I’m watching the ball get ready to drop in Times Square (on TV, of course — it’s too cold to be there!) and thought I’d share some of my favorite tips I’ve gotten from interviewees and readers from the past six months since I began writing Songwriting Scene. I hope you’ll all share many more over the next year! Happy 2010, songwriters!
1) Going back to those old songs:
“The bottom line is that every song is a work of fiction. No matter how personal, no matter how plucked from the day’s headlines, it is a piece of art that is constructed to fit a specific format. The lyric may be 50% “true”, 100% “true” or 0% “true”. It doesn’t matter. It’s a song. It may have been composed for therapeutic reasons but once it goes out into the world it becomes its own thing. It isn’t yours anymore and the emotions that inspired it belong to you in your personal life but in the rest of the world they belong to the song. Let them exist there and enjoy the fact that you don’t need to experience them anymore, other than as an artist.”
– Mark Allen Berube
“Start with what’s funny before you add the music. Goofy and funny are two very different things. Cute and funny are two very different things. Be willing to say what you actually think, not what’s socially acceptable. Humor often comes from truth. Be willing to tell the untellable. Don’t try to stretch one joke out for three minutes. Listen to the masters. Anger is good fodder for humor. Try writing as revenge. Get our your evilest, ugliest thoughts.”
– Eric Schwartz
3) The best way to get started in co-writing:
“Invite a songwriting friend that you know and admire to write a song with you.”
– Sloan Wainwright
4) A new way to think about chord progressions and get out of your songwriting rut:
“I think many songwriters think of a chord as a fixed entity, like a slab of granite that doesn’t have component parts, but I think of a chord more as a collection of ropes all laid next to each other. You can take one and move it up a little bit, while keeping another note in place. That’s what a chord progression really is.”
– Pat Wictor
5) A songwriting marketing must-have:
“Marketing your new song is all about word-of-mouth. Share it with as many people as you can, and some of them will share it with their friends well. That’s viral marketing – put it out there and let it spread like a virus. Only a really cool, fun, creative virus.”
– Elisa Peimer
