Craft and weirdness June 5, 2014 No CommentCraft involves working with music to develop skill. Working with music helps you to understand the materials (chords, rhythms, etc.) you’re working with. Developing craft means developing both skill and a deep understanding of materials. How do you do this? One way is to consider how the music supports the lyrics. Doing something unpredictable might support it. Not playing might support it. Using a different harmonic rhythm or different strumming rhythms than the ones you’ve been using might support it. Adding a chord in the second verse that wasn’t there in the first verse might support it. Weird All of these things involve doing something unexpected. Doing something unexpected often feels weird. Think of a song you’re writing. Where can you do something unexpected? Anywhere, really, but where will it be effective? Try things in different places and see how it feels. Write those things down. After a while you get a feel for what works and your writing gets more interesting. Patience Be patient. In the short term, it feels like you’re getting worse. In the long term, you’re getting better than most other people, because most other people can’t put up with the short term. Try it and after a while the obvious weirdness gets more subtle. Listeners don’t notice it; they just notice that there’s something interesting about your stuff. If you’re patient, if you really listen to what you’re writing, if you try different things, you will make better songs. It will take longer. You’ll have fewer songs. But it’s better to have one great song instead of ten crappy ones. thoughtsShare : Tweet
More on craft June 2, 2014 No CommentIn a previous post on craft (back on April 7), I talked about the things you could do with two chords. To repeat: “Experimenting with chord relationships is part of the craft process. Why does a chord sound better going to one chord more than another? Why does a chord relationship work in one song, but not in another? Answers to these questions don’t emerge right away. You might have to wait for the next song. Or you might never get an answer. Or the “answer” might come in the form of an insight that has nothing to do with the question. Just ask the questions. Things will happen. You’ll get better.” The next chord Continuing the process into the third chord brings up other questions. These questions are different from person to person, but they usually sound something like: Does chord 1 sound better going to chord 2 or chord 3? Do different rhythms sound better between different chords? Many of these questions are unconscious. Try to be aware of them. Rhythm experimenting Once you’ve put the chords where you want them, try experimenting with harmonic rhythm (where you’re placing the chords) and strumming rhythms. This might change the progression, or just where you decide to place a chord. It might not change anything.Whatever happens, this process is important if you want to effectively support the words, and write the best song that you can. A lot of songwriters don’t think about this. Important words come in unexpected places sometimes. A change of chord at those points can make all the difference. Or not. You really have to try things out. You are not your work Craft separates you from your work so that you can clearly see what the music needs. Not what you need. What the music needs. Make the separation. You are not the thing you make. But you will still have emotional responsesto that thing, and to your inability to make it perfect. Nothing is perfect.But everything can be made better. And yes, craft makes it better. thoughtsShare : Tweet
Types of Rhythm May 29, 2014 No CommentSmall-scale rhythm, large-scale rhythm, medium-scale rhythm. What do these things mean? Essentially, it’s a matter of perception. How does the listener perceive the sounds that are coming at them? How does the composer control the sound in order to control those perceptions? Small-scale rhythm Small-scale rhythm is what most people think when they hear the word “rhythm.” It’s what you’re most aware of when you hear music. More than pitch or harmony, you hear and retain small-scale rhythm. Here’s an example. This kind of thing can be repeated over and over to create a type of hook. Medium-scale rhythm Medium-scale rhythm refers to where the stress is placed in each bar. Over the course of a phrase of music (say 3 bars), a listener will be aware of accents in each bar that add up to a coherent rhythm. So take the rhythm above and add accents, and you might get this: As a listener you notice those accents and unconsciously form a background rhythm superimposed on the small-scale rhythm. Large-scale rhythm Large-scale rhythm is more abstract. It’s usually communicated in musical events that stand out from those around it. These don’t occur that often, but a listener notices them. They could be the entry of a new instrument, or a chord that’s louder than all the ones around it. It could be a change of rhythm. These types of events act as mile-stones. Thinking about what the musical milestones are in both songs and instrumental pieces gives you something to move toward when you’re writing. It also makes the whole thing more coherent for the listener. These large-scale things often occur intuitively as you’re writing, and it’s easy to miss them. Stay aware, and you’ll have material to build the whole piece around. Composition, UncategorizedShare : Tweet
Originality May 25, 2014 No CommentSelf-expression Suppressing self-expression is really hard. This makes suppressing originality really hard, too. I mean, you can do it, but only up to a certain point. This is good news! You don’t have to work to be original! You just have to work to learn about music if that’s where you want to be original. Constructing ourselves We construct ourselves out of our experience of living in a particular culture.We do this by making decisions about how we’re going to act based on what we experience. These decisions express who we are in the world differently than anyone else. We see it on the street in the way people dress, how they cut their hair, their hand gestures. We see it in songwriting in the way people put chords and words together.Why can people still use the 12 bar blues progression and get away with it? Because they bring themselves to it. Whatever that is, it’s expressed in the choices they make while they’re playing or writing. Originality isn’t an issue. Stretching yourself is. Go ahead and steal other people’s music.Anybody who’s ever played to blues is doing exactly that. The challenge is to take what you steal apart and put it back together in an interesting way. thoughtsShare : Tweet
Guitar Extended May 22, 2014 No CommentI love stomp boxes and editable pedal boards. But the problem is that regardless of what sound you build with them, you still get a guitar sound, and everyone knows it. Twenty different distortion sounds all point to one thing: overdriven guitar and the particular styles of music that this sound implies. The same applies to any effect: they all lead the imagination in the direction that whoever designed them wants to go. None of this is a problem if you want to make music that sounds like other music. In fact, you need these tools if you want to do that. But what if you don’t want to do that? What if you want to build your own sound? Guitar Extended is a blog that can help if you want to go beyond the standard effects that we all find in guitar stores. Check it out. http://guitarextended.wordpress.com guitarShare : Tweet
7th chords May 17, 2014 No CommentYou can use the chord-making technique I’ve been talking about to make 7th chords too. All you do is add the 7th note of the scale to 1, 3, and 5 that you already have. E F# G# A B C# D# 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 That gives you E G# B D#. These are the notes of an E major 7th chord. Invent some chords Find three different groupings of those four notes. This a bit more challenging than doing it with triads, but in some ways it’s more fun. Sometimes you get three of the notes, but can’t get the 4th because your fingers can’t stretch that far. So you’re faced with a puzzle. Is there another way to play that 4th note if you can’t reach it with a left hand finger? The answer to that question will take you in directions you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. Two possibilities: Play the three-note chord by itself and then play the 4th note by itself. This means that you have to let go of the chord to play the note. You get something more like an arpeggio. You can invent some interesting chord/note patterns this way (i.e. chord – chord – note – chord – note –note, etc). The more comfortable you get moving between chord and note, the more interesting the rhythm will become. 2.Play the three-note chord, hold it, and then play the 4th note by tapping it. This is like playing chord and melody together. Try tapping other notes besides the initial note you couldn’t reach. Can you think of any other possibilities for playing impossible chords? guitarShare : Tweet
