The Art of Song, Part 2

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I took in this songwriters’ workshop a few weeks ago, sponsored by Canadian Music Week, the Songwriters’ Association of Canada and just about anyone else who doesn’t want our aspiring talent to go stateside. The highlight of the day was a lecture by Blair Packham, who used to be in the Jitters. He played a yet-to-be-recorded track called “Funny How” that just slayed me.

Anyway, I was just looking through my notes from that day, and I thought I’d share some of the more insightful points here.

So here goes…

The real reason we write songs

Songs should be written to express thoughts or emotion. Therefore, your lyrics are extremely important. People listen to music to help escape the drudgery of their everyday lives, so it’s the songwriter’s job to create a lyrical alternate universe into which the listener can escape for a few minutes.

If your lyrics aren’t expressing your ideas well enough to significantly impact the listener, you’re not doing your job well enough.

This point was illustrated later on during the “demo derby” part of the program. My demo didn’t get played, but there was one track they dissected where the lyrics were pretty vague and non-specific. The songwriter in question argued that every time he explained the song to a someone they always told him it was really cool, but the panel rebutted that if the song ever made it to the radio the DJ would have to explain it every time it was spun (which would never happen). So, make sure the lyric actually expresses the idea.

The Prime Directive: Don’t be boring!

Hold the listeners’ interest. Don’t lull them, engage them.

One of Blair’s big points was that humans love recognizing patterns, but we also love to have our expectations of patterns subverted. Getting into a groove is good, but the way you get out of the groove will separate the wheat from the chaff.

The way I was educated, I learnt that the concept of tension and release in music was all about getting the harmony back to the tonic. But Blair introduced me to the concept of patterns building tension by creating anticipation of a break from the pattern, and the release being entirely dependent on how artfully you execute the break.

Blair’s advice was that people like to have a break every ten seconds or so. It doesn’t have to be a radical break every ten seconds, but at least something to shake things up a bit.

Clichés work for a reason, but dogma sucks

Conventions become entrenched because they generally work fairly well, but you should never consider them set in stone. That said, if you are going to flout the collective wisdom of 100 years of songwriting conventions, you should have a damn good reason for doing so. If the tune you’re working on requires you to break tradition in order to better communicate an idea, then that’s the route you should take.

This reminded me of “She Said She Said” by The Beatles, when John Lennon chose to break the rhyme scheme to make sure the listener listens. There’s a line in the song that should rhyme with “know,” but then Lennon sings that he’s “ready to leave” instead of “ready to go.” He used unexpected wording to express the same idea, and in the process he totally trashed the rhyme scheme without making any attempt to recover it (an pretty radical idea for 1966). By doing so, he totally engaged my when I first heard it. By doing the unexpected, he made me sit up and pay attention.

So I guess you should take a cue from Lennon and use your discretion about being unpredictable. He didn’t do it much; if he did, then it would have become the norm. Also, I doubt he would’ve been as successful as he was.

The one minute rule

This one actually came up in the “demo derby,” not during the lecture, but I thought it intriguing. It might have been said by someone else on the panel, but I think it was Blair. Any, it went something like this:

By the one minute mark of any tune, there should be no doubt in the listeners mind what the song title is.

It was a pretty radical idea, at least for me. It’s not that your lyrics should be repetitive to the point of inciting dementia, but you should definitely do the following:

1. Mention the song title prominently in the lyrics
2. Mention it early enough that the listener catches it before his/her mind wanders

I found myself guilty of breaking both of these rules so much so that I went straight home and retitled one of the tracks I’m working on for my debut album to better reflect the lyrical content.