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I’m not recommending laziness or failing to make a song as good as it can be. But it’s like a car… If you’ve got a motor, transmission, steering wheel, axles, wheels… the thing’ll run, even if it’s dented, the paint’s chipped, the fender’s falling off, etc.

Focusing first on the essentials is a good habit to get into. Get those right and you can color in the rest around them.

So what are the most essential aspects of a song?

(Keep in mind that there quite a few songs out there that don’t get all of these right and are still great because the elements that are good about them are GREAT.)

• Title/Chorus. Having a strong central idea, a phrase or section of words and music that the song is organized around.

Many an otherwise great song has fallen short of its potential due to a weak central idea.

Often I don’t start with this. Many writers won’t start without it. But it’s something that I’m always keeping an eye out for as I wander through the writing process. When I find it, other things tend to snap into focus. Or the opposite – it becomes immediately clearer when things don’t fit.

• Structure. This connects directly to the Title and/or Chorus.

Am I supporting it with the right structure? Should it be a Verse/Chorus song or an AABA song; or something else? Should it have a Bridge, a Pre-Chorus, a Tag? Is the length of the Verses and Chorus right, as well as the amount of Verses? Is it the right structure for the story that’s in the lyrics, and vice versa? Too long, or too short?

This also has to do with the momentum of the song. Is it moving along at the proper pace? If not, does something need to be shortened, cut, or extended? Sped up or slowed down?

• Melody. The not-so-secret (but too often ignored) weapon of great songwriting.

Remember, melody has two aspects – pitches and rhythm. Does the melody have motion in the notes and in its rhythm? (Don’t forget that the rhythm of the notes needs variety too.) Without movement, a melody can quickly get static and boring. Does the combination of short notes and longer, held notes feel right?

  * Harmony. This starts with harmonizing the melody, which creates the emotional subtext of the song.

Also including riffs or chord progressions that go beyond harmonizing, musical signatures that can be so important to the character of a song that it’s hard to imagine it without these trademarks.

  * Lyrics. Why do I put this last? Lyrics are obviously crucial to a good song. But I’d venture to say that there are more good songs with weaknesses in the lyric than good songs with weaknesses in the other areas we’ve discussed.

This isn’t true for some songs that are mainly lyric-focused. But a song with a great Title or Chorus, appropriate structure, powerful melody, great harmony and key riffs… can get away with a mediocre lyric. Again, I’m not advocating this as a writing strategy. It just seems to be the case… generally speaking.

But I still include lyrics as essential. Not just the content of the words – the sound of the words, which in songwriting is just as important as the content. (In fact it’s the main reason why sometimes lyrics with weak content can work – because they just sound right – even if they’re not!).

So, in getting your car to run, think first about the engine, the wheels, etc. When those are in place you can spend as much time as you want on the paint job and taking the dents out of the fender.

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One major reason for the staying power of his songs is that great melody never goes out of style. And the more I hear Brian’s melodies the more I appreciate their haunting beauty, and the more his stature rises in my book – and it’s always been high.

I watched a documentary recently that focused on his early songs for The Beach Boys. I was struck by Brian’s individuality, his harmonic and melodic daring, in even his earliest pieces, before he’d developed a songwriting voice that was completely his own (in later masterpieces like ’Surf’s Up’, ‘Heroes & Villains’, and ‘’Til I Die’ ).

I’m going to look at two fairly ‘typical’ early Brian songs – ‘Surf City’ (written and produced for Jan & Dean) and ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ (The Beach Boys). Both songs combine basic rock and roll chords (for most of the song) with some real curveballs that only Brian could’ve thrown.

A lot of ’Surf City’ (listen below)  is a simple blues in Ab. But it starts out with a signature hook; they sing “Two girls for every boy” (this was 1963, folks) over these chords:

| B | E F# | Eb | Eb |

An unusual (to put it mildly) and interesting way to get into the key of Ab! The Verse chords:

|| Ab | Fminor | Ab | Ab | Ab | F minor | Ab | Fminor |

| Db | Bbminor | Gb | Eb | Eb ||

Check out how he goes from 8 bars of straight-up ‘50s RnR into the brief harmonic journey in thirds (in bars 9-13) that takes him out of key to the Gb chord and then back in again (Eb). All done so smoothly you might not notice.

Nobody was writing rock and roll songs with chord changes like these! (We still aren’t.)

The Chorus starts out as a straight ahead 12 bar blues…

|| Ab | Ab | Ab | Ab | Db | Db | Ab | Ab | B | E F# | Eb | Eb ||

…but when he gets to the 9th bar, instead of hitting the V chord as expected Brian hits a ‘B’ chord (way out of key) and revisits the introduction described above.

I want to emphasize that, within a basically diatonic song, when big moves out of key work it’s almost always because the melody works. The listener follows the melody. If that makes sense you’ll follow the chords anywhere.

‘Don’t Worry Baby’ is known to any Brian Wilson/Beach Boys fan for its aching, soaring melody and the universal and heartfelt sentiment of the Chorus. Not to mention Brian’s poignant high vocal. (Listen below.) The song starts out in one key, changes key for the Chorus, and then returns to the first key for the Verse.

This in itself isn’t so unusual, but what is less common is the way it’s ‘baked in’ to the song. It’s not an imposed modulation. You couldn’t play the song without it (another one like this is The Beatles’ ’Penny Lane’).

‘Don’t Worry Baby’ starts out with a chord progression and melodic contour that’s very close to ‘Be My Baby’ by Phil Spector (a big influence on Brian, mainly as a producer – and he wrote this one with ‘Be My Baby’ in mind). But what Brian does is much more sophisticated (not taking anything away from the classic, but compositionally simpler, ‘Be My Baby’).

The chords of the first 8 bars are identical to ‘Be My Baby’ and the Pre-Chorus chords similar too. But Brian, switching the order of ‘Be My Baby’s’ Pre-Chorus chords, moves into a new key for the Chorus.

Verse || E | E | A | B | E | E | A | B |
Pre-Chorus || F#minor | B | G#minor | C# ||
Chorus || F# | F# | G#minor | C# | F# | F# | G#minor | C# | E/B B ||

The way he comes back to the home key in that ‘extra’ 9th bar of the Chorus always gets me.

Again, the reason this all works musically is because of the melody. Play or sing the melody of ‘Don’t Worry Baby’ without the chords. Note the winding, rising and falling drama of its musical story. Note the trademark Brian big leaps – twice jumping up a flat 6th in the Verse and twice up a flat 7th in the Pre-Chorus. Beautiful.

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As with many of Marley and the Wailers’ songs, the record throbs with heartbreak and longing while also being wistful and bouyant (respect to The Wailers, a great band), making listening a multi-layered emotional experience. (Listen below.)

Start with two chords only – Ab and Db. A four bar pattern, two bars each chord, repeated for the whole song irresistible reggae ballad groove.

Add a memorably poignant refrain: ‘I Don’t Wanna Wait In Vain For Your Love’. Words that most of us can relate to – we’ve been there – sung to a touching 5-note melody, with the word ‘vain’ landing on a C over the Db chord; a major 7, what I call one of the ’tender notes’.

The Verse melody uses only 5 notes: Ab, Bb, C, Eb, F. Marley works lovely and imaginative variations, both melodic and rhythmic, on these few notes – he was very good at that! (Great singer too.) Remember that with the chords being simple, it’s especially important that the melody has motion and variety, and stays interesting.

Add some vulnerable Verse lyrics:

In life I know there’s lots of grief
But your love is my relief
Tears in my eyes burn, tears in my eyes burn
While I’m waiting, while I’m waiting for my turn
I Don’t Wanna Wait In Vain For Your Love

The Chorus adds another note, a passing Db, into the melody mix. The Bridge climbs up to an octave Ab. The range of the entire song is just one octave, using 7 notes.

That’s it. That’s all you need. Ok… all you need if you’re Bob Marley, that is.

But we can all learn something from the transcendent feeling created by those two chords rolling along in a steady groove, a touching melody that uses few notes – though I wouldn’t call it simple -, all in a major scale, and a touching one-line Title/Chorus that ties the whole thing together.

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I have to put myself into the song, really invest in it, to make progress, without any guarantee of success. Some of them work out and some of them don’t. And though I can gain in craft from both results, there’s almost never any telling in advance which ones will come together and which won’t.

But here’s some good news. If I put in work on the tougher ones (that’s most of them) the likelihood of an easier one falling into my lap increases exponentially. They’re like bonuses.

I had this experience recently. I was wrestling (and song wrestling is fun – an interesting challenge) with a song I’d been working on for a while and a different one just dropped into my lap. A riff led to a title led to a chorus led to a verse led to three verses…

I had the thing 90% finished in a half hour, maybe 45 minutes. I performed it at my last show and it turned out well. The response was great. Much of the time the quick ones come to me like this – by way of the labor-intensive ones (though the quality, as always, will vary).

I’m convinced I never would’ve had that one fall out of the sky if I hadn’t been laboring over the one taking me weeks to finish. And by the way, I’m still working on that one! Who knows if it’ll ever come to fruition?

Assuming I have an idea I think is good and might turn into a worthwhile completed song, if it’s taking time to get it right, it doesn’t mean I’m doing something wrong. Songs take the time they take.

There’s no direct correlation between difficulty or ease and quality.

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What creates skill?

Talent – It helps to have a ‘feel’ for songwriting; sometimes called ‘natural talent’.  This certainly exists, but it is so intertwined with Desire and Determination (see below) that in the long run sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. 

Natural talent is a fact, and a few people have so much of it that it carries them quite a ways. But many of the songwriters you most admire did not start out as prodigies. They loved writing, so they worked at it. They learned something new every day. Their songs got better as a result of this application; and their inner talent began to shine through.

What you make of what you have is usually much more important than what you start with.

It’s often been noted that as a high school freshman Michael Jordan did not make the Varsity team. He was a decent player. But he was obsessed – he couldn’t stand not being the best; he worked and worked; and his genius began to emerge.

I’m not saying everyone’s a genius and that all one has to do is to work hard to be one. What I am saying is that even Michael Jordan, generally acknowledged as the best ever in his field – or court – was not recognized as a prodigy. It wasn’t obvious from the start – except maybe to him. (Oh yeah… and he also grew to be 6’6″ tall…).

Study – Learning from those who came before you. This can come through books to some extent, but usually there’s somebody talking to the person who’s trying to learn, explaining and demonstrating how they do things and how other skilled people do them. It can be a coach or teacher, it can be a peer who’s somewhat more experienced – a bandleader or band member, a fellow songwriter, etc.  Or all of these.

Then there’s the study you do on your own. With music and songs, it mostly starts with Listening. Again, a lot of this can be fun… if you find learning, playing, and analyzing the songs of great songwriters to be fun (I do). Trying to figure out what makes them tick, what makes them great. Trying to imitate them. Deeply checking out Richard Rodgers’ and Brian Wilson’s melodies… Burt Bacharach’s and Lennon/McCartney’s chord changes… Bob Dylan’s and Eminem’s lyrics… etc., etc.  Also the grooves, arrangements, and tempos that bring songs to life… Why do some things work better than others?

Repetition – Doing it over and over and over again – writing song after song after song. As the great musician Robbie Kondor said to me years ago, “Songwriters write songs.” Most of us have to write a lot of songs to learn our craft and find our ‘voice’ – to incorporate all our influences into something special.

Learning from mistakes – This may be better put as accepting that many songs will be failed experiments… that just don’t work out the way you hoped they would. So you go back to the drawing board and work on the next one; trying a lot of approaches, gaining some feeling for what might or might not work in the current song and in the future.

Desire/Determination – This is the X Factor. Sheer determination can overcome many lacks, shortcomings, obstacles. Most accomplished musicians and songwriters I know were not considered ‘best in class’ in high school. But they’re the ones who stuck with it and kept improving and learning, through the good times and bad. They thought about quitting… but they didn’t.

(And don’t forget; some of us – like me – are late bloomers. For some, all of this takes more time than for others.)

It’s amazing to me how much a person with desire and the willingness to work can improve – it can be astonishing. It’s also amazing how quickly a person of great talent without a lot of desire and determination can plateau… and never fulfill their potential.

I’ve been both of these people at different times in my life. I know how scary it is to challenge myself to get better and how exciting it can be to actually get pretty good at something I love… and I also know how tempting it can be to say, ‘I’m good enough now… my real work here is done.  Let the rewards roll in!’

But, to a creative person, the latter position is a kind of living death (and usually the expected rewards don’t exactly roll in on schedule either).

Finally, real Skill is the thing you have that no one take away – except you. It’s knowing how to do something at a level with the best in the field.

There’s another part to this that’s beyond skill, beyond competence, beyond technique. You know it when you hear it or see it. You can’t teach it. You can’t force it. You can’t fake it (for long). The Beatles. Duke Ellington. Michael Jordan. Muhammed Ali. Miles Davis. Bob Dylan. Joni Mitchell. Eminem. Philip Roth. Marlon Brando. Judy Garland. Martin Scorcese.  Robert DeNiro. The Coen Brothers. Vince Gill. Many others; the greats. All most of us can do is aspire to moments at that level.

Let’s face it: the majority of the most acclaimed people in any field are largely forgotten after a few years or decades. Some of us ask ourselves, Will I create anything of lasting value, that people will appreciate as a real contribution, decades and even centuries into the future? And, of course, the answer is probably No… most of us won’t have a street named after us… 

Even those few of us whose work will be remembered beyond our lifespan won’t know that for sure when we go. We accept (or not) that ultimately we’re just a small part of something much bigger.

So… I write because I want to, I need to… and because to me, while I’m here, creating something seems to be a more worthwhile activity, given my talents, than the alternatives. And it’s worth it to try to get as good at it as I can. That’s where skill comes in.

Two quotes come to mind:

“You’ll never know if anything you write is any good. You’ll die without knowing. If you have to know, don’t write.” – John Berryman

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.” – Woody Allen

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When working with less experienced songwriters. this is one of the most common questions I hear. I encourage writers to register their copyright (which, by the way, already exists as soon as your creation is fixed in any ‘tangible form’, such as a piece of paper, a recording, etc… What you do with the Copyright Office – URL below – is register that copyright. This is what secures your rights.).

But in decades of working with and producing songwriters in the heart of the New York City music business, as well as writing, performing, and recording many songs of my own, I’ve never seen anyone have the problem of playing their song in public, live or recorded, and having one of the listeners rush home, copy the song, and then make money from it. 

I’m sure this has happened sometime somewhere, but I’ve personally never seen or heard of it.

For you, a songwriter playing your song in public, getting it stolen is probably one of the last things you need to worry about.

Getting someone to hear your song through the clutter, pay attention to it, buy it, cover it, pass it on to a friend… getting people to listen! These are far more worthy of your concern than worrying about your song being stolen.

Copyright your song, by all means. But if you haven’t done that yet, and you have an opportunity to play your song for someone… anyone – my suggestion is… do it.

If you have a successful song that makes money, it’s very possible, even likely, you’ll be sued for stealing someone else’s song, even if you didn’t. That’s the nature of the beast (money).

But someone actually stealing your song… possible… but highly unlikely.

ps  I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. Just my own experience and observations..

http://www.copyright.gov/forms/

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Even going the latter route, if and when partnerships break up you’re back to the same dilemma: Our ‘demos’ are supposed to sound like masters – or at least close. And few of us have the money to go to a ‘real’ recording studio (with an engineer) every time we write a song.

So, on one hand, you do have to get comfortable with recording your songs. But there are pitfalls that often ensue, and they’re easy to fall into.

Let’s say you, like many others (including me), get into production and want to/have to make good sounding recordings of your songs. You get into a DAW – Logic, ProTools, Ableton, etc. – and start learning. There are lots of places to get help; from friends, books, on YouTube, on training sites.

It’s easy to go down that recording/production rabbit hole – in fact, as with everything, you have to go down the rabbit hole and get obsessed, at least for a while, to become any good. (As Woody Allen said about his pretty good but not great clarinet playing, “I have to practice every day just to be this bad.”)

But as hard as it is to become a good producer/arranger/recordist… it’s still not as hard as writing songs. In the former you’re usually creating something from something. In the latter you’re often creating something from nothing.

When you’re producing, you’re usually working on recording an already-written song, or creating a beat for it; that kind of thing. Whatever you do, you start with a song, a recording, a musician, a sound, a loop, and it gives you something back as you listen. You get a playback, you try different sounds, effects, balances… and those sounds, effects, etc, are already there, waiting for you to use them.

When you write a song from scratch… it’s just you and the song. Prose writers call it The Blank Page. (In a way we’re lucky because we get to make sounds as we go.) All writers have to deal with this – much of the time you start with nothing. Or very little, like a title, or a lick… or a writing prompt, if you’re in a workshop.

Look at the movie business. A lot of people start as screenwriters and then become directors. If they’re successful at that, they usually stop writing. Then they hire other writers to do the writing. Why? At least part of the answer is that writing can be a hard, solitary business. It’s easier to have meetings and lunches and talk a lot, sometimes to writers, than to grind out the writing yourself.

The same kind of problem can come up for songwriters and recording. As challenging as it is to become good with recording, sounds, arrangements… it’s still easier than sitting down by yourself or with a partner (which for some people helps a lot) and whipping up something from nothing or almost nothing.

The bottom line is twofold. It’s unquestionably important to know how to capably record your songs or get them recorded well. And it’s easy for songwriting to get sidetracked by recording.

If you want to remain a songwriter and get better at it, this is a delicate balancing act – to fall into the wonderful world of digital recording and at the same time stay faithful to the sometimes painful but highly rewarding process of songwriting and the commitment it requires. This balance, a personal one for each of us, can easily slip out of whack. Finding and maintaining that balance is a worthwhile goal.

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The other way is getting inspired by someone else’s song and thinking ‘I want to write something like that’. Sometimes it’s just getting obsessed with some part of it. So we ‘borrow’ the groove, the chord progression or part of it, a melody phrase.

Call it inspiration, call it borrowing, call it a starting point, call it stealing! Who cares? We all do it. As long as it’s not identical to another song there’s nothing wrong with this. It’s an important way we learn the craft and it’s how songwriting grows, evolves, and expands.

If we haven’t carefully written it down or recorded it, by the time we’re working on either our ‘original’ idea or our ‘borrowed’ idea, it’s already changed. Let it. Don’t fight to recapture something that’s already gone.

As with most things related to memory, how we remember will not be precisely accurate. That may be bad for an eyewitness in a courtroom, but for songwriting it’s fine.

Go with whatever’s there, whatever’s left. Your creative mind is already transforming that idea into your idea. It doesn’t matter where it started.

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There’s nothing like a deadline to spur creativity. And internal deadlines (“I WILL have this done by Wednesday!”) are usually not as effective as external ones.

The deadline can be anything real – a gig, a rehearsal, a meeting with a producer, a songwriting workshop – that raises the stakes and focuses the mind on bringing the song to a point where it’s at least presentable. (In most cases it’s not ideal for a recording session to be the first time a song is performed. Better to develop it in less permanent settings before recording.)

Songs are notoriously hard to complete. I’ve observed that one of the main reasons people come to a songwriting workshop is simply that most of us seem to write more (and in a more concentrated way) knowing that listeners are waiting to hear the song on Monday, or Tuesday, or whenever.

Playing the song, in a tolerable but far from perfect form, to other people – audience, band, friends, other writers – also provides indispensable information, in real-time and after, on where a song needs to go.

Deadlines are a powerful way to move a song much closer to that mysterious state…  Completion. (And how do you know when it’s complete? Ah… that’s a story for another post.) Leave it at this: when it comes to finishing a song, having a deadline is incomparably useful.

“All I need (to write music) is a piano and a deadline.” – Duke Ellington

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I often have some sort of starting point but from there the key word is NEW. I’m more or less starting from scratch and, even if the ideas are familiar, I’m combining them in a new way.

Rewriting seems to me to have two parts. One might be more accurately called Editing. As opposed to the original writing, this is more reactive. I’m responding to the original ideas and trying to improve them.

Here I try to tune myself to what the present version of the song needs, what it’s missing, what doesn’t quite make sense or flow naturally.

Being attuned to this very personal reactive ‘vibration’, developing this inner voice of taste and preference, is a skill like any other that can be improved with time and practice. It requires honesty; acknowledging when something doesn’t feel right for the song instead of just saying, ‘it’s good enough’.

Then it’s time to come up with improvements for what falls short… which takes me back to writing again, also known as rewriting.

Finishing? Getting all those nasty details right that can make a good song better and a better song great? That can be work!

One of the truest of truisms about any kind of writing is that it’s always easier to start something new than to finish something that’s not right yet and needs work. I’ve seen this over and over in myself and many other songwriters.

Another hard truth, though, is that most good songs require some cold-eyed rewriting.

To summarize, I’d say the initial writing part is, or should be, more like play – fooling around, trying things out, keeping the stakes and inhibitions low. What have I got to lose?

The two aspects of rewriting are intertwined. The editing part is more focused – reacting to what I’ve already written, trusting the inner voice that says I can cut something or that it can be better (though I don’t yet know how).

The writing part of rewriting is finding the how. It involves bringing back the playfulness… but now the play’s not so free. Now it has a goal, a purpose – to finish this individual song in a way that’s right for it and only it.

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Looking more closely at the song gave me a better idea of where its power comes from. (Play and sing it; you’ll be glad you did.)

The first Verse lyric is basically the singer feeling sorry for himself.

I’ve paid my dues
Time after time
I’ve done my sentence
But committed no crime
And bad mistakes
I’ve made a few
I’ve had my share of sand kicked in my face
But I’ve come through
(And I need to go on and on and on and on)

These words are sung to music that is much more Broadway or cabaret than rock. In fact, the beginning of the melody is similar to Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Send In The Clowns’ (not a bad thing, but not what you expect from the Verse of an iconic rock anthem). Verse chords:

|| 4/4 Cminor Gminor | Cminor Gminor | Cminor Gminor | Cminor Gminor | Eb Ab/Eb | Eb Ab/Eb | Eb Bb/D Cminor F7 |2/4 Bb |4/4 Ab/Bb C7 ||

What I find interesting (along with the slick modulation going into the Chorus) is that the song transitions from the above Verse right into ‘We Are The Champions’ etc. There’s no way to tell it’s going to go from ‘I’ to ‘We’. The singer goes from an intimate personal confession and transforms into the leader of ‘The Champions’ – with no verbal preparation or transition. And you have to admit it works!

How? The music does the transitioning.

I’m not aware of any heavy rock song of the time or any other that fits this many key changes and non-traditional chords (for the genre) into so few bars. The soaring melody and highly dramatic harmony (to the point, in the Queen style, of being campy) sell the unlikely transition.

The Verse’s quiet, intimate section only lasts for 6 bars before the drama begins in bar 7 (above)… The melody climbs up the scale, leading us to the C7, the V chord of the new key.

By the time he gets to that C7, Mercury is throwing the book away and just going for whatever feels right to him melodically and harmonically. And in this case ‘right’ means triumphant – the Chorus is a 9 bar thrill ride.

|| F Aminor | Dminor Bb C | F Aminor | Bb D/F# | Gminor | Gdim/Bb Edim7 | F Eb/G | Ab Bb | Bb6/C ||

It’s hard to imagine this Chorus being much more rousing. The melody, moving up and down fluidly through a range of an octave and a fourth, is accompanied by chords that maximize the excitement.

Note the use of diminished chords (Gdim/Bb, Edim) and suspended chords (D/F#, Eb/G, Bb6/C) – not the kind of chords you normally hear in a heavy rock song. One of the reasons this works is because the bass notes are doubled – emphasized – by Brian Mays’ overdriven guitar, thereby giving the bass movement more weight than the actual chord qualities (which nonetheless are heard and do their job).

One particularly interesting Chorus moment is when, in bar 7, leading us to the wrap-up, the melody is A, F, Bb  – over an F chord; fairly common – and then it repeats those notes… but over an Eb/G chord… unusual.

The lyric in the 2nd Verse is also bold – it asks us to sympathize with the rich and famous rock star.

I’ve taken my bows
And my curtain calls
You brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it
I thank you all
But it’s been no bed of roses
No pleasure cruise
I consider it a challenge before the whole human race
And I ain’t gonna lose
(And I need to go on and on and on and on)

Again, Mercury puts himself out there as a full rock star… and then invites the audience to join him… WE Are The Champions. Nervy.

Also, for the transition from the end of the Chorus back to the Verse he throws a curve, out of nowhere going to Fminor (|| Fminor Bb/F | Fminor Bb/F | Fminor Bb/C ||); ending with a Bb/C that you’d expect would go… pretty much anywhere but Cminor… which is where it goes.

Only one person in the world could or would have written this song this way. Other than the beginning of the Verse, there’s nothing generic about it. And even the beginning of the Verse serves as a red herring. It doesn’t prepare us – it fools us, sets us up… until we quickly discover that we’re in for a very different experience than the one we expected.

That sense of surprise characterizes the whole song. By risking the ridiculous, Queen flirts with the sublime.

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In those same periods I’d frequently wake up with a fragment of music and/or lyrics, sometimes a whole section of a song, in my head, out of some kind of dream. Trained (by myself) to get out of bed, more asleep than not, I’d get the idea down. Otherwise I’d certainly forget it.

I can evaluate the quality of the idea later and develop it if it’s any good. The main thing is to pounce when it comes.

In the last few years my songwriting pace has slowed down to probably one or two songs a month… maybe fifteen, twenty a year.

Which isn’t bad… but more recently I noticed that even that output was beginning to decline somewhat. So I resolved to work on songs more regularly, and I’ve been doing it.

Even though I’ve stockpiled a lot of songs, I know that if I don’t use it (my songwriting), I’ll lose it. Also, I like to believe that I can get better at this songwriting thing – which isn’t going to be the case if I just think about it.

This week something else happened. I woke up from a dead sleep with a melody that I think might turn into a good song. It just came to me, about 2/3rds complete (the rest came after I force-dragged myself out of bed to write it down!).

This hadn’t happened for a while. I hadn’t even noticed that I wasn’t receiving the gifts that come unbidden when I’m tuned into my ‘songwriting channel’ (and, just like with TV, if you don’t have the set turned on and the channel tuned in, you miss the show).

For me these ideas often come out of a sleep state. But they can and do come any time or place if I’m writing consistently.

The easier ones seem to come when I’m putting in the time on the not-so-easy ones. Go figure.

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This can be an excellent jumping off point for a new song – writing something based on what I love but haven’t done before.

Because we all have our comfort zones. Some of us always write with an 8th note feel and never write shuffles (triplet feel); some writers are the opposite, and always write in a shuffle or swing feel.

We all have tempo comfort zones. I have a few areas (my versions of slow, medium, fast) that I immediately default to – unless I hit the reset button.

There are melody comfort zones – some writers’ phrases almost always start on a downbeat. Some writers’ phrases often last for two bars, followed by two bars of rest… and this continues through the song. Some writers tend to write melodies that go up… some write ones that descend… and some write melodies that don’t move much at all.

Some writers use major chords almost exclusively, rarely venturing into the world of minor chords… not to mention diminished and augmented chords, etc. Some never use 7th chords; some rarely use a chord without a 7th!

Some have never written a song in 3/4 time (such as a waltz) – everything is always in 4/4. And some (like me) have written only in 4/4, 3/4, or 2/4… and have never used ‘odd’ time signatures such as 5/4 or 7/8.

And we all have lyric comfort zones – most of us write a lot about our obsessions (whether we’re trying to or not).

Does any of this sound like you?

It’s not a bad idea to mix it up every once in awhile.

How about narrating as a character that is not you at all?

If you usually write optimistic songs… can you explore your dark side? Do your songs tend to be melancholy… can you lighten up? Write something happy! It (probably) won’t kill you.

The problem is that any of these kind of ‘comfort zone’ habits can lead us to create songs that are too predictable, songs with a deadly lack of surprise, songs that sound and feel too much like our other songs.

To go back to where we started, this is where the excitement that happens after you hear that song you love and say to yourself ‘Why haven’t I written a song like that?’ can really come in handy.

Listen closely, analytically, to that song. Take some element of it that’s not in your comfort zone… and use it in your new song. Is it faster – or much slower – than you usually write (or think you can write)? Etc.

Grab something you think of as being not you – and take it for a test drive… No obligation to purchase.

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Most great artists, great songwriters, Bring The Pain. They’re either not afraid of it or – more likely – they are, but push through anyway. This goes for lyrics and music.

The things that scare me most are the things that compel me, moth-to-a-flame, to come closer. Sometimes they obsess me. They scare and excite me.  As a writer, I try to lean in to that excitement.

Like everyone, some things scare me so much that I don’t want to think about or feel them  – or write about them. But since most writing comes from the subconscious anyway, if I’m willing to keep the channels open, I won’t stop my monsters (and angels) from appearing. That’s a good thing.

When I’m listening to a song, or watching a performer or a film, I’m often struck by how a powerful artist will have available and be able to use difficult, complicated feelings, bringing them right to the surface. (In many cases they might have trouble accessing these feelings in their ‘real’ lives.) 

We, the audience, immediately relate when a talented artist does this. When the artist won’t dig down and make it feel real, neither will we – why bother?

Even great comedians (think Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, Woody Allen, Laurel & Hardy) make us laugh by using difficult personal situations, memories of what they’ve endured, their appearance… They turn what could be seen as tragic –  their struggle with their limitations – into laughter in which we recognize ourselves.

Great performers who play Heroes (think Harrison Ford, Gary Cooper, even later Clint Eastwood) bring us with them on their journey because we feel their pain – even though they’re heroes, their triumph is not easy for them.

Great singers (you name them)… you know they’ve been there and back.

Even if a song (or any work of art) is lighthearted and fun, if it’s not connected to something real, some sense that the joy in the song does not come easy (that’s why it’s JOY and not just nice), it’s hard for the song to connect deeply at the heart and gut level.

So this is not just about writing dark songs; not at all. It’s about bringing real feeling to whatever you write, no matter how light or dark.

I think of my late friend Doc Pomus’s lyric for ‘Save The Last Dance For Me’. Doc was disabled and couldn’t dance at all; couldn’t even stand up. In his songwriting, he didn’t wallow in that; he didn’t even refer to it. 

He took the painful situation he was in and found places within it that many others could relate to. As a writer, he didn’t run away from his most painful feelings – he transformed them.

When Eminem wrote, about performing, “His palms are sweaty/Knees weak, arms are heavy/There’s vomit on his sweater already/Mom’s spaghetti‘, was he backing off from telling us what he really went through before going on stage?

But that’s part of what being an artist is – we’re the ones who go to the scary place and bring stuff back for others to feel and then maybe understand a little better. We go first. Then we help our listeners melt the ice around their hearts.

So dig down to where your hurt is – that’s where much of the good stuff is too.

In this story, you’re the one who makes the Hero’s Journey.

(And don’t  forget, you have to learn how to put the feelings into a coherent form – we’re not talking about writing in a journal here.  But that’s the craft of Songwriting, which is and will be the subject of many other posts).

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Think about these leaps up:

* Empire State Of Mind (jumps up a 5th – ‘inspire you” – in the Chorus)

* Alfie (up a 6th on the repeat of ‘What’s it all about’)

* Somewhere (from West Side Story) memorably jumps up a flatted 7th in its first line (There’s A place for us’)

* Of course the immortal Somewhere Over The Rainbow (a leap of a full octave)

Our hearts rise with those melody jumps.

What about leaps down?  Less common, with a different effect, but think about:

* Roxanne (down a 4th).

* Brian Wilson’s melodies are full of extreme leaps up and down – check out God Only Knows or Surf’s Up – an amazing melodist.

At the end of the verse in Frank Ocean’s Thinking About You he drops down a major 6th… only to, with the help of his falsetto, jump up an octave and a 6th from there!

Don’t limit your melodies to scales, repeated notes, bluesy 3rds… every once in a while, Take A Leap. Try it!

Credits:  Empire State Of Mind (Hunte, Keys, Shuckburgh, Sewell-Ulepic, Carter Robinson), Alfie (Bacharach/David), Somewhere (Bernstein/Sondheim),  Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Arlen/Harburg), Roxanne (Sumner),  God Only Knows (Wilson/Asher), Surf’s Up (Wilson/Parks), Thinking About You (Ocean, Cobey)

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When asked about inspiration, Duke Ellington said he didn’t need it: “All I need is a piano and a deadline.”

There’s nothing like a deadline to spur creativity and get a writer moving forward… and internal deadlines (“I will have this done by Wednesday!”) are usually not as effective as external ones.

I’ve found that one of the main reasons people come to my songwriting workshops is simply this – most of us write more (and in a more focused way) knowing that someone’s waiting to hear the song on, for example, Tuesday.

Songs are notoriously hard to complete. Having people who are expecting to hear your song at a specific time and place – at a recording session, a band rehearsal, a gig, a co-writing or coaching session, a meeting with a publisher, a songwriting workshop – tends to move a song much closer to that mysterious state… Completion.

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What should I say?

Now, I wouldn’t have even begun writing lyrics if I didn’t feel strongly that I had ‘something to say’. But ‘having something to say’ is a very general idea or feeling. Writing a lyric for a particular song is not general at all – it’s incredibly specific. If it’s good, a lyric will fit its song – and no other. Every job is custom.

Say I’m writing a song… I have a Title, maybe a Chorus, maybe some idea for a story or situation, a part of a Verse that kind of makes sense… in other words, I have a long way to go before I have a real song on my hands. That’s a pretty familiar situation for me, and for a lot of songwriters.

Most good songs are still Title-focused. This is not as prevalent as it used to be, but still – most. 

Most of my songs end up being Title-focused. And, although I don’t usually start with a Title, once I’ve got one, I believe that the DNA of my lyric is usually encoded in that Title. My job is to crack that code.

This is where paying very close attention to the Title can pay off. Every word of it (even if it’s only one) contains ideas and clues that can, in the rest of the song, be worked with, against, and around; in every way from directly to abstractly.

Kind of a good news/bad news situation here. The good news is that I believe there is a code in the Title… and if I can crack it, I’ve got a map that will point me towards my goal – a complete and satisfying lyric.

The not-so-happy news is that, just like science, this takes a lot of experimenting – let’s just call it work. This can be fun; don’t get me wrong. But it can also be quite laborious – getting it right, that is.

In a Title-based song, when it works, everything leads to the Title, like a road leading home. And there are as many different roads as there are songwriters.

For example, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Gerry Goffin, Carole King, Hal David, Marvin Gaye, mid- and late-period Springsteen, Adele, and Max Martin usually take a direct approach to the title (as did most 20th century songwriters). Some, like Joni Mitchell and Amy Winehouse, use an approach you might call, ‘direct… but surprising’.

Bob Dylan often takes the direct route but, protean as he is, he also doesn’t hesitate to approach a title from many different angles in the course of a single song. But he always keeps its centrality in mind.

Eminem and Frank Ocean use, and use well, a lot of poetic freedom. David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy, Kendrick Lamar, Sam Beam, or Thom Yorke might be considerably freer and sometimes abstract in their approach, depending on the period in which they wrote a particular song.

For me, sadly, useful ideas don’t fall from my pen like rain from the sky. But there are ideas in me if I keep after them.

I think about the Title and various ways I might approach it, trying out different angles. What does the Title mean to me? What are its possible ramifications? How many different sides does it have, and which one(s) do I want to work with? What are different ways to get to the Title, oppose it, contrast with it, interpret it? Sometimes the lines come quickly and instinctively; other times, not so much.

I need to choose words that fit this song only – hopefully ones that make it as interesting and fresh as I can – and leave out everything else. 

For the songwriter, unraveling the strands of DNA found in the Title can answer a lot of questions about what other words belong in a song.

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Or I might be messing around – aka ‘writing’ – and come across something I like. This then leads to other intuitions about where the song could go and what it could be about.

So I chip away at it – sometimes this takes an hour or two (rare), other times it goes over weeks or months (less rare, in my case) – until, if I’m lucky, the song takes shape, becoming something substantial…

In other words, the song has begun to take on a life of its own… which is what I’m searching and hoping for.

When this happens, I’ve noticed that something important in the writing process occurs.

What I wanted the song to be about, or thought it would be, musically and/or lyrically, is not so important anymore. Now there may be something going on that’s stronger and more interesting than what I originally intended.

At that point it’s best for me, as much I can, to let go of what I thought the song was supposed to be, and to pay close attention to what it is.

It’s time for me to get out of the way and let the song tell me what it needs, instead of the other way around.

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When working with less experienced writers. this is one of the most common questions/concerns I hear. 

I encourage songwriters to register their copyright (which, by the way, already exists as soon as your creation is ‘fixed in any tangible form’, such as a piece of paper, a recording, etc… What you do with the Copyright Office is register that copyright, which then gives you legal protections – see url below).

But in decades of working and with, playing, and producing hundreds of songwriters in the music world of New York City, as well as writing, performing, and recording many songs of my own, I’ve never seen anyone have this problem. That is, play their song in public, live or recorded, and have one of the listeners rush home, copy the song, and then make money from it. I’m sure this has happened, but I’ve still never seen or heard of it.

I’m not promising or guaranteeing anything here; just passing on my experience.

If you’re a songwriter playing your song in public, getting it stolen is probably one of the last things you need to worry about.

Getting someone to hear it through the clutter, pay attention to it, buy it, cover it, pass it on to a friend… getting people to listen!… These are, imho, far more worthy of the expenditure of a songwriter’s supply of anxiety and worry than concerns that your song will be stolen.

Copyright your song, by all means. But if you haven’t done that yet, and you get an opportunity to play your song for someone… anyone – my suggestion is… do it.

ps  I’m not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

http://www.copyright.gov/forms/

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