Follow-up to Building Your Song

THANKS

I had a plan for what I wanted to post this week, but I am going to put that aside for the moment and address some issues raised by last week's post, which, thanks in large part to some Redditors over at /r/WeAreTheMusicMakers and /r/Guitar, EXPLODED. I deeply appreciate anyone who read the post, let alone commented, cross-posted, retweeted, or otherwise shared it. I can't tell you how great it feels to know that someone was able to benefit from my experiences. Thank you.

Because I'm responding to some of the topics from last week, what follows may not be the most structured post. Apologies.

GENRE

I should have specifically mentioned in the article, and perhaps on the Work the MIC website in general, that the things I have to say about music are aimed at musicians who are interested in writing songs for the "mainstream." By that I mean "commercially viable" Rock, Alternative, Indie, Singer-Songwriter, Country, Pop, Folk, Metal, and even Rap, that kind of thing. So, some of the things I said and will say about structure, checklists, and hooks will not apply if you're doing, say, house music, improvisational Reggae, or experimental Acid-Rock.

VERSE/CHORUS

Some people complained about the "tired" verse/chorus structure. Look, every song has parts. Call them "A," "B," and "C," or "verse/prechorus/chorus/bridge," the names don't matter. The point is that you do not want to play one note or repeat the same 4 bars over and over for 3-4 minutes. People like change in their music, but not too much change.

You shouldn't feel limited by this structure. Remember that the Wright Brothers' Flyer and the Space Shuttle both have an engine, wings, and landing gear, but one traveled a few feet, and the other makes regular milk runs to space. There's lots of room to play within the verse/chorus structure. It's been around for a LONG time, and it's not likely to go anywhere anytime soon. I didn't make these guidelines, I just study and practice them.

A couple of commenters complained that "so and so" famous artist put out hit songs that didn't observe the traditional structure. My response to that is that:

A) In almost all of these cases, and certainly in the examples mentioned, the artist was already famous, or at least had an audience. When you are comfortable with the size of your audience, you can write whatever you want.

B) These examples are so few as to be irrelevant to this conversation. As with any art form, learn the rules before you break them.

DON'T TAKE IT PERSONAL

Quantity breeds quality.

Some people resonated with my method of brainstorming multiple songs in a single session, while others thought it was ridiculous. Someone even said, "that's a good way to write crap." You can write as little or as much as you want, but my point is this: don't get emotionally attached to your work, especially too early on. If you've seen any behind-the-scenes documentary about a band going into the studio, you will invariably see that they went in with something like 14, 16, or 20 songs, and came out with 10. That's just the way it works - quantity breeds quality.

Imagine that a major record label down in Nashville hires you to be an in-house songwriter/producer. They're bringing in their latest Pop starlet for a writing session tomorrow at 2pm, and they want you to bring your best ideas to pitch to her and her team for a new single. You will be 1 of 4 other writers in the room all vying to get that 1 track recorded. Are you only going to show up to that meeting with 1 song idea? If the starlet rejects your idea, then what? Are you going to scream "but I worked really hard on it!" then stomp out of the room, go hide in a closet, and quietly sob? OR, are you going to say "no problem, here's my next idea. What do you think?"

I treat my band writing sessions as if they were that kind of record-label pitch meeting. I show up with 2 or 3 ideas that I've put some decent time into. If 1 is rejected, or needs work, we have other things to try out. We have our eggs in many different baskets. (Don't get me wrong, I still cry in a closet if my ideas are rejected.) If the song goes in a different direction than I imagined, then so be it. There's no harm in trying something new. We can always circle back to the original idea if it doesn't work out.

ARE WE ARTISTS OR ARTISANS?

To be a good songwriter, you have to put some blood on your guitar strings.

Judging from a few of the comment threads I saw, some people seem to think the song should just fall out of your brain fully-formed and ready to be turned into a gold record, as if anyone can write a great song anytime they wish. I disagree. Real songwriting is craft. It is hard work. It is learning, trying, failing, and trying again. It is taking a huge slab of marble, and hammering and chiseling away for days and weeks to reveal the beautiful statue hidden inside.

You have to have vision, inspiration, and skill, but more importantly, you have to have persistence. You aren't going to pick up a notepad and a guitar for the first time and wow the pants off of everyone within range of your voice. If you want to write, you have to put some blood on your paper and your guitar strings.

If you do this right, you will get tired of it. You will get frustrated. You will get so angry that you'll want to push a piano off of a rooftop. When that time comes, I suggest taking a short break. If you're not drained as a result of the work you put into your music, then you're not putting enough work into your music. If you get up on stage and play something you just threw together, it will show. If you don't believe me, ask Ernest Hemingway, who said, "the first draft of anything is shit."

Rodin worked on "The Gates of Hell" for 37 years. Does that inspire you, or tire you?

I recently went to the Rodin museum in Philadelphia. Rodin is famous for his statue "The Thinker," which I discovered was actually part of Rodin's larger masterpiece, called "The Gates of Hell." It's a set of doors that includes several scenes from Dante's "Inferno," and is an unbelievably impressive piece of art. I was stunned to learn that Rodin worked on this single piece for THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS. Does that inspire you, or do you just feel tired thinking about that? Tell me again, how much time have you put into your songs?

LEAVE THEM WANTING MORE

In an ideal situation, there would be a song-editor to keep every songwriter in check. Authors, journalists, and filmmakers have editors. Why don't we? We do have Producers, but those of you who are recording at home don't typically have access to them, and even if you do, they usually don't come along until very late in the process.

In the mean time then, someone has to take the raw materials created by the original artist and find a way to translate it into a clear and cohesive story, told in the most entertaining way possible. Unless you have a Producer, we have to come up with other methods to trim the fat, which is why I suggested getting feedback from songwriting circles, pros, and friends, etc. in last week's article.

Broad-appeal songwriting is sort of like writing for Twitter in that you are forced to be as lean as possible. You can still say a lot with 140 characters, and the same goes for a 3-minute Rock song. But, you have to cut ALL the fat. When it comes to trimming, my co-writer likes to remind me of a tip he heard from [a famous musician whose name escapes me now]: "Take your finished song, and chop out every other line. Does it still make sense afterward?"

Do you really need a 1:45 intro? Do you absolutely have to have a 1:30 solo that just repeats the same part over and over? Always leave the audience wanting more. Give them an action-packed trailer instead of the movie, the deleted scenes, the cast interviews, and behind-the-scenes documentaries. I just went to see a Rock show last week, and the band (who are fairly well-known) spent a large portion of almost EVERY song just repeating the same 2-bar instrumental part over and over while the singer traipsed around the stage. That's not jamming... that's padding your set.

SUMMARY or, for Redditors: TL;DR

If you want to be an effective songwriter, you have to put in serious time and practice. You will not improve as a songwriter with a Playstation controller in your hand. You have to learn how to cut the fat, and more often than not, you gotta cut deep. Get someone to give you good feedback on what they think could be cut. Don't take cuts personally. As many famous authors have said, you have to "kill your darlings."

Recording Your Shows Is a Bad Idea (Part II)

Let's continue our discussion about whether you should record your shows. You can catch up on the first part of the discussion here.

THE ONE GOOD PART

There IS an upside to recording live performances... it gives you a loose (and if you're recording with a phone, I do mean loose) idea of what everyone in the band is playing, and allows you to make decisions about structure, parts, arrangements, and mixing.

If that's what you're going for, it might be better to capture a rehearsal, where you're not competing with crowd noise, and you're not obsessing over cringe moments like when you said something really embarrassing from the stage or when the vocalist went flat on the chorus of your best song. Your negative feelings about those moments could color your opinion of the rest of the recording. However, if you hear those moments in a rehearsal recording, you'll be much better off because you can just say, "thank god no one heard that."

That brings me to what I view as the most important consideration about recording live performances: we humans are subjective, emotional beings, and we have poor memory-recall abilities. In some cases, that's a good thing.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSICAL FAILURE

Let's say you have a terrible show. Everybody's got 'em, so don't feel too lousy about it (unless you've been having terrible shows for 11 years... then you may want to reevaluate some things). Maybe your drummer drank too much and dropped the beat a couple times. The singer couldn't hear herself in the monitor, so her pitch was all over the place. The sound guy was watching a ball game on his phone instead of paying attention to the mix. (All of these things will happen to you if they haven't already. God knows they've happened to me too many times.)

Now, if you didn't record that trainwreck of a show, your imperfect memory will gradually gloss over all the bad stuff, and you'll eventually come to a place where it doesn't bother you that basically shamed yourself in front of a bunch of friends, fans, or coworkers. You'll probably even laugh about it, if you remember it at all. Without that crippling shame of failure, you'll just go about your musical career, happy as you please.

"If you record a bad show, you have a permanent reminder of just how sh%&ty you really were...

Not the best thing to have if you want to convince yourself to get on stage again."

HOWEVER, if you did record the show, you now have a great and semi-permanent reminder of just how shitty you really were, and if you're anything like a lot of us self-conscious musicians, you'll put that thing on repeat and beat yourself up for years to come. Maybe not the best thing to do if you ever want to work up the courage to get back up on stage again.

This is especially true if you're just starting out, because there's going to be some crappy shows... maybe even a lot of them... and it takes a certain amount of self-deception to keep plugging away and getting better. Having a hard copy of your failure is going to make that all the more difficult.

MR. FREEZE

Another thing a lot of people don't think about is the observer principle as it relates to your recording. There's some sort of crazy brain magic that causes many people to just freeze or panic when they see a camera. If you know that your performance could be posted on YouTube for millions of people to watch you miserably and utterly fail, you might start to notice your voice tightening up, or your guitar player sweating abnormally, or that suddenly the band is plowing through the stops in every song, or playing in double time.

DON'T WORRY, IT'S ONLY BECAUSE YOU SUCK

Some people might argue that if you don't want to record your show, it's because you're not "pro" enough, and if you were legitimately talented, you'd be okay with any show you play representing you as a performer.

Bullshit. If you pay attention to your favorite band's live album, you will most likely hear them fading in the beginnings or fading out the endings on certain tracks. In some cases, this is because they are cutting out breaks or banter, or sound problems, but in a lot of cases, it's because they're patching together 2 or 3 performances, or even an entire tour into one good show. Nobody's perfect all the time.

IT'S YOUR FUNERAL

Recording shows is your decision, but hopefully I've given you some things to think about. And if you ARE going to do it, do it right, something we'll talk about in a separate post.

(If you like what you've read, please share or quote freely. I appreciate your support.)

Recording Your Shows is a Bad Idea (Part I)

I'M A JERK

I am an absolute tyrant about the fact that I do not want anyone recording my band's live shows. Friends and fans will tell you that I have asked them to take cameras off of their tripods, or delete recordings from their smartphones and social media pages.

Am I jerk? Am I killing my chance for free promotion? Am I alienating friends and fans? Probably. But I've got my reasons. Many musicians rush straight into recording their performances only minutes after they've learned their first chord. It's a natural inclination to want to hear how you sound. However, I believe there are some compelling reasons to leave the camera at home.

RECORDING QUALITY

There's this idea that a recording, regardless of the equipment, the technique used, or the skill of the person doing the recording, is an objective version of what you actually sound like. That's a nice idea, unfortunately, it is total bullshit. Let me tell you why:

MUSIC IS MORE THAN SOUND

Let's compare sound to color, since we can't see sound. When you're listening to music in a live setting, you are absorbing a wide prism of "colors," whether you're listening to a solo instrument, or a full band. The primary color of an upright bass is beautiful on its own, but mixed with another primary - maybe a tight kick drum - you now "see" an equally pleasing secondary color. (This all assumes that the band and sound guy know what they're doing, but let's just put that aside for now.)

"A smartphone can't capture the warm fuzzies of a great performance."

The colors these instruments produce are reflected off of the walls, the ceiling, the floor, absorbed by the bodies of the audience, altered by the shape of the stage, and filtered through your highly subjective emotional and mental state. Your feelings about the music and the experience are affected by the energy of the crowd, and the charisma of the band.

A smartphone will funnel that wealth of information through a mic the size of a pin, and produce a tinny, compressed, clipped xerox copy. It cannot capture the warm fuzzies of a great performance. It would be like watching your favorite movie, but you're only able to see one color... Godfather in Blue. Who wants that?

(DON'T) BRING THE NOISE

The other thing to take into account is that if you're recording in a crowd, the people around you are much closer to the mic, so their conversations and screams, the sounds of them moshing, or the sounds of them talking smack on the band, are going to compete with the sounds coming from the stage.

You'll also be introducing the handling noise from the recordist fumbling around with the device, something that drives me absolutely nuts. If you set the recording device on a table or chair, you could also be introducing a whole new form of unpleasantness as the sound bounces off of the surface and into the mic.

PUT YOUR MUSIC IN THE RIGHT HANDS

If you really do want to record your show, there's a gigantic difference between trusting an experienced sound tech who's familiar with your type of music, and is using a 32-channel digital rig with high end mics and preamps, as opposed to using a camcorder held by your best friend. And, if you've got a soundguy who REALLY knows what they're doing, they'll probably have the ability to throw the tracks they capture into a sound editor (like ProTools or Reaper) and work some magic on what they recorded. Generally speaking, that's the kind of thing you're used to hearing on live albums. It's a lot of work, and a lot of expensive gear. Can your little camera compete with that?

There's some additional thoughts to consider, but due to time constraints, we'll have to save that for next week.

(If you like what you've read, please share or quote freely. I appreciate your support.)