Inspiration and Craft

Reproduced from the Songwriters E-Tip, 4/17/09. SongConnection@aol.com

My composition teacher in college once told a story about a woman who approached him at a party. She was very taken with the idea of his being a composer, and asked if he liked to walk in the woods before he wrote music. He laughed and responded, what for? "For inspiration," she answered, and he laughed again even as he told the story.

The notion of the artist that creates only when the spirit moves them is about as far removed as you can get from the ethos of professional songwriting. My teacher's response to the woman's question was that every day he sat down at the piano to work at 9 AM, broke for lunch at noon, and returned to work through the afternoon. This is the work ethic and method of many a professional songwriter today, not to mention most of the great composers and writers throughout the history of both classical and popular music. It's unquestionably a good method for developing craft and discipline as a writer. But how DO you cultivate inspiration, and is it even important to writing good pop music?

We should take a moment to define "inspiration". It can be in the melody that's playing in your head when you wake up one morning (as once happened to Paul McCartney....the tune became "Yesterday"). It can be in the "aha!" moment when you find the one word that ties the entire song together. Or it can be in the phrase that you hear in a passing conversation that starts the gears spinning. In all of these cases the writer is looking, asking, or reaching for the raw materials that feed the process of songcraft. Perhaps they aren't consciously looking at all....but many writers will tell you, a songwriter is always looking.

I was told once by a musician I have been a fan of for years that he found it important to make time to step away from working on his music. That it was sometimes more valuable to get out of your writers room into the world to gather those raw nuggets of inspiration, the seeds that with care and discipline can be cultivated into fully realized songs. I think he made an important point: that to write with a truthful voice about the world we do need to live in it. Sometimes we need to stop trying to create and just take time to quietly observe and to listen. Given the intensity with which so many of us pursue our career goals, this can be a real challenge....but if your ideas start to feel stale or forced it's probably time for a change in perspective or a change of scenery. It's also worth considering that a lack of inspiration may be a sign that some other element of your life has become stagnant: that the flow of ideas has ceased because something else is blocking it.

From a musical perspective, finding inspiration can be as simple as listening to some new sounds. A composer/producer friend of mine would unwind from a session by putting on ambient music that was so subtle as to almost be white noise. He said it was like a palate-cleansing for his ears, a way to step away from the music he had been working with and then return to it with a fresh perspective. If you play a musical instrument, use one of the myriad of resources available on the internet to learn something new today. Or take a lesson with someone, even if it's just one, to stimulate another way of thinking about your work. If you don't play an instrument, vocalize and just listen to the sound of your voice. In a safe environment where you can make all kinds of noise without being self-conscious, explore what your voice naturally likes to do. Even if you don't consider yourself a singer you can learn a lot by tuning in and listening to both the sound and feeling of your voice as you allow it to simply make sounds. This becomes a great tool for writing melodies: you don't have to be a strong singer to learn to use your voice to express up and down or low and high.

To answer the original question: inspiration IS important, but not in the sense that the woman who approached my teacher meant it. Inspiration is the spark that keeps us excited about what we do, and motivated enough to apply our craft to the ideas it gives rise to. Seek it in its absence, and celebrate its arrival. And even if there are no woods to walk in, there are many ways to find it....and when you do, take what you've found and get to work!

Commitment and the Long View

If you're made the big move to Nashville or are even considering the option, you have made a commitment to music. Whether your goal is to become a hit songwriter, an artist, or a working professional musician, achieving that goal requires a commitment to the path you've chosen. We've all heard many times over that building a career takes time, and that there's no such thing as an overnight success. I think that's absolutely true. But I also believe that there are different levels of commitment, and if you're serious about your career it's important to answer this question: what are you committed to, the goal or the process of achieving it?

The distinction is crucial. I think that committing to the process leads to limitless growth and the continual expansion and realization of potential. It means recognizing your strengths and weaknesses, and always looking for ways to improve both. It's a tall order and a lifelong process, but it also means that there is always something new to dig into and get excited about.

When it comes to playing an instrument, this idea is at the heart of why so many people get "stuck". It's important to realize that your ability to learn and grow is not about your level of talent (an unmeasurable and unhelpful thing to focus on anyway) but your level of commitment. Directly tied in with this idea is the acceptance of a long-term view: that large goals may not be attainable in a short time, but an ongoing series of short-term goals WILL gradually move you forward. Over time, those small accomplishments add up....and even more importantly, they build upon and reinforce each other so that progress becomes exponential and not just sequential. We grow in leaps and bounds when we stick it out long enough for the process to happen.

Practically speaking: if you want to learn to play your instrument better, you make the commitment to practice. But recognize what you have room for in your day-to-day life and adjust your expectations accordingly. If all you have time for on a regular basis is five minutes a day, then commit to five minutes a day. It may not seem like a lot, but over six months or a year you'd be amazed at how much you can accomplish. The continued reinforcement of daily practice is a powerful thing. But the long-term effect is even more powerful, especially when we give ourselves permission to allow the process to unfold....when we make the commitment to allow it to happen.

Ignorance is not bliss.

There is a LOT of guitar instruction material on the internet. I’ve been exploring lately, looking to see what other teachers are up to as I organize my own thoughts. And while there are plenty of smart and talented people out there with something to offer, they sometimes seem to be islands floating in a sea of….well, fill in the blank.

To make a sweeping generalization instead of a blanket indictment: there are no magic bullets. Learning to play an instrument is a lifelong journey, there’s always something else to learn, and all of those things are going to take work. Anyone who promises you shortcuts, secrets, or tricks is minimizing that fact, but it’s a common thread I keep seeing in so many of these courses.
There ARE simple ideas that can make a huge difference in how quickly and how efficiently you learn, but these are concepts – a mental approach that pave the way for the work to follow. My issue with a lot of what I’m seeing out there is the repeated assertion that it’s not important to know about music….that these so-called shortcuts do so by eliminating pesky details like vocabulary and musical literacy.

You certainly CAN choose to learn that way, and there are plenty of working professionals….even stars….who did just that. We all did in the beginning: here’s a chord, memorize it, here’s a lick, memorize that. And it’s true that you don’t need to know how to read music or how to spell a minor 11th chord to be a songwriter, or an artist, or even a professional musician. There are many who don’t, they just do what they do and some people do it amazingly well.

But realistically, unless you are a genius savant and really don’t need to (and even then), knowing more about what you do can only help. Musical knowledge gives you more choices and more options. Musical literacy makes it easier for you to communicate your ideas to others and to absorb theirs. Even Mozart had teachers and went through a process of musical education. (He may have mastered it all by the time he was ten, but that’s a separate point).
This is not the sexy stuff, this is the grunt work. Not instant gratification but a payoff that comes down the road. Like any investment, it takes time to mature. See the shortcuts for what they are: a means to get a little taste of the good stuff, and enjoy them…..but don’t mistake morsels for a meal.

The great jazz pianist Bill Evans had this to say on the subject:

“It is true of any subject that the person who succeeds in anything has a realistic viewpoint at the beginning in knowing that the problem is large. He has to take it a step at a time, and he has to enjoy the step-by-step learning procedure".

We’re talking about applying a small idea to a big thing: be aware of the big picture, but process information in snapshots.

It’s not a secret or a trick, just the recognition that music is an interconnected system with many, many interwoven relationships. Start by knowing these relationships are there, and then start looking for them, one by one. Be aware that this is going to take a long time to really get to know the material….but the beauty of it is, you don’t need to know everything to make music. Every one of these small pieces can be put to use right away. Learn a chord, use it in a song, then use it a different way and it will lead to another new chord. Every piece of the puzzle brings you closer to seeing the whole picture.

Adopting this mindset will keep you from getting stuck; stagnation in any aspect of life happens when you no longer see possibility. Acknowledging how big a thing we’re tackling here should make it clear that you’ll never know everything, so there’s no way to run out of possibilities…unless, of course, you decide some things aren’t worth knowing.

Phrasing & Space

In writing a lyric, one mistake many beginners make is not following a recognizable meter or pattern of stressed beats. (Think back to ninth-grade English class, the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, etc). No matter the style of music, if you want your lyric to be understandable when set to music it needs to be musical to start with…..and like most poetry low and high, from limericks to sonnets, nearly all music follows some kind of meter. The meter of a lyric can strongly suggest the feel and tempo of the music that goes with it, just as the words you choose determine the attitude and tone of the song.

Inherent in the idea of meter and its stressed syllables is the opposite idea: unstressed beats and open space. Think of rhythm as operating on several levels at once: the steady pulse at the foundation, the stressed beats that define the meter, the unstressed beats that make the accents “pop” and complete the line, and the spaces between the lines that define the form.

This is the essence of phrasing, in both the lyrical and musical senses. Phrasing is the organizing principle in speech, poetry, and music, and makes your message easier to deliver by giving the brain a pattern to connect to. That’s not to say that phrasing is repetitive by nature, it doesn’t have to be…but the complexity of your phrasing is going to be determined by what’s appropriate to the style. Country music as a rule uses simple, short phrases:

Hey, (beat)(beat) good lookin’ (beat)(beat)(beat)
wha- (beat) (beat) -tcha got cookin’ (beat)(beat)(beat)
hows about cookin’ (beat) something up with me? (2-3-4-5-6-7-8)

Notice how the held notes and spaces complete each eight-beat line….in other words, how the phrasing comes from a combination of the natural stresses of the words (good LOOKin’) and the added beats (the spaces between) to complete a coherent, symmetrical 4-line form of 8 beats per line.

Now, if you have a strong innate sense of rhythm (and many songwriters do) you might work these things out without any effort or conscious thought at all. But looking at phrasing and stress patterns in a lyric can open up new possibilities in a song, taking it in a musical direction you might not have thought of initially. Here’s an example, from Travis Tritt’s “Great Day To Be Alive”, written by Darrell Scott:

It’s a great (beat) DAY to be alive
I know the sun’s still shinin’ when I close my eyes
There’s some (beat) hard times in the neighborhood
but why can’t every day be just this good?

Notice how the added beat before the word “day” not only emphasizes the word but also makes it into a memorable part of the hook. The pause before “hard times” not only does the same thing, it adds a two-count “knock-knock” motif that is established by “there’s some” (pause) followed by the words “hard times” in the same rhythm. The contrast of the breaks in lines 1 and 3 with the unbroken lines 2 and 4 also gives the lyric added balance and musicality.

It’s worth mentioning as well that Darrell Scott is an instrumentalist of the highest order, and as strong a case as you could make for the added dimension instrumental ability brings to songwriting. But just as in lyric writing, strong phrasing is essential to great music, as any great musician will tell you: just ask Darrell, or B.B. King, Miles Davis, or Floyd Cramer. Too often we try to separate writing ability from musical ability, but the two go hand in hand….after all, we’re talking about SONGwriting.

A crash course in harmony: or, what I SHOULD have been taught in theory class.

This is a music theory article!

I can hear the groans already. Triads, augmented fifths, leading tones, wha?? My first theory class felt like math, and I hated math. My first three theory classes, really. But then came the eureka moment....when the light bulb clicked on over my head and I GOT it. And at that moment I realized that had certain things been explained from the get-go, the whole business would have made more sense. That's what I want to talk about today: a simple principle that easily explains what music theory is, how it works, and why it's important.

Randy Halberstadt, a jazz pianist and educator from Seattle, wrote a fantastic book called "Metaphors for the Musician", which I highly recommend to anyone who already has a basic grasp of theory and wants to dig deeper. But he used a phrase as the title of one chapter that sums up the whole concept beautifully: "Harmonic Astronomy".

"Harmonic" in that we are talking about how notes played together create harmony. "Astronomy" in that notes and chords exert influence and force upon each other much like celestial bodies do. And understanding this simple concept provides a framework which is filled in by all the specific details. In short, learning theory gives you a convenient way to organize which moon revolves around what planet, and how all revolve around the sun.

Let's get into some detail. You've probably heard the word "key" used as a musical term: as in, this song is in the key of C. Now, the technical explanation of this is that the key of C uses only the white notes on the piano: in other words, out of all the notes on the keyboard we are using a subset (haha, math class, remember?) that includes only the white keys.

But what we really mean when we say we're in the key of C is that the note (or chord) C is the sun around which all the other notes revolve. In other words, when we're in the key of C the way you hear every note is filtered through the prism of its relationship to C. Change keys and gravity shifts....the same note can be heard in a completely different way.

To illustrate this, play this sequence of chords on piano or guitar: C - G - F - C - F - G...

I followed the G with those three dots for a reason....does that series of chords sound finished? Or does it sound like you've been left hanging, waiting for something to happen?

Well, you have. That G chord wants to resolve: to bring us back home to C. Now play the same sequence but end with the C chord and notice how it brings a sense of finality that was missing before.

Now play this sequence: C - G - D - G - C...

This time, the C doesn't sound quite so final. Follow up with this: C - G - D - G - C - D - G

Now G sound like home, and we have moved into the key of G.

This is the whole concept in a nutshell. Chords want to lead to other chords. Notes of a melody have an inherent need to resolve, to move one way or another. Music theory is a way to organize this set of interwoven relationships into a tool box you can use in your writing and playing. Obviously there's much more to learn here, and subsequent articles will explore this further. But listening to music with this in mind can change your whole way of hearing....and have a huge impact on your musical choices and vocabulary.

On music theory: do you REALLY need to "know the rules before you can break 'em"?

It's a statement I've heard repeated often enough to have become a cliche. Let's face it, when it comes to music, "breaking the rules" is not a conscious decision. Musical innovators develop their own language by following what they hear, and while any writer or composer is influenced by the music that moves them they don't have to have a formal grasp of the vocabulary to absorb elements of the style and sound.

On top of that, the subjective filter that we comprehend music through is different for everyone...one man's celestial harmony is another man's noise. And with the whole of human musical history a few mouse clicks away, you can go from Gregorian chant to Sonic Youth in the blink of an eye. Any combination of sounds anyone's ever made are probably on a YouTube video. There are far more sonic and tonal possibilities open to the contemporary musician than Bach or Mozart would have dreamed of. So is it still relevant, given all this, to study four hundred year old "rules" to learn how to make music in the 21st century?

Well, yes, it is. The tonal system as we use it in most popular music today still follows the same principles of tension and release that form the basis of classical harmony. A major chord is still a major chord, and ending a song on a 5 chord is sure to leave most of the room hanging. A 12-bar blues or a three-chord country song still moves forward not just on the narrative thrust of the lyric but by setting up dissonance: the diversion from 1 to 4, and the expectation and gratifying sense of release when 5 brings us back home to 1. Fundamentally, harmony is like gravity: combinations of notes and chords exert force on each other and bring about movement as a result. So music theory is simply a way to categorize and explain how and why this works. The earth revolved around the sun before Galileo postulated it, and Newton's apple would have fallen whether he was there to observe it or not.

So the "rules" are not really rules at all, but explanations why some notes sound good together and some don't. The major triad is present in the overtones of a vibrating string: it's a sound that existed before someone gave it a name. And understanding of THIS aspect - music theory as an explanation of natural sonic phenomena - is a great tool and stimulus for creativity.

This is a large and complex topic, but understanding this simple fact makes the study of music theory both more relevant and more interesting. So to go back to our cliche: you really CAN'T break the rules, they just exist....and they're more flexible than you might think.

Capos Are Not Cheating!

as originally published in Susan Tucker's Songwriters E-Tip Newsletter. To subscribe, email songconnection@aol.com.

There's no reason to be apologetic about using a capo, even if it is sometimes called a "cheater"!

When you use a capo you are applying at least a basic knowledge of music theory, and if you really know what you're doing it opens up a whole range of new sonic possibilities without your needing to learn lots of new chords.

First of all, let's address the "cheating" thing. It's true that an accomplished piano player can play in all (or at least most) keys without much difficulty, never mind the "transpose" button on most modern electronic keyboards. But the truth is that there isn't nearly as much of a difference in difficulty playing in different keys on the piano as there is on the guitar. In terms of what the change requires of your hands, it's less of a challenge than many beginners might think once you master basic technique....the greater challenge is mental, because every key has its own configuration of notes.

On the guitar, especially if we're talking about playing rhythm on an acoustic, there's a tremendous difference in difficulty between playing in, say, D and D flat. Adding bar chords into the mix levels the playing field a whole lot, but bar chords just don't ring the way open chords do....the instrument doesn't resonate nearly as much. Also, in many flat keys we lose the sympathetic vibration and overtones created by the open strings. (That's a topic for an entirely different article, though, suffice it to say that when you play certain chords other strings will sound whether you struck them or not....this is called sympathetic vibration and adds to the richness and depth of the sound).

So now that we've established that using a capo is part of maximizing the sonic potential of an acoustic guitar and is NOT in fact "cheating", let's talk about how we use it.

The most important idea to understand is how much you have moved or "transposed" a chord when you clip on that capo. It's helpful at this point to visualize a piano keyboard: white keys in a row, with black keys between them. The white keys follow the letters of the alphabet, while the black keys fill in the sharps and flats. If you're at all familiar with a keyboard, you already know that not every pair of white keys has a black key (and therefore a sharp or flat) in between, and here's where the main concept lies.

We're now talking about measuring the distance between two notes: between, say, two white keys when there's a black key between them, or when there isn't. The distance from A to B is what we would call a whole-step, because there's a black key between them. Same with C to D or F to G. But there's no black key between E and F or B and C, and so the distance in those two cases is called a half-step.

Still with me? It's simpler on the guitar....a half-step is one fret, a whole-step is two. And remembering these two small pieces of information are the key, because now you know that if you put a capo on the second fret you have moved (transposed) every chord up a whole-step. So C becomes D, F becomes G, and G becomes A.

Remembering where those naturally-occurring half-steps are also tells you that with that capo on the second fret, E becomes F SHARP because ordinarily E to F is only a half-step.

It's true that it takes time to soak up all this information to the point where you can use it without having to think too much....so let's throw in some shortcuts. Instead of thinking letters, let's now go to numbers: an eight letter sequence C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C would be numbered one through eight (seven really, because eight is just the recurrence of one....the pattern is really a circle just like on an old-fashioned clock). The chord built on each of those notes has the same number: so C is the "one chord", F is the "four chord", etcetera. Musicians often shorten this and just say "one", "four", and so forth. This is the "Nashville number system" in a nutshell.

So here are the shortcuts. First, common chords in two common keys and their numbers, but note three points first.

1. The minor chords on the 2, 3, and 6. Major chords may be substituted as well but these are what we would call "diatonic" chords, meaning they use only the notes of the scale.

2. The one exception is the use of the "flat 7" instead of the seventh note of the scale. This is actually a far more common chord in popular music than the diatonic 7, and makes an interesting substitution for a 5 or to approach a 5.

3. The flat 7 in both these cases uses a bar chord, the B flat and the F. This is a hurdle that everyone needs to get over at some point, but once again that's a topic for another article.

Here are our examples:

Key of C: 1=C, 2= D minor, 3= E minor, 4=F, 5=G, 6=A minor, flat 7=B flat.

Key of G: 1=G, 2=A minor, 3=B minor, 4=C, 5=D, 6=E minor, flat 7=F.

Now visualize the keyboard again. Keeping in mind the naturally-occurring pattern of whole and half-steps, you can move of "transpose" to any other key by using these patterns in higher capo positions. For example:

C with a capo on the 2nd fret becomes D, the 3rd fret becomes E flat, or 4th fret becomes F.
G with a capo on the 2nd fret becomes A, 3rd fret becomes B flat, and 7th fret becomes D.

As I said earlier, it will take some time to become thoroughly familiar with all of this. But I hope the basic concept is clear and its application useful. A future article will explore more creative and unusual uses for the capo.