People ask all the time how to write a song. To a songwriter, it’s hard to describe because
it’s somewhat like breathing. Every musician does it differently. Some artists,
like Elton John, who don’t write lyrics, receive the words from people Bernie
Taupin, and then Elton composes melody to what Bernie hands him.
For me, the spark of a new song seems to come from nowhere. Then,
with some work, you develop it further until it’s a full-blown melody. From
there, you find the hook, or the thing that grabs your ear and keeps your
attention. Of course, you need to create
a “middle eight” - the eight bars of the song than makes it different enough to
keep the song from being monotonous.
At that point, the music suggests the title. And by then,
the melody dictates a style – country, a ballad, rock, etc. What’s nice about
being a producer in addition to being the writer is that you can figure out the
style in the writing process. Sometimes this can be a contentious battle
between producers and writers. The
artist thinks the song should be one style and the producer hears something
else.
The last step of writing the music is deciding on the
structure: is it going to be a two verses and a chorus, or a verse, a chorus, a
verse, a solo? Songs require structure or they are just an endless string of
melodic notes. Finally this is the time
when the lyrics start to come to fit the title, structure and phrasing of the
song.
Sometimes a song has to be re-written during the recording
process. In a recent recording session, we went to record a song and discovered that it
was missing an “entry”. Every song needs
a beginning, middle, and an end, or it becomes repetitious. Although we thought
the song was complete for years, it became apparent while recording that it
needed additional work.
That’s the way the Dreamer’s Brigade music usually gets
written!
