The Art of Songwriting and Composing by Bjrn Langseth 11.

Nov 2011
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Man With Guitar Pablo Picasso 1

Introduction
Nothing is more difficult than to speak about music. The attempt is very arduous for musicians themselves and nearly impossible for others.2 Talking about music is like dancing about architecture,3 but I will make an attempt in this paper to write about the art of composing and songwriting. We always hear music while living in this world, no matter if we want it or not. It is a part of the culture, and difficult to avoid. However, where does all this music come from? All music has a mind behind it: the mind of a composer or a singer songwriter. There are many different approaches to writing music, and the different composers can always be connected with different genres and styles of music. The methods of writing songs have been passed down from teacher to student through generations and those who have learned it and practice it are keeping the art alive.

The Different Approaches

The classical composers like Beethoven. Mozart and Bach used notation as a means for writing music. They would know the music in their heads, and they would write it down on a paper. Musical notation is like another alien language that takes a lot of time and effort to learn. The composer must know this language for him to be able to write the music down. A composer may use a lot of time to get the music written down in the way he wants it to be. Its a great challenge for the composer to get the music in his head to be accurately written down in notation. Its a process of trial and error, and the more perfectionist the composer, the more time it takes. Beethoven would throw much of his work in the trash when he wasnt satisfied with it. Some composers may write music without using any instrument, but an instrument is an important tool and is helpful in the process of writing songs. The composer may sit by the piano and try out different things, and when he finds something that he likes and he thinks sounds good, he may write it down. However, many of todays modern composers dont know notation. This type of composers may be called songwriters. Popular music, which is more simple and primitive than Classical Music, normally has no notation on it. Paul McCartney and John Lennon never wrote down their songs in the classical way, but would only base their songs on chords, melodies and arrangements. John and Paul would jam and write songs together. Lennon, with his cynical edge and knack for introspection, and McCartney, with his storytelling optimism and gift for melody, complemented each other.4 Even though they didnt write notation for the songs themselves, other musicians have written notation for their music, which can be bought. Many songwriters also use recorders to remember their songs. If they get an idea on their instrument, they simply record it and keep a file of recordings. Since a songwriter usually has many ideas, he has to choose what ideas he wants to work with and expand on his favorites. A singer songwriter may sit with his guitar, pen and paper to write Thomson p. 81 Cook 4 The Beatles Wiki
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down lyrics and ideas, and then add a melody to the lyrics. Sometimes he may write the melody first and then add lyrics, and other times he may write the lyrics first and then add the melody later.

The Challenge of Writing Songs and Matching Lyrics And the Melody
We don't know what we're trying to achieve -We don't know why we are writing -We don't present our songs as effectively as possible -We're not sure what our melody is all about -Notes fall out of our heads without us thinking about them -Rhythms fall out of our heads without us thinking about them -We're not sure what we're trying to say -We take too long to say too little -We don't take meter and rhyme seriously enough -We don't think about how to grow a lyric -We don't think about how we grow our melodic ideas -We write chords without understanding them -We don't think about how we use chords.5 Cope claims that there are a lot of problems when writing songs, which may be true sometimes. Writing songs is just something that happens when the songwriter is in the right mood. He may want to express his feelings and get a message across. The importance may be primarily in the melody, the lyrics or in both. Mozart stated, in opera the poetry must be the obedient daughter of the music,6 but he was not a poet himself, and he had other people write lyrics for him. This is maybe why he thought the music was more important than the lyrics. Boileau (1636- 1711) once wrote to Racine: There will never be such a thing as a good opera, for music cannot tell a story In his day he was right.7 The author Thomson and the composer Boileau agree that opera as an art form was bad at expressing a story. However, most composers put more importance on the music than the story and lyrics; thats why these elements, even though important, were in the shadow of the music. It may be a challenge for the composer to find the balance between lyrics and the melody. Its important that both go well together. In some types of music the melody is used to serve the lyrics. Franz Schubert (1797-1828) wrote a melody to Goethes Poem Grethen am Spinnrads in which the keyboard is imitating the sound of a spinning wheel while Grethe is thinking of Faust,8 and all his promises. The accompaniment is speeding up and slowing down in response to the text, to show Gretchen's excitement and distraction.9 Composers like Mozart and Schubert didnt write lyrics themselves and were solely musicians. They didnt do both like the singer songwriters do. Songwriters like Elliott smith, Cope Haugland 7 Thomson 8 Haugland 9 Grethen am Spinnrade
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Leonard Cohan, Neil Young, Lennon and McCartney wrote the music and the lyrics themselves. This is why their songs may sound very different than other music.

Inspiration
Inspiration is important to every composer and songwriter. Its not only something that artists have, but something that everyone may experience.10 It may arrive when you least expect it and cannot be forced. It just happens by itself. Religious people believe that God may bless them with inspiration that it is like a gift from above or something coming from outside. However, if a musician writes uninspired music and forces it, the quality of the music may suffer from it. Paul McCartney was once inspired by a picture of Picasso: I was wondering what chord is he playing, so I tried to use that as an inspiration and tried to write a song that only had two fingers. 11 (See the picture on page 1.) We would just try to write a song. We wrote a few bad ones at first, but then the inspiration just came.12 Rock and Roll and the blues inspired the Beatles. In the blues, almost all songs are different variations of four chords. The most common is to play the twelve bar blues in the key of A, and then switch between the chords A, D, E and B. Once the twelve bars have been played, the exact same thing is repeated over again in a loop. One doesnt have to be an educated musician to recall this pattern that may be called the signature sound of the blues. The musicians may add whatever guitar solos or lyrics and melody to individualize the blues, but the basics remain the same. Blue notes were the guitarist bends the strings to play in between the piano keys (not possible on regularly tuned piano) is typical in blues, and the vocalist may also sing blue notes every once in a while. If its done in the wrong place or overdone, it may sound out of tune. The blues has a robustness and hard-boiled quality that never lets it become sticky-sentimental, no matter how self-pitying the words are.13 Everyone that has tried to play the blues may end up making their own version of the blues, but it still sounds pretty much the same to people who are not into it. Its usually details about timing and feeling that makes the difference. Some songwriters may get ideas while dreaming and wake up with a song in their head. Singer songwriters like Elliott Smith focused a lot on imagination and imagined things during the day. I think the imagination is the divine force, so if you dont block it up, it will come out and surprise you. I dont think about it as language, but more like shapes.14 I think its pretty easy if you just relax and quit think about what other people want to hear. If you can keep finding new things that you personally like about music and put it into the blender and see what comes out.15
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Ustvedt McCartney 12 McCartney 13 Simon and Schuster 14 Smith

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You have to give yourself a bit of confidence to do what you personally like16 His approach is based upon confidence in his own songwriting and what he personally likes. I like his approach because its relaxed and seems easy, without really being that easy.

Personally I always sang songs during my childhood and eventually tried to just sing something on my own, though I wasnt initially satisfied with it. Eventually, I started learning how to play guitar from a guitar teacher who also would make up songs while I was with him. I saw how he experimented with different chords and riffs and did what he told me to do. Eventually I begun to play chord changes myself and added some indicated melody to it, and just like that I had made my first verse. My first song consisted only of a verse for several months, but eventually, I experimented with making different chord progressions that I thought would fit as a chorus and added melody and lyrics to that. All you need to make a pop song is verse and refrain. My songs are a bit like paintings. Ill add more and more, but will never be finished with it. Ill just leave it as it is.

Being Original
Some people write songs to make money from them. Therefore, their aim is to make something that is easy to listen to and something that is catchy enough that a lot of people will like it. They dont care if the music is original or something new, because their only aim is commercial success. Other composers want to write something original and new. They want to make songs that have never been done before. Ironically, this is like an impossible mission because almost everything has been done before in music. Anything a composer writes will sound somewhat like something that has been done before. Some composers want to turn back to the roots and create music like they did in the old days in order to stand out from what is normal in their time of age. Every once in a while, bands like the Beatles and composers like Beethoven are being called original, but they were also inspired by others, and were following in the footsteps of the musicians they liked. I want to make music that I like myself and that is original, beautiful, wonderful, amazing, astounding, mystic, sweet, happy, emotional, melodious and new. In addition, I would like to sell it and make money from it. Still, the most important thing to me is not to make something that sells, but to make something that Im satisfied with. If it sells, that will make me satisfied because Ill make a living from it. However, music sales have gone down since the invention of file sharing, so less people buy music, and it has become a bigger challenge for musicians to sell. Has this affected songwriting? Yes and no. The ways of songwriting are still the same, but new technology like computers work as a tool in addition to the old techniques. With music available for free on the Internet, the artist now has to put even more effort to create music that catches the audiences attention and that someone hopefully will find worth buying. Composers like Johann Sebastian Bach never became famous for their works until after their death. Bach himself was only known for his keyboard skills while he was alive. However,

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Smith Smith 5

today he is considered as one of the most magnificent composers of all time. This may also be the case with many of todays composers and songwriters.

Conclusion
There are many ways of writing music, and whether the goal is to create something original and beautiful, or something that sells is up to the composer. The imagination is important, and one needs inspiration to write music, just like in any other art form. It is important to keep a balance between compromising the music in order to make it sell, or to be original and make something new.

Cited Page:
Barzun Pleasures of Music Cassell and Company Limitied. 1951, 1977

The Beatles Wiki Lennon/McCartney http://beatles.wikia.com/wiki/Lennon/McCartney

Danny Cope Righting the Wrongs in Writing Songs. Boston, MA, USA : Course Technology ; [Milwaukee, WI : Distributed by Hal Leonard Corp.], 2009. http://callutheran.worldcat.org/title/righting-wrongs-in-writingsongs/oclc/471132943&referer=brief_results

Elliott Smith Gives a Song Writing Lesson A clip showing Elliott giving songwriting advice and giving a brief glimpse into how he comes up with his own music. Lemoyne Street, Los Angeles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_XNghTKvq8

Geoff Wonfor og Bob Smeaton, The Beatles Anthology (documentary). EMI Records Limited. 2003, 1:23:24t.

Hege B. Beckmann History of music: The History of Western Music and Song Writing. Power points presentations from my previous school, Ansgarskolen Teologiske Hyskole, Kristiansand, Norway, 2010.

Kjetil Hyer Johansen Composing and Songwriting: Power points presentations from my previous school Ansgarskolen Teologiske Hyskole, Kristiansand, Norway, 2010.

Leonard Bernstein The Joy of Music: The Muray Printing Co. 1954. New York. Nicholas Cook: Music A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Paul McCartney about songwriting

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny-jYTh2C1A Ustvedt, Yngvar Interview of Aksel Sandemose 22nd of April 1965. Stemmer fra arkivet, NRK, Oslo, Norway. http://www.nrk.no/programmer/stemmer_fra_arkivet/stemmer_fra_litteraturen/2330586.html