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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.

 

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