Genre and my discontent

The concept of genre is something I have very mixed feelings about, mostly negative. I can understand the utility of sorting music into genres. It allows marketers to more efficiently market to the right groups of people. It has made it easier for people who like a particular band to find others they might like. Mostly, people have embraced sorting things by genre, simply because people will embrace just about anything that saves them time and mental effort.

But to me, it has gone too far. It has turned into a ghettoization of music. It has gone from an atempt to group things by similarity to a system that forces bands and musicians to fit themselves and their music into fictitious, neat categories. So we get less experimentation (unless you’re in the “experimental” subcategory), less cross-pollenation and cooperation, and more generic crap.

It’s not that genre is a new idea. It’s not, by far. When I was a kid and Aerosmith did a song with Run-DMC, it was considered a crossover breakthrough simply because people who listened to rap and rock didn’t mix much. Disco faced off against punk, rock against jazz, jazz against blues, and so on down the line into, well, antiquity. It’s in music, art, film, literature, and so on.

It’s just that there are such narrowly defined and specific genres now that I feel like a lot of people are completely unexposed to music that they might like if they gave it a chance. I have known people who only listen to emo or only listen to trip hop or only listen to thrash. These are all very specific kinds of music. It would be impossible for the industry in its current form to produce anything like another Beatles or Rolling Stones or Michael Jackson – acts that had an incredibly wide appeal in their heydays. The closest we get now is something like Justin Timberlake. While I actually think Justin Timberlake is really good at what he does and I give him credit for his hard work, well, he sure isn’t the Beatles. Or Michael Jackson.

I could go on and on about this, but Josh Wentz wrote an article about it earlier this month that puts it a lot better than I think I can here. Josh has contributed to the Very Us Artists, of which I am a co-artistic director, and he has a lot of really good thoughts about music. He also has a lot of pretty good stuff going on at his site, Sidedown.

It's in the lyrics

One area of songwriting that seems to get shortchanged too often, at least in my eyes, is lyric-writing. Songs, as I defined them, don't necessarily have lyrics. But the vast majority of them do. Yet when I've taken part in conversations about songwriting, the lyrics seem almost like an afterthought.

The way I see it, if you're not going to put some effort into writing the lyrics, you might as well not have lyrics. Just sing gibberish or "aahs" or use an instrument other than voice. The lyrics are as much a component of the song as any other, and they deserve adequate attention.

That's not to say that every song needs to have lyrics that read like a Shakespearean sonnet. On the contrary, sometimes the best lyrics sound terrible when taken apart from the music. Great lyrics don't necessarily need to stand up well on their own. They simply need to enhance the song.

After, Before, or Concurrently Written
With that in mind, there are many approaches to writing lyrics, and everyone has his or her own way of approaching this part of the craft. The first consideration is when the lyrics are written in relation to the music. They can be written after the music, before the music, or concurrently with the music. Each of these brings its own set of advantages, disadvantages, and considerations to the table.

In most contemporary pop and rock music, the music is written before the lyrics. Sometimes only the vocal melody is written, while other times the whole song is written and arranged before the lyrics are considered. The main advantage of this is that it gives you complete freedom musically. Whatever happy accidents or brilliant ideas you have, you can throw them in and see what sounds good. Later on, you can come up with lyrics that fit the mood of the music or in some way complement it. This gives you some structure around which to write the lyrics, which can also be helpful.

The disadvantage here, of course, is that the lyrics are literally an afterthought. You may find yourself struggling to fit your lyrical ideas into limited space or stretching them out to fill a verse. Your lyrics are constrained by the music, which can have a negative impact on them.

In most operas and musical theater pieces, where story is more important, lyrics come before the music. Entire operas, in fact, are usually written to pre-existing librettos. The primary benefit to writing the lyrics first is that you can write music that suits or complements their mood. You can compose the melodies so that they follow the words closely (e.g. “Here comes the sunshine” ascends, “Here comes the rain” descends). You can synthesize moods by purposely creating mismatches (e.g. “I’m so happy” set to horror music). Essentially, you challenge your songwriting abilities more by creating constraints, and you can potentially create a much more integrated final product. I’ve known composers and songwriters who prefer to work this way, usually because they prefer to challenge their ability to write music with constraints or because they find it hard to write without them.

The main disadvantage, of course, is the constraint itself. It isn’t necessarily easy to compose music that works well with pre-written lyrics. It takes away a good deal of musical freedom. If you write riff-based rock songs, where vocals are usually written after the guitar riffs have been configured in some way, this method won’t work well for you. If you are a hip hop artist, however, this may be your standard modus operandi.

Writing lyrics concurrently with the music is somewhat unusual, in my experience, but I’ve definitely done it. The great thing about working this way is that your head is in the same place when you write the lyrics as it is when you write the music. If you are feeling dark and moody because you were just fired from your job and want to write a song about it, that specific emotion will come across in both the music and the lyrics. I’ve had musical ideas come to me complete with lyrics attached (usually snippets rather than whole songs), and these have been some of my most satisfying songwriting experiences.

The hard part about doing this is that when you’re stuck, you’re really stuck. If you can’t come up with the next line, you’re sitting there doodling. It can be kind of time-consuming. It can also sometimes result in lyrics or music that aren’t as good, since it isn’t necessarily a simple thing to concentrate on both at the same time. You may lose sight of the big picture of the song as a whole.

While I have plenty of songs in which music and lyrics are written before, after, or concurrently with one another exclusively, I would say that in most cases, for me, it is some combination of the three. I may, for instance, have a good idea for a verse of a song, write lyrics to that, then continue writing lyrics for a chorus, and then write the chorus music. Or I may work on music and lyrics together until I hit an impasse lyrically, but I still have musical ideas coming so I come back and write the next set of lyrics later. Or I may alter a melody line to account for a particular lyric.

I just think it is useful to know what the benefits and drawbacks of each type are. Choose which one works best for a given song based on what you are setting out to write.

Lyrical philosophies

Beyond the decision of when to write the lyrics, there are numerous philosophies regarding how lyrics should be written, and you will often find people who adhere quite rabidly to one or another. Personally, I don’t really have a consistent philosophy. I guess my lyrics are headier than most, but not always.

Here is a small sample of the various philosophies I have come across, in no particular order, many of which have gone into my own work.

• Song lyrics should work as stand-alone poetry. I’ve heard this from a lot of the more literary, coffeehouse types. The idea is that good words are good words, and if something is well-written it should work with or without accompaniment. I tend to disagree with this as a principle, although I have written poems that I have set to music and I have changed lines to make them sound more independently coherent.
• Song lyrics should be based on the sound of the words rather than their meaning. There is some truth to this, I think, and it has a lot of adherents. Word sound is a consideration in poetry as well, except that poetry alone doesn’t have the added consideration of being sung. However, I tend to find meaningless lyrics kind of pointless and boring. I love it when lyrics actually have something to say.
• Song lyrics should work with the underlying music to achieve an overall effect. I pretty much completely agree with this. Sometimes the lyrics capture the mood of the music, while other times they bend it into something new. Once, a long time ago, I wrote a song whose lyrics consisted entirely of the repeated phrase “I love you.” Not much on its own. But as the song progresses, it goes from being sung happily to pleasant music to being screamed in agony over dissonant, distorted music. The overall effect could not have been achieved without the music and lyrics working together to create it.
• Song lyrics should be from the heart, not the head. A lot of people feel this way. Music has more of a direct emotional link than most other art forms, and it makes sense that lyrics would take advantage of that. However, some of the best lyrics I’ve ever heard have been very clever and expressed ideas over emotions. It all depends on the type of music and the goal of the song. People who adhere strongly to this particular philosophy almost always hate the band Rush.

What defines lyrics as well-written to me is not the same from one song to another. Sometimes lyrics sound really silly or dumb when you speak them, but they fit the music so well that they should be considered great. Or vice versa. It all depends on whether the overall effect is achieved.

Bad lyrics

Poorly written lyrics are pretty common across the board in all kinds of music. I’m not necessarily talking about the ones Dave Barry points out; although he does a pretty good job of naming some bad ones, some only sound bad because they are taken out of the context of the music (his write-ups are pretty funny, though). What I really mean are lyrics that display poor technique.

One of the biggest no-nos is using tired clichés. “Down on my knees / Begging you please” is one example of a tired, overused line (yes, I know Paul Simon used it and he’s considered a very good lyricist, but it was a weak moment). It’s lazy and it displays a lack of originality and care about the craft. Sometimes you can get away with a cliché not sounding too bad if it’s used in an unusual way, but most of the time, it just shouldn’t be done.

Similarly, overused rhymes should be avoided. I don’t mean rhyming “do” and “you”. That’s not so bad. But “together” rhyming with “forever” is way, way overdone. It stands out more because it’s an obvious and easy (if imperfect) rhyme, which, incidentally, is how many cliché lines come about, such as the aforementioned “Down on my knees / begging you please.”

Another problem I see a lot is what I call the rhyming dictionary effect. It is when a lyric is the obvious result of having looked something up in a rhyming dictionary. It usually manifests itself as a strange, unusual word popping up inappropriately and out of nowhere in a song that doesn’t feature many strange, unusual words. Often the word is used slightly incorrectly. One example that comes to mind is from a song written by a nameless acquaintance of mine that contained the line “I said, ‘Hey baby, it’s getting late / I guess we better ameliorate”. He wanted to look literate. It backfired. Thankfully, the line didn’t make the cut.

Those three issues cover about 75% of all lyrical problems, I think. The rest are more specific.

For instance, a song might be too unsubtle or straightforward, which can sound like it was written by a child. As an example, here are some lyrics I wrote as a child: “Baseball, baseball / I like baseball / I play third base / its lots of fun / I like to hit the ball and run”. There’s an appalling lack of poetry there. Okay for children’s music, where something very straightforward is actually desirable, but if you were to put that in a song aimed at adults, it would sound pretty stupid. Know your audience.

A song might also come across as naïve, or it might try to be funny and fail. There are all kinds of things that can go wrong. I won’t claim to be perfect, either, many of the very problems I’m mentioning exist in my own work.

There’s one particular brand of poor lyric writing that really gets to me, though. The absolute worst lyrics, hands down, are lyrics that are aiming for a sort of earnest sincerity but end up being corny and ridiculous. They make my facial muscles twitch when I hear them. I don’t normally like to refer to current songs here, but the latest song to do this is the atrociously bad “Tattoo” as sung by Jordin Sparks.

Musically, it’s pretty catchy and not a bad piece of pop confection. The lyrics are mostly standard pop lines, but the standout slice of pure cheese is: “You’re still a part of everything I do / You’re on my heart just like a tattoo / Just like a tattoo I’ll always have you.” Yikes. I don’t know which of the four listed songwriters is responsible for this lyrical monstrosity, but it’s pretty darn bad. I won’t even get into the reasoning because, frankly, I don’t want to even think about this song.

My songs, my children

I worked for a man once who had written four published novels. At a lunch, someone asked him which one was his favorite. He was taken aback by the question.

“I can’t answer that,” he said. “My books are like my children. Even if I have a favorite, I’m not going to admit it. I love them all equally.”

I suppose I feel similar about my songs in some ways. I’m very hesitant to call one of my “children” superior to the others. However, there are certainly some that have stood up over time better than others, at least in my eyes.

I’ve never been the sort of person who is quick to assign value to anything. On those Myers-Briggs tests, I always score a strong P over J (usually I’m INTP). I tend to be critical but non-judgmental, if that makes sense (and maybe it doesn’t). So whenever I pick my favorite anything – movie, song, book, etc. – I always have to prefix it with caveats like, “this is subject to change,” or “I don’t really believe in rating art,” or something like that. But sometimes life requires us to make decisions about what we like most, and I grudgingly must oblige.

So when it comes to my own songs, I have a similar hesitation, but I do have to admit that some are better than others. Sometimes it pains me to admit that an old favorite isn’t quite as good as it seemed when I was writing it. Other times, what I thought was a throwaway seems a lot better in retrospect.

That said, I can’t pick just one favorite. There are a few, based on different qualifications for “favorite” that I could have.

I think the best song I have written, from a musical standpoint, is "This Is Your World". The way it introduces its parts and then has them work together works really well to my ears. Maybe it’s no coincidence that I wrote most of it, including the various instrumental lines, in my head without touching an instrument. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to get the recordings of it (I think I’ve done three) to do justice to the version that’s in my head. It’s just my shortcoming as a non-techie that I can sometimes have this issue. One day I’ll get this song right and the world shall recognize my genius!

The song that has gone over best with other people, by a long shot, is "Existential Lullaby". The song has been among the top 10 songs on the Experimental Rock chart of GarageBand.com for about a year now. In some respects, I can kind of see why. The recording came out pretty good, and it has a pretty unique sound. It’s also has what might be the best lyrics I’ve written. But I also kind of scratch my head a bit, because it’s a very unusual song structurally and it’s extremely dark thematically (being about the fact that life feeds on death).

The best pop song I’ve written is probably "The Legend I Was Meant to Be". It is melodically strong and follows lots of conventions pretty well. The recording isn’t that great. It was recorded for the RPM Challenge, so it had to be done fast, and I had a cold when I did the vocals.

Enough about the best. What about the worst, the disappointments?

Well, I’ve never actually recorded the very worst songs I’ve written, at least not in a format that I can readily access. In fact, I’ve forgotten the names of many. But I remember a few of them as vague embarrassments. The worst was this unnamed thing I did about people living underground after some unnamed catastrophe. It was a musical jumble that didn’t work well and made no sense with the lyrics.

As for the worst that I’ve actually made available online, well, that’s a tricky one. I don’t actually dislike any of the songs I’ve put up, which is why I put them up. But if I had to choose the one that has turned out to be the weakest over time, I might go with "My Life Inside", which is a little blander than I’d wanted it to be. My worst-recorded song that I’ve made available is probably "The Plutocrat", simply because there’s a major instrument missing from the recording (guitar). It’s my worst-rated song at GarageBand.com, too.

Naturally, this is all subjective. Another person listening to my songs might think “My Life Inside” is really good and the rest of my stuff is worthless, or that it’s all worthless, or whatever. The great thing about being a songwriter is that it’s all opinion. There’s no objective rating scale. If someone hates my music, I can just say they’re wrong and continue believing in my own greatness. :)

Song structures

I tend to approach songwriting from the grand scale, which is to say that I concern myself with the overall structure of a song before delving into the details. It's pretty rare that a song comes to me completely. I usually have a number of melodic or sonic ideas that have been sitting around for a while in my head or roughly recorded, and I piece them together into songs. Whenever I come up with a new snippet of an idea, I ask myself if I have any other ideas with which the new idea might pair up, and sometimes things click and a song is born. Probably more often, I will have a couple of ideas that form the basis of a song and build around that.

But I do like to have some idea of where I am going. Most songs, of course, follow some variation on the standard setup of verses and choruses (V-C-V-C-Bridge-C or something close to that). A lot of my songs do as well. I don't always try to make a statement through song form.

There are two major divisions when it comes to constructing a song form: strophic and through-composed. Strophic song structures bring back earlier parts, whereas through-composed song structures go off on a journey and never return. Strophic is by far more common in popular Western music for obvious reasons. First and foremost, it's pretty difficult to create a memorable, catchy song if you don't repeat any sections. It is also much easier. You only need to write a few chunks and then arrange them. Through-composed songs require a lot more writing. I'll talk about strophic song forms first, since they are more common.

Strophic song structure

In popular music, strophic songs usually have two main sections that repeat: the verse and the chorus. There is usually (but not always) a third section, the bridge, that occurs in the latter part of the song only once. Longer songs may have other sections, such as pre-choruses or instrumental solos, which may or may not repeat. The verses are usually more tense and less melodic or memorable. They tend to stay within a small range of pitches. Each verse will usually have different lyrics with it. Choruses, on the other hand, are the memorable hooks in the song. Most songs use the same lyrics (or slight variations) for every occurrence of the chorus.
A few examples of popular song forms are:
V-C-V-C-V-C
V-C-V-C-B-C
V-C-V-C-B-V-C
V-PreC-V-PreC-C-B-C
V-C-V-C-B-Solo-C

As with all categories, there are songs that will fall in between. Sometimes a verse sounds different every time it is sung, for instance, but it is essentially still the same music underneath. In general, as far as I am concerned (and maybe some music theorist will disagree), it is still strophic if the key, chord progression, basic melody, and meter are the same. It is a new section if these elements change. Different instrumentation may be enough if it changes the nature of the section in some way (since instrumentation is not necessarily an essential part of a song).

When I write songs with more complex structures, I usually throw out the idea of verses and choruses. If I have a song with seven or eight sections, I'll go the art music route of using letters for the sections. V-C-V-C-B-C might be diagrammed as A-B-A-B-C-B instead. It's more universal and more useful, in my eyes, to do things this way.

Sections that repeat but aren't quite the same as their first instance can be differentiated with apostrophes. So if I bring back section A but it is in a different key, I might call it A'. A second variation might be A''.

One of my more complex (but still - just barely - strophic) songs is "Teeming Megalopolis". I map the song structure as:
A-B-C-D-E-A'-F-G-C'-D-D

Some people might call this through-composed, and it really is a sort of hybrid. Most of the sections come and go, and even the ones that return are slightly different in some ways when they come back. However, there are repeated sections, so it technically qualifies as strophic to me (I'm pretty strict about what I consider to be through-composed). There is no chorus. This illustrates what I would consider to be the outer limit of strophic.

Through-composed song structure

Through-composed songs are much harder to come by, and they are much harder to compose well. They often come across as experimental in nature, simply because people aren't used to hearing them. The best example that comes to mind from popular music at the moment is "Last Goodbye" by Jeff Buckley.

To use one of my own as an example again, "Looking for Something New?" would qualify. It has a series of different sections. However, if you listen, you may notice that there are a couple of sections that repeat. Here is an important point: a through-composed song may include strophic sections within it. "Looking for Something New?" has a couple of parts that repeat in some form early on, but it then takes off in wild new directions (maybe too out there for many tastes, but hey, that's who I am) and never returns. The essential characteristic of a through-composed song is that it takes off and does not return. "Teeming Megalopolis" is structured to bring you back toward the end, whereas "Looking for Something New?" is not.

Through-composed songs are great for taking the listener on a journey. Some very long songs, such as "Supper's Ready" by Genesis, use through-composition to gradually build, from one section to the next, into a climax. While the strophic song will soar and then come back to Earth each time, a through composed song will just keep going and leave you off in a different place than where it picked you up.

Through-composed songs are rarely radio hits, but when done well, they can satisfy in a way that strophic structures cannot.

The nature of a song

When I call myself a "songwriter", I mean it as something that is distinct from a "composer". Or, rather, it is a more specific sort of composer: a composer of songs. This, of course, begs the question of what a song is.

It isn't as easy a question to answer as one might think. We can certainly identify a song as something separate from, say, a string quartet. Songs are pieces of music written for the voice as an instrument. There may be other instruments in songs, but the voice is the focus. But we already know this, right? It's in the dictionary.

As with most definitions, however, there are deeper layers of complexity and specificity. We certainly have heard songs where non-vocal lines are the most memorable parts, or even "instrumental songs". The latter are often instrumental tracks on albums of primarily vocal material. There is usually some other instrument that replaces the voice as the instrument of focus.

There are also pieces of music that are vocal but may not fit everyone's idea of what a song is. Listen to, say, the soundtrack for Star Wars Episode I. There's a lot of ominous vocal stuff going on there. But does that make the vocal parts songs? Most people would say no. Why not?

Everyone will have their own definition of what is or is not a song, and most people have not and will never think long enough about it to put that definition into words. Some people insist that all songs are vocal and have lyrics, while others have very broad definitions that could be applied to just about anything. Here I will outline my own definition, which you may or may not agree with. I don't think there is a precise right answer. But when I say that I am a songwriter above all else, these are the qualities of the music that I compose and think of as songs.

Chris Torgersen's three (somewhat loose) qualifications for songs:

1. Songs are self-contained.

This is not to say that songs cannot be part of something larger, just that they have their own beginning, middle, and end. They are recognizable as distinct pieces within the larger piece.

2. Songs have hooks.

"Hooks" can be interpreted widely. They can be rhythmic, melodic, or whatever. The point is that songs aren't just tense background mood music. They have some quality to them that is identifiable as being distinctly "that song" and memorable as such.

3. Songs spotlight solo instruments.

This is not always the case, but the vast majority of songs give the spotlight to one instrument (overwhelmingly voice) over others. The instrument of focus may change within a song, but usually this is not the case. Importantly, a song must be recognizable as itself by the use of these solo lines alone. This is a tricky qualification because it is even more subjective than the others. For instance, I do not think of string quartets as songs because, even though they can have different solo instruments, they are interdependent. Individual lines don't capture the essence of the piece.

This is probably a much wider net than most people would have. I'm sure it captures quite a few things that I would not consider songs, simply because I did not include the necessity of vocals if nothing else. But these are loose guidelines.

So, then, how can we say that one song is the same song when played in vastly different ways. After all, most Americans have heard "The Star-Spangled Banner" played at sporting events in many different ways, and recognize Jimi Hendrix's version of it as the same song. This is because songs can be distilled down to their essential elements and reconstructed in different ways.

This is an important concept for me. When I say that I write songs, I mean that I write these essential essences. I can interpret my own songs in a variety of ways, but my interest lies more in the writing of the underlying song than in the instrumentation, production, or performance of it.

So when I say that I am a songwriter primarily, this is what I am talking about. If I record a song that switches moods unpredicatbly or relies heavily on production (as many of mine have), there is always an underlying essence that is there when the rest is stripped away. A song is not its production or performance. It is the intangible thing underneath that can only ever be heard through interpretation. It is a theoretical, abstract object that must be made concrete by production or performance.

Therefore, most songwriters also take up performance and/or recording as a sort of secondary craft. This can go both ways. In my experience, I have seen more performers or studio wizards who have taken up songwriting as a secondary craft than the other way around. Performance, production, and songwriting are separate skills that do not always (actually, rarely) exist strongly in one person. Most often, a person has one of these skills and uses the others as means of showing it. And different audiences value these things differently, but that's another discussion.

I am a songwriter first. I have learned how to do some recording in my little home studio, and I'm not terrible at it (though I'm really far from good). I am not much of a performer. It took me a while to realize this about myself. Knowing this about myself and approaching music from this angle helps me to work in the way that is most rewarding for me.

How to tell the diamonds from the rough

Every time I come up with a melody that I like, whether it is while I'm plucking at keys, fooling around on my computer, humming, or simply thinking it up, I immediately believe I've come up with the best melody I've ever come up with. I think that's natural. If it doesn't seem great at first thought, why linger on it at all?

Sometimes it only takes a few minutes for me to realize that, well, maybe it isn't the greatest melody, or even really one worth keeping. Sometimes it takes a few days, or it takes coming up with a newer, better one that puts the first one in its place. Unfortunately, sometimes the melody makes it all the way into a full-blown song before I realize it kinda stinks. Such is the songwriter's struggle.

This last situation is one that every songwriter tries to avoid: writing a song that he or she ends up regretting. It feels like a waste of time and effort, and it can be kind of demoralizing. So are there ways to test the ideas right from the start, of separating the diamonds from the rough, of making sure that shiny stuff isn't fool's gold?

Well, there are some techniques that can be applied, though none are perfect and there are potential pitfalls to some of them. In this post I will descibe a few I have used.

The first is what I call the memory game. It was described to me by an old composer friend. In its raw form, this is a bit dangerous and may lose the melody for you completely, but it's a pretty good test to see how memorable the melody is. It is also incredibly simple. You do not record the melody or write it down or anything else that would serve to ingrain it more deeply in your mind than simply hearing it a few times would do. Just play it or sing it to yourself a bit and let it sit in your head. Then walk away. Listen to other music. Play video games. Make yourself put it totally out of your head. Do this for hours or even days. Then try to remember it. If you can remember it, well, that's a pretty darn memorable melody. If not, it wasn't particularly memorable, right?

The problem I've found with this method is obvious: you end up forgetting a lot of melodies. It is also not entirely clear that it weeds out all the bad ones or that all the ones it weeds out are bad. Having tried it myself, I can say that some non-stellar melodies have made it through, and I'm pretty sure I've lost some good ones.

A slightly different method is what I'll call the modified memory game, which adds the obvious step of recording the melody first. Yes, this may increase your chance of remembering a melody that isn't particularly good, but it's worth it, I think. The key is to record it simply and quickly. Sing it into a microphone or play it on a keyboard, record it, and stash it. An additional advantage here is you can see if the way you remember it is the way you recorded it. Sometimes, the mind plays games of its own and displaces a few notes over time.

An unrelated method for testing a melody is, of course, showing it to other people. I don't much like this, however, as you relly need to pick the right people. Unless you are intending it as some sort of a capella piece or solo line, you are effectively showing people an unfinished work. Only a few kinds of people can give good feedback on unfinished work. You don't want to show unfinished music to people who aren't used to hearing it. They will be judging your music against what they are used to hearing, which is completed, fully produced songs. You also don't want to look to loved ones who don't want to hurt your feelings. Find other songwriters, people who work on audio or produce albums, or anyone who is used to hearing things that are less than ideal. And people who won't be afraid to tell you that you stink. Never trust the opinion of a person who likes everything.

Now, I'm talking about melodies here, but melodies don't exist in a vacuum. I know that, for me, it is relatively rare that I just come up with a melody with no accompaniment ideas. So if your melody needs to have some context for it to make sense, make sure you include that context. If there is a counter-melody, include that. But don't go and produce a full song until you're sure it's built on a solid base of a good melody (assuming your song is meant to be a melodic one and not an experiment in anti-songwriting or something).

Probably the best way to tell if a melody is good is simply to give it time. If it still seems like a good, useful melody to you in a few months, it probably is. Of course, not everyone likes to wait a few months to see whether they still like an idea before using it. Certainly, if you're one of those people who write ten songs a day, this is a pretty useless method.

Sometimes maybe it is just best to not judge and just go with it. Write tons of music without pausing to see whether it's good or not. However, people who write a lot of music tend to write a lot of bad music. It is a rare genius who can crank out whole albums of good stuff in a week or two. Most of us have to rely, at least on some level, on craft to complement instinct. When you are writing quickly, it can be exhilerating, but you do sacrifice some amount of quality control. Everything becomes more hit-or-miss. Putting time in allows you to steer songs that might have gone off track into something better than they would otherwise have been. Of course, overthinking has its own dangers. But that's for another post.

My songwriting history

This is a long one, so bear with me. Feel free to skip to the good parts. :)

My first songwriting memories are from the early 1980s. I was a young kid sitting at my grandmother's Hammond organ, and I made a song called "Here Comes the Sunshine" (unrelated to any Beatles song). It consisted of pounding on the keys in some sort of ascending pattern while yelling, "Here comes the sunshine" followed by pounding in a descending pattern and the phrase - you guessed it - "Here comes the rain." I didn't have much of a concept of key, and the actual keys hit were rather random. I doubt anyone would have heard it and said, "Hey, that kid has talent. He should be a musician." More likely they were trying to figure out polite ways to close the door on me so they could watch TV in peace. But they let me do it.

In time, I got my own little keyboard, and I played around a lot with it. I realized early on that I had pretty much zero interest in playing music written by other people. For me, it was all about the creation of new music. It started with simple melodies, sometimes played to whatever preprogrammed accompaniment the keyboard had. My writing got gradually more sophisticated, and my musicianship grew only out of a desire to hear the music in my head out loud. I never practiced exercises or took lessons. Really, I was never a particularly good keyboardist. I never had good technique or played anything like how you were supposed to play. I was only ever good enough to play what I was writing, and I got better only as a result of writing music that was more difficult to play.

When I was about 15 or so, for the first time, I began to think of music as something more than just a little minor hobby. I started to focus on it. I got a new keyboard and 4-track recorder and began writing much more sophisticated songs, now with lyrics. The lyrics tended to be very dark, usually about loneliness and death, which was appropriate enough for a depressed 15-year-old with anxiety issues. I was drawn mostly to heavy metal music, particularly the darker end of the scale (Metallica, Slayer, etc.), although I played an instrument that was mostly unwelcome in that realm. It led to some very odd and unique music, I think. I grew a lot over the next few years.

In 1992, I went off to college. There I formed a band called Dying Breed with my friends Joe and John. Joe was an old pal I'd known since first grade, and John was a newly met friend whose passion for music was probably even greater than mine. Certainly meeting John pushed me to go a lot further than I might otherwise have gone. Joe fell away from music after a time, but John and I kept going with more experimental things. We were very influenced by the complexity of progressive rock on one hand and by the technical marvels of MIDI on the other. We got heavily into electronic music, which was a way for us to get out our ideas without having to learn to play them well first (and so a decline in instrumental ability set in). All of this culminated in an odd musical theater project that could best be called a "rock opera" (though it was a most unconventional one) called Dimensional Rift. The show was put on at SUNY Stony Brook in spring of 1996, and it stood as the peak of my musical life. It certainly seemed to be the first step in a music career.

Post-college malaise hit me hard. I dealt with a lot of personal crises that set back what had been a promising career in music. I continued to write music rather prolifically, but I wasn't doing anything with it. I would write it, sometimes record it, and set it aside. John and I pitched in and got a digital 8-track recorder and some other equipment. We had a few stalled attempts at starting up bands. Mostly, we just wrote and recorded.

Eventually, John set off on his own ventures. There had always been a division between us where I was more interested in writing songs, whereas he was more interested in creating what I call, for lack of a better word, "pieces", often very conceptual in nature. I wrote a lot of lyrics, whereas he didn't have much interest in lyrics. He was also very technical, agonizing over the proper velocity of every sixteenth (or thirty-second, or sixty-fourth) note, whereas I had a kind of broad stroke approach. He ended up doing some great work for a dance company or two, release an album, and enjoy awards and some level of success, at least on a local level.

Our parting worked out pretty well for John, but it left me kind of directionless. I linked up with a couple of other people to form a band called Crystal Lil. We wrote some songs and actually played live at a party, but we soon all went our separate ways. I often regret losing touch with them, as they were cool people.

I got involved with another band, Delano's Core, in around 2000. We mostly just rehearsed. We didn't have any real songs. It was a new experience for me, and I kind of got into the whole playing-music-live-with-other-people thing, but ultimately the lack of songwriting left me feeling empty. It fell apart without us ever playing a gig.

Then came 9/11/01. I worked for a bookstore in the basement of the World Trade Center at the time. There was a boom. I ran. What followed was utter, extreme chaos. I ended up trekking to my girlfriend's house, and a couple of months later, after another plane crash and then a disconcerting earthquake, we fled to Providence, RI. We got married and had two kids in five years there, and for quite a while, my songwriting juices seemed to have evaporated. I started working on databases at a hospital and came to really believe I'd left songwriting behind.

As it turned out, I was wrong about that. In 2005, I started writing again. The next year, we moved back to New York. I reconnected with John, who had built up his portfolio significantly by this point, and we started a project called the Very Us Artists, which would bring together musicians and artists from all over the place. I also started releasing my stuff, old and new, under the name Carpentron, and I put together a website. I have gone fully back into music mode and am once again coming up with tons of song ideas, although recording time is harder to come by when there are two little boys running around.

And that is where I am today, at least from one angle.

Whew!

Introduction and a Statement of Purpose

My name is Chris Torgersen. I am a musician and songwriter with a lot of thoughts and opinions on the creative process and of songwriting in particular. I have been writing and recording music for the better part of the last 20 years. This is one of the biggest passions in my life, so I have decided to start blogging about it.

I am not going to give any tips on how to succeed in the music industry. I won't have any advice on live performance. I know nothing about fame or making money with music. I am not a gearhead, and I'm not much of a techie, either, beyond the minimum necessary for what I do. I am neither famous nor rich. My music is mostly available for free, and I have never had a record deal. I have played live with a band exactly one time ever, although I have had music written by me played in public settings a few times. But not much. Most musicians reading this will have more experience in these areas than me, despite the length of time for which I've been a musician.

What I have done is compose a lot of music. A whole lot. And I think a lot about the process of writing and what goes into it. I've found that I love talking to people about it. I'm a pretty quiet person, but songwriting one of the few areas where I seem to have a lot to say.

So, for this blog, I'll post a lot of my thoughts on songwriting. I welcome feedback (but not spam, please). I'll try to see if I can do some interviews with fellow musicians about the process as well, and we'll see from there.

I'm not a big believer in genre (more on that later), so I'm not interested specifically in, say, rock songwriting, although I do come from that sort of background, at least in part, myself. I believe in inclusion and mixing up genres, so I will hopefully be able to get perspectives from a variety of styles, and maybe even talk about what makes some different from (or similar to) others.

First up, so that you know more about the guy doing the writing, a history (coming up)...