Songwriting isn’t a science. It’s a multi-varied art form. Even when songs are written by different band members in the same group, the results can turn out quite differently. If you are an awake listener, you should have no difficulty telling the difference between a John Lennon song and a Paul McCartney song even if they were on the same Beatles record. The same thing holds when listening to a Don Henley song compared to a Glenn Frey song even though they were side by side on an Eagles CD. This story is the same in band after band where there are multiple songwriters in the band. So even in the same musical genre, which we have to realize is the case when songwriters are in the same band, there is something unique about the musical output from one writer compared to another. And that’s in the same niche, style, genre, or whatever you want to call it.
What about comparisons of songs across wildly divergent styles; Heavy Metal compared to Jazz, Folk compared to Hip Hop, Pop compared to Hard Rock, Country compared to R & B. There is so much difference between all these types of music, and yet we have to notice something profound. Ozzy Osbourne and Mozart used the same scales. Even more significant is that as different as all these styles of music are from each other, after closer observation, they are more alike than they are different. Don’t you think it could be a remarkably beneficial exercise to study the parts of music and learn what makes a song a song, regardless of style.
There are thousands of rules, but they’re not all applied to every song at the same time. Using different structures and forms, different cadences, different harmonic progressions, rhyme schemes or no rhymes, melodies that are super melodic or melodies that are monotone or talk-sung, super chatty or minimalist lyrics, all contribute to make each song different and the niche, style or genre it is in be more unique.
The purpose of this blog is to help you explore your own songwriting if you are already a writer, or to motivate you to begin writing if you’ve always wanted to. It will be filled with tips, strategies to try in your writing, analysis of some existing songs, and a mixed bag of other beneficial info. Check back from time to time to see what’s new, and we’ll see you on the radio, iTunes, CD Baby, or wherever you market your music.