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Tag: songwriting
On Songwriting: What’s the Purpose of Writing Songs?
For a long time I never considered this question since making up tunes and singing along to them – relying totally on serendipity – was a childish habit I developed as soon as I was big enough to hold a guitar. This was long before I asked why anyone did anything. Only later in my…
Too Much Introspection?
Lurking around online guitar communities one’s bound to come across a variety of opinions on this, that, and the other to do with the best example of this and the best way to do that. It’s all excellent fodder for contemplation and is occasionally informative. Most of what one reads is, though, borne out of…
Songwriting – wherefrom the songs?
Sometimes I’m asked at gigs and catches me off guard. It’s always a difficult question to answer succinctly to a stranger, and causes me to stutter and stammer incoherently. “I’ve always done it”, is as lame a reason as it is true. But to me it’s all rather obvious since it’s an internal life that…
Noodling with form
One of the effects of my listening to so much classical music (particularly symphonies) is that I appear to have developed an ear for forms such as rondo, sonata, minuets, etc. Out of curiosity, I’ve also read a little about the historical development of these forms. Even more curiously, I’ve been pondering how they might…
Noodling with words
As I wander from internet forum to bulletin board and back again, I come across certain topics that come up repeatedly like the sunrise. One of these is a question about the relative priority of music or lyrics when it comes to songwriting. If I pipe up and post a reply it is usually a…
Songwriting: On the use of early fragments
I’ve writ elsewhere (all over the world wide web) that I picked up the guitar at an age too early to learn anything proper like an extant piece of music. I was simply interested in making twanging and snapping sounds. I had no loftier ambition than to disturb the peace in our home. It’s true…
Tourism and songwriting
Last week I was in Italy with my family on holiday and we spent some considerable time strolling around the streets of Rome and Florence taking in the sights. I had decided before the trip that while there I would try and put lyrics to a few songs that I had kicking around waiting for…
Songwriting – Stirring the muse
Sometimes I’m asked… Most of the time I stumble across something when I’m working on some experimentation with harmony and finding different ways to change key, or trying to get some weird scale under my fingers. An idea will pop up which I’ll mess around with to see if it’s got any legs. Thoughts of…
Songwriting – a fact of imbalance
Proportionality is a lost cause. I have the curious knack of making my major key output sound more minor than most peoples’ minor key output! It might tell of a deeply troubled nature. I would, there is no doubt at all in my mind, be a deeply troubled individual did I not have the therapy…
Songwriting – a question of balance…
… between the melancholy and joyful. What the heck? What is it about melancholy songs that they just seem to drip from the fingerboard seemingly without call or effort. Whereas, in contrast, happy songs require the skills of a musical sorcerer. I can sometimes approach a pastiche with burlesque outbursts or strains of manic hysteria,…
