Songwriting - Coloring your song

At Song School, I had the opportunity to work with Maggie Simpson in taking one of my songs to the next level. Maggie uses a process from acting to "color" a song.

There were a few steps, but one that I remember most is singing a song three ways, with sadness, anger, and then joy. I was singing to Maggie and she mirrored back each emotion . What I wrote as a happy, fun song took on a new dimension as I explored the dimensions of sadness and anger. I realized that the joy rose from these other dimensions and they now had a part in the song. I understood more of what the song was about and added it to my performance.

Another student sang a very sorrowful song. When she sang it with anger and joy the song expanded to a whole new level. The transformation in the song and performance was plain for everyone to see.

This is an amazing process for exploring behind the original emotion that we have when songwriting. It adds new depth and helped me as a songwriter better understand my own muse.

One tip, don't do this right before getting on stage. I was so wrapped up in the joy of the song that I forgot the ending. Luckily the band pulled me out...

Capos for songwriting - Part 2

Over the last week, I've been exploring one capo position - partial capo, down from top, second fret. At this point, I have guitar parts for four songs and melodies for two. Now all I have to do is get motivated for lyrics.

To create these parts, I use a number of different processes -

1) Try familiar chord shapes until I hear something that I like
2) Explore the key of E scale and let different notes ring through
3) Find the 1,4, 5 chords in different places, add the 6th and 3rd or flat third.


Each one of these processes, has yielded the verse, chorus, and bridge for a song. I'm going to spend another week or two (or until I get bored) with this capo position before moving on. If I get really crazy, I may try DADGAD and a partial capo...

Songwriting - You've got the music now what

I was working with a friend that has the music and melody for a number of songs, just no lyrics. He's has guitar skill that I wished I had. He made two comments that I hear a lot, "I really want the perfect lyrics for this song," and "I don't want my lyrics to sound ____ (childish, goofy, sappy, conceited ....)." These self judgments limit songwriters more than any negative feedback they will ever receive.

The best advice I ever got was, "to write crap." To write and write a lot is the key. Get yourself out of the way. Self judgement keeps your lyrics prisoner. Almost every writing class I've been in has some variation on free writing, where you write as fast as you can, whatever pops into your mind. If you wait for the perfect phrase, you end up with a blank sheet of paper or music and no lyrics.

Another comment I heard was "that if I actually finished this song, I would have to play it for someone and expose a part of me."

No doubt about it, singing your songs for other people is a scary thing. Face it! That's what's so cool when someone shares a song they wrote.

Directed writing – add depth to your songwriting

I found myself in the unenviable position of having to sing an original song in 20 minutes and having only two verses, no melody, no chorus, and no final verse. Amazing as it sounds, I wrote a bridge, another verse and even shaky melody, and gave a performance that wasn’t awful.

This was the experience of day four of Paul Reisler’s directed writing course at Song School. The first three days we went through a process of developing the concepts and ideas for a song. As Paul stated, “premature writing destroys creativity,” “many songs suffer from a lack of depth.” In this class, we went to the bottom of the ocean.

The process was:
1) The story – We had a partner tell us a story about an event that transformed their lives. We were to listen and use this as the genesis of a songwriting idea. We were not tied to the story and had full liberty to change the event, add a different ending or write about something totally different.
2) Concept – Identify the transformation in one sentence and outline some points for a story.
3) Mind mapping – Taking the points identified, we then used a non-linear outlining technique called mind mapping to further define and describe.
4) Clustering - Circle key concepts that emerged and underline key images.
5) Free writing – We then went through a process of free writing (writing for a set time period with no editing, letting the pen flow) around an image or concept identified in the clustering exercise.
6) Identification of key points – We went back and highlighted key items that emerged in our writing.
7) Fairy Tale – We then transformed the key points from the free writing into a fairy tale, i.e. “Once upon a time...”
8) Creating metaphors – Taking key words from the fairy tale we then went through a mind mapping process to create a metaphor. This was a really cool process that hopefully I find time to describe later.
9) Putting it together - Writing and performing the song.

If this sounds like a lot of work, it was. It reminds me of the line that good songwriting is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.


The interesting thing was how easy it was to write the song after all the upfront work was done. For someone who typically writes with a guitar in hand and looks for words that rhyme, this was totally out of character. Also the song that developed was different from anything that I had written. Cool... Many of the others in the class had the same experience and some amazing performances were given on day 4.

Will I use this whole process again, maybe? Will I use some of the components, yes!


Would I recommend this workshop, definitely!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!