Category : songwriting

Communicating with different time signatures

4 + 3

It’s safe to say that most songs in the singer-songwriter category are either in 4/4 or 3/4. Tasteful use of these two time signatures gives you an expressive way of extending a line, creating tension, and communicating feeling.

For instance, what happens when you’ve been playing in 4/4 for the entire verse, and then switch to 3/4 for the chorus? What does that communicate? Is there a sense of tension, surprise? Or try the verse in 3/4 and the chorus in 4/4.

How about using a single bar of 3/4 in the chorus, just before going back to the verse? How about extending the chorus by adding one more bar of 3/4?

Sometimes this type of thing works really well. Other times, not so much. Sometimes it’s just a matter of getting used to something new.

Expectations

These kinds of moves are always unexpected, and add interest even if that’s the only reason you use them. But they’re always more interesting if you use them in support of the lyrics.

For instance, if the line at the end of a verse expresses a feeling of uncertainty or tension, then a time signature different than the one you’re already using might support that feeling. If the end of the verse expressed confidence, then continuing with the existing time signature makes sense.

Living, breathing music

Using time signatures in this way means that you wouldn’t be repeating the same thing every verse. There would be a sense of organic change in the music as the feelings in the lyrics change.

These are really broad ideas. In the next post, I’ll get more specific, and use different time signatures on the same lyric to show how they affect the meaning of the words.

Share :

Becoming a better rhythm player: triplets and strumming

Two years ago, I started this blog with a series on songwriting. I finished fifteen posts, and then went careening off into other areas of personal interest. Some of it, I hope, was of interest to readers. Some of it was me clarifying my own process of music-making.

Triplets

I ended the series with posts about rhythm, but I didn’t get past quarter-notes and eighth-notes. Here’s the last post in that series.

How to make chord progressions a pro would love, Part 15: Rhythm III – Strumming

So I didn’t get to triplets. Too bad, because they’re kind of awesome.

Here’s what they look like, and how to count them.

As with eighth-notes, you need to keep a steady beat and distribute the notes evenly over that beat.

Use a metronome to get this right. Most metronomes can play eighth-notes and triplets while accenting the downbeat. This is really useful for hearing what I mean by “distribute the notes evenly over that beat.”

Eighth-note strumming

Strumming triplets turns out to be more challenging than strumming quarter-notes and eighth-notes. Here’s why.

With eighth-notes, you naturally use an up-and-down strumming motion, hitting the downbeat on the down-stroke (square bracket symbol) and the upbeat on the upstroke (wedge symbol).

It feels pretty natural. After all, you have to bring your arm up after the down-stroke in preparation for the next down-stroke. Might as well hit the strings as you do.

Triplet strumming

But with triplets, everything changes. If you use an up-and-down strumming motion, you wind up using an upstroke on every second down-beat. In the following example, that means on beats 2 and 4. Like this:

This means that you don’t get to use gravity to emphasize those downbeats where you use an upstroke. This feels weird, and it’s why some people use down-strokes exclusively when strumming triplets.

But practice it anyway. If you do, you’ll make your upstrokes as strong as your down-strokes. This will make you a more flexible and interesting rhythm player. It will also make people want to play with you more.

Share :

Songwriting and sonic texture

I’ve been talking a lot about ambient/textural music and sound in the last number of weeks, but how does all this fit into song-writing?

Song-writing isn’t just about chords, melody, and words. Conceptually, it starts there, usually with words that seem to work only if music is supporting them. And that music usually has some relation to the words. Or it should, even if it’s only minor key for sad song, major key for happy song.

Conventions

Here’s some other conventional material that can be used to support words:

• A guitar solo (with or without the rest of the band) to illustrate loneliness
• Arpeggiated chords to illustrate a lighter mood
• Power chords to illustrate confidence or aggression
• Silence to build tension

This list can get pretty long, and of course any of these can illustrate something other than what I’ve indicated here. But each choice should have some sort of reason for being there. Music should support the story of the words somehow, otherwise what’s the point of including it?

(At this point, it’s not a bad idea to list all the musical ideas, techniques, etc. that you can think of, and then try to relate them to lyrics that you’ve written).

Ambient experiment

Ambient sound can function as support for lyrics, too. Using the guitar, you can create sound that illustrates thunder, wind, industrial sound, etc.

But can you sing over these kinds of sounds? Of course, you don’t have to; they can just be used for effect.

But it’s fun to try.

As an experiment, take a melody from a song you know (or one you’ve written), create and loop an ambient sound, and sing that melody with the sound. Here’s a couple of ideas for ambient sound:

• Delay pedal – set a delay of .5 second with maximum feedback; play long, single notes in the same key as the melody until you get a dense weave of notes.
• Distortion – maximum distortion; rub or scrape the strings; don’t try to get any sort of conventional harmonic sound; just think noise.

These sounds can be disorienting to sing over. But give it a try. It usually sparks ideas, and it’s not like you have to use it as part of a song. Although you might want to.

Share :

Writing music without the guitar

If you’re a guitar player, and you write music with the guitar, you will only be able to write what you’ve already written.

Playing the guitar is a set of learned muscular responses. It’s a hard instrument to play, and it’s necessary to repeat the same movements over and over when learning it. So when you pick it up, your body will naturally make those movements.

In fact, those learned movements are the only movements that are possible. If you want to add to what you can do on the guitar, you have to repeat a different movement on the guitar a bunch of times.

You can only write what your body is able to do.

What to do?

So how do you write music if the only thing you know is the guitar?

Sit in a comfortable chair with a notebook. Leave the guitar in another room. Draw some vertical lines until you have 8 empty bars.

Now think of how much activity you want in each bar.

Maybe there’s a chord on the second beat and the rest of the bar is empty. Maybe there’s a strumming rhythm that goes through the whole bar. How does the sparseness of the first approach make you feel? What does the busyness of the second approach do for you?

While the song may have chords, that doesn’t mean that it excludes electronic sounds, environmental sounds, etc. That doesn’t mean that the chords are playing all the time. Are there any other sounds, instrumental or otherwise, that you think would work?

After you’ve filled the 8 bars (without picking up the guitar), play what you’ve written. Revise as necessary. Working this way, you often come up with stuff you don’t normally write.

Chords

You can learn new chords, or you can change the sound of the chords you already know. Try playing a chord that you know, and take one of your fingers off the fretboard.

With an open string C chord, you need three fingers. Take one finger off the fretboard. Strum, then arpeggiate. Do this for each finger you take off. See if you can write an entire song by manipulating that one chord.

Learn a new chord, and go through the same process.

Share :

Beyond notes and rhythms

What do you think about when you write music? What are you trying to do?

In popular music it usually comes down to notes and rhythms. But there are other things to consider: timbre, articulation, register, density, dynamics. If we take these things into consideration when we write, our writing becomes deeper.

Awareness

This comes down to awareness.

It doesn’t mean that you have to structure every last thing in a piece. But being aware of when it wants to get loud, where the timbre changes, how many instruments are playing, and what range the notes are in makes your connection to the piece deeper. It gives you more material to work with.

Just notice what you’re doing.

Connections

As a simple example, you may want to connect the first minute of the piece with the third minute by using the same timbre. First minute – distorted guitar; second minute – clean guitar; third minute – distorted guitar. This kind of thing forges connections in the mind of the listener.

And of course, this can be used in popular music as easily as in avant-garde music. Just connect verses to verses, choruses to choruses, or verses to choruses by considering things beyond notes and rhythms

Share :