song writing – Impact Guitar

5th May 2020

Focus vs Exploration

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards.
– Steve Jobs

Someone once asked me what makes ‘Jump’ by Van Halen such a good song. I really didn’t know how to answer that. There are so many elements that combine to make it great: the intro keyboard riff, the guitar playing, the singing, the backing vocals, the way the bass and drums interact. Then there are the recording techniques, the tempo of the song, and the personality of the musicians. So many elements that could have gone badly wrong come together to make a great song.

As musicians we spend a lot of time taking leaps into the dark, and that takes faith and trust. We have to trust that our skills will improve, otherwise we wouldn’t practice; when we write a song we are connecting dots (sometimes literally on manuscript), but each note can feel like a blind man in an unfamiliar room, arms extended, trying to get a sense of its shape. It is only when we finish writing the piece that we see the totality of it and how each note seems to “inevitably” lead to the next. We can only connect the dots looking backwards and we have to initially explore in the blindness before we arrive at the destination. We have to trust it will lead somewhere.

It is important to allow time for cross-pollination between different fields of interest or areas of our lives. Steve Jobs took a calligraphy class in college which later played a part in the typography on the Apple mac. If he was too focussed solely on computers he might have missed that opportunity for cross-pollination. Sometimes it is our side-interests which have the greatest impact on our main passions.

But what about focus?

I have noticed, however, that the times in my life where I have really excelled are when I have solely focussed on one thing for an extended period.

Arnold Schwarzenegger said “knowing how to focus on one thing at a time has made me better at everything I did”, and he has certainly achieved a lot in his life across a diverse range of fields such as bodybuilding, real estate, acting and politics. But he did them one at a time.

This means that every day we have to make a decision – we have to choose to either focus or explore.

Focussing on one thing logically means that you must remove all the other things that are distracting you. The idea of “via negativa” means to improve something by deducting, rather than adding. For instance, to improve your health you may be better off by removing all the sugary drinks from your diet before you add a new workout routine. Deducting is often easier to do (and sustain) compared to adding a new habit.

The times when I have focused on one thing are like meditation: the outside world slows down and every action seems to flow into the next. By sustaining that focus over an extended period of weeks or months, my motivation increases as I can see myself improving, and the habit starts to form, making it easier to continue the upward spiral.

On the other hand, my explorations into different fields make my main passions richer and deeper. For instance, learning about the different energy levels of pencil strokes in art has given me a greater appreciation for the different energy levels that emotion can bring to a musical line on the guitar.

Ultimately, I think the only way to balance these two approaches is to spend extended periods of time doing deep learning, but allow shorter periods of exploration between these extended blocks. This will create a depth of knowledge and understanding within a narrow passion, which will then be enriched by other diverse and seemingly disconnected interests.

28th Nov 2019

Write Great Songs By Developing Intuition

“For a songwriter, you don’t really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they’re made of, and wonder if you can make one, too”
Tom Waits

When learning an instrument we usually apply ‘deliberate practice’, working methodically and efficiently to improve our skills. When writing songs, however, we instead use intuition to express our feelings and emotions.

In reality, they are two sides of the same coin: with enough deliberate practice a new skill sinks into our unconscious, becoming automatic intuition. But how can we use these two parts of the brain to help us write better songs?

With deliberate practice we must learn something so deeply that we can then forget it. We would learn scales until we no longer consciously think about them, and they instead form an invisible framework that sits in our unconscious.

There are a lot of musicians, such as Jeff Beck, Eddie Van Halen and Noel Gallagher who claim to know no music theory, relying instead on intuition to write a song; although I’m sure they spent many years learning lots of songs. This may not be ‘deliberate practice’, but all those songs will sink into the intuition of the artist and inform the songs they write in the future. Noel Gallagher’s years of listening to The Beatles clearly had a massive influence on his song writing.

So one way to develop our intuition for writing great songs is to simply learn lots of songs by other artists. But if we wanted to go deeper than that, we could analyse songs more methodically. At the moment I am teaching a student ‘Patience’ by Guns N’ Roses . The verse chords are C – G – A – D, so the key is G major, starting on the IV chord (‘C’), and then moving to the I chord (‘G’). It then starts to shift key, using A major to temporarily modulate to D.

The fact that we know this doesn’t necessarily help us to write a song, but we could steal the chord progression to use in our own songs, twisting it and blending it with our other influences, internalising the chord progression and adding it into our vocabulary.

Analysing music helps you to understand why a song works (i.e. after it’s been written), but it doesn’t help you write one from scratch. The pop songwriter Max Martin, who has written numerous hits song for Britney Spears, Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson, said in an interview with NME magazine:

“…a great pop song should be felt when you hear it“
Max Martin

Although you may not be writing pop music, the point remains the same – don’t let the theory get in the way of the song. When I studied music at university, there were many teachers who were really good classical composers, but they couldn’t write a good song. Their music was too deliberate and lacked spontaneity.

Composers are more like architects and songwriters are like gardeners: to write a classical piece you need to have balance, thought and structure deliberately built into the process; to be a songwriter you need to let the piece naturally grow from a source outside of yourself.

The initial spark of the song will be ignited by your intuition; but the fire of your intuition must be fuelled with continual practice. If you do that, your intuition will always be there when you need it.

Ways to develop intuition in song writing:

Play anything for ten minutes without judging whether it is good or bad. I really struggle with this, but my brain eventually calms down after a few minutes.
Record yourself whilst playing for ten minutes. You may listen back later and hear a few gems that you missed. Distance often helps us gain a new perspective.
Write with other people.
Don’t expect anything to happen – just let it happen.
Write often. You need to write a few bad songs to get to the good songs.
Whilst I’m writing, I sometimes visualise that I’m improvising a song to an audience of friends, family or strangers. This takes my conscious mind off what I’m doing and helps with flow.

Ways to apply deliberate practice in song writing

Learn lots of your favourite songs.
Analyse the chord progressions.
Analyse how the notes of the melody sit over the chords: are they consonant or dissonant (i.e. are they notes within the chord or outside of the chord)?
Analyse the shape of the song: is the chorus melody the same as the verse melody (e.g. ‘I Wanna be Your Lover’ by Prince); Are the chorus and verse chords the same (e.g. ‘High and Dry’ by Radiohead)?
Analyse the note clusters of the melody: is the verse melody made up of only long notes, or only short rhythmic notes, or a mixture? Does the chorus melody contrast this by doing the opposite?
How are the principles of repetition, contrast and development used?

My latest book ‘Guitar Gymnasium: Habits, Hacks and Tricks to Accelerate Your Playing‘ is available on Amazon now.

19th Nov 2019

Use Limitations to Write a Song Today

“The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self.. “
Igor Stravinsky

The blank page, the empty canvas and the silent guitar are the most difficult starting points, yet that is where we must all begin. When our options are infinite it is difficult to make creative decisions, but we can channel and focus our creativity by setting restrictions and limitations.

Below are some limitations you can use to write a song today. These are only starting points which we can always change later:

Limit yourself to some simple chords: C, Am, F, G. You might change these later, but they will serve as a good starting point.
Think of a rhythm you can use for the melody – don’t worry about what pitches will be sung, just the rhythm. You can keep it simple and use a rhythm similar to the word “coff-ee” on each beat, or do something like:

Now play the chords whilst you hum the rhythm you previously made. Start by using one pitch for the whole rhythm, and then make some notes higher and some notes lower. There are lots of good melodies which are based on only one or two pitches, such as the verse of “I Am The Walrus” by the Beatles, the verse of “Manic Monday” written by Prince, and the verse of “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis.
After a bit of experimenting you will have a basic structure which you can start to sculpt. Try changing the chords, switching the order of the chords, or change chords at a quicker pace (harmonic rhythm”).
When you’re ready to create the next section, repeat the process above, perhaps starting with different chords.

The tips above are for when you feel stuck and uninspired. In his great book ‘On Writing’, Stephen King says “Writing equals ass in chair”. If your inspiration is flowing, then grab it and seize the moment without over-analysing it.

Following the process above doesn’t guarantee you’ll write a great song, but you will write a song of some sort. Many legendary musicians have lots of songs that have never seen the light of day: Prince’s famous ‘vault’ contains thousands of unreleased songs; Adele’s initial songs for the hit album ‘25’ were shelved after legendary producer Rick Rubin thought they could be better.

If you write a hundred songs, most will be mediocre, but a handful will be good; and the more you write, the better you will become.

No one in existence has lived the same life as you, and no one except you can write the songs of your life.