you into the groove.

Strum-a strum-a strum....a rhythm primer for songwriters

A lot of songwriters learning to play the guitar have it backwards, and in all fairness it’s hard not to get wrapped up in the paradox. You want to play the guitar to accompany your songs, but your songs end up getting limited by your ability of the guitar. So you might call a teacher and ask if you can learn some new strums to spice up your vocabulary. But a strum pattern is exactly that, just a series of motions....what you really want are new ideas and new sounds. So the idea is to get PAST the strumming to the sound....in other words, to be guided by your ears and not your hands. Your ideas can lead your fingers, rather than your fingers limiting your ideas.

Yes, this requires practice, but it doesn’t require as much skill as you might think. What we want is to allow the lyric or even the idea of the song to suggest the rhythmic feel, and then figure out how to produce that sound on the guitar. For example, you can find the natural rhythm of a lyric by just speaking it, and see where you feel the stresses. Then try to tap out the beats where you feel them. Don’t be afraid to be simple! And if you can tap or sing a rhythm, you can play it by asking the hands to follow the beat you’ve just established. The following exercise will help start you along the way.

Remember that your strumming hand is your rhythm generator. Hold a chord, hit the strings and feel a single beat. Hit the strings four times in succession and feel a measure. Then hit the strings repeatedly, counting to four each time and accenting the first count of each group. Now you felt a meter, four-four time (or just 4). Do it faster, and the song is uptempo. Do it slower, and now it’s a ballad.

Subdivide the beat by swinging the right arm back and forth. We’re still counting, one-and-two-and-three-and-four-and as we alternate down and up strums. Notice that strumming down accentuates the bass strings, while strumming up brings out the trebles.....so don’t try to hit all the strings on every stroke. Let your arm swing like a pendulum from the elbow, steadily back and forth, two parts of the same cycle. The down strums are downbeats, the up strums upbeats.

So now we have eight different beats, some of which could be accented (or played more strongly) and some might be skipped (counted, but not played....the hand just misses the strings on that pass). Experimenting with different combinations of accented, less strongly accented, and skipped beats will reveal MANY different rhythmic feels, and as long as the back-and-forth of the right hand is consistent your hand will always be moving in the right direction at the right time.

This might all seem very mechanical right now, and really it is....but through mechanics we develop control and possibility, which together add up to freedom. Great musicians know how to make music FEEL good because they have mastered the mechanics and therefore are free to conceive and execute ideas. And if you let your exploration of mechanics be guided by the pursuit of sounds you hear in your head, then your practicing is never abstract but just another aspect of your songwriting process. Above all, remember to be patient with yourself....mastery of large tasks takes a long time, but mastery of a single, small idea doesn’t seem so daunting.

Are You Still Recovering From Childhood Music Lessons?

I often meet songwriters and players who tell me they took music lessons as a kid and hated it. That little old lady down the street who gave piano lessons, or the guy with all that hair from the local band who taught guitar at the neighborhood music store, may have done more harm than good. I’ve heard stories of people who were told they “had no musical aptitude” or “just didn’t have the talent” as if to play music you needed to be touched from above. Or the teacher had an ironclad method that they insisted upon, whether it involved mastering “Fur Elise” or “Smoke On The Water” before you could move on to something more in line with what you wanted to learn.

First of all, let me be clear: methods are useful tools, and I’m not suggesting that some people aren’t given great gifts or that learning an instrument doesn’t require a set of concrete skills. But in my twenty years of teaching music, I’ve come to believe that the gift is in how quickly you understand, absorb, and learn to master those skills, and the method needs to reflect and be based upon the learning style and goals of the student. In other words, my job as a teacher is not just to show you how to do things but to figure out how you learn and deliver the information accordingly. And if that little old lady or the shaggy guy from the music store didn’t see it that way, you would be unlikely to learn much from them, and you probably don’t have the most positive memory of "music lessons".

But music is probably pretty important to you if you’re reading this right now. And because lessons are not the only way we learn to make music, you may have been writing, singing, or playing (or all three) for years now and are good enough at it to be seriously pursuing a career as a performing artist and/or songwriter. But because there’s always something new to learn, you may have come to feel that some sort of lessons might be a good idea, IF you could find a teacher that wasn’t going to make you repeat that childhood experience.

All my best teachers were the ones who could show me not just where to put my fingers but also how to think about and hear what I was doing. Their teaching transcended the nuts and bolts of playing the instrument..... and realistically if you practice regularly, as I was, that part takes care of itself. If you go to the gym every day and work out, you will get stronger, it can’t NOT work. They were not just teachers but coaches, in the sense that they helped me identify and bring out my strengths while recognizing and addressing my weaknesses. So I’m suggesting that if you’re looking to grow as an instrumentalist, writer, or artist, what you need is not “music lessons” but performance coaching.

We all have a process for developing and refining new material. If you're formally trained or just very organized it might be a very clear conscious series of steps, or it might just be a matter of exploring and changing things until they feel right. Then once we feel like we’ve got it where we want it, we start looking for feedback.....from other writers and performers, from friends and family, from teachers, and of course from pros in the industry we're all trying to break into. Some of it carries a whole lot of weight and some of it doesn't, depending on the source; then most of us file that information away in our heads and decide later on whether it rings true. I think that's the right approach, because a lot of the feedback we get is almost purely subjective....what we're being told is whether someone likes what we do or not. There might be concrete information we're being given, and it's up to us to decide how much value it has, but ultimately the feedback is the answer to a yes or no question: do you (the listener) like this song/performance/artist or not?

All of that's important.....if NO one likes what you're doing, you should probably go back to the drawing board, so to speak....and if the feedback is almost entirely positive that's obviously proof that you're on to something. But most of us live in the middle ground between those two extremes: we get positives AND negatives, which makes it a little more difficult to decide what’s valuable and what isn’t. And if we’re in agreement that much of what we do get is primarily subjective opinion, it's hard to know whether we can really use it to hone and refine what we do.

I’m suggesting that a great teacher is able to help you sort that out by accomplishing three things.

1. Identifying realistically and clearly who you are and want to be as a person and artist.

2. Defining as specifically as possible where your strengths and weaknesses are.

3. Devising ways to brings out your strengths and develop your weaknesses in a way that works for you and the way you learn.

I believe that all three of these points can be discussed in a way that focuses more on concrete things and less on subjective likes and dislikes. Speaking for myself, when a student brings in a song I don’t offer any commentary on whether I like it or not, because I don’t feel that’s important to our interaction. What IS important is whether the song is communicating what its writer intended, and whether the performance is helping to put that message across.

So f you are looking to study with someone, think about this article and the three points I just outlined when you evaluate whether that teacher is right for you. And if you’ve found the right person you’ll walk away from the experience a better writer, player, and performer, and hopefully with a better feeling about music lessons than you had as a child.