My Approach To Songwriting

While writing songs I have used several different approaches, which have a lot in common with other songwriters.

D.G. F.D:

When writing this song, the first part I wrote was the chord progression E C#m B A G#m7, which is for the chorus and introduction and can be heard in my starting point recording. After I wrote this I began to create a concept for the lyrics, which are historically themed and based on the Elizabethan era. Therefore, before actually writing the lyrics I had to do some research to learn a bit more about what I was writing about, which would in turn help me actually write the lyrics. After doing some research I made a list of the things I wanted to reference along with some rough lyrical ideas. After researching my subject, I wrote the chord progression for the verse section which is E A E G# and began to write lyrics for the song. When I had the two completed sections I realised that they didn't flow well into each other and needed some form of build/up bridge section so I wrote the chords to the pre chorus and later wrote the lyrics. I used a variation on the first pre chorus the second time round to try and make the song a bit more interesting and varied. By this point I had constructed my song into an ABCABCA pattern, but felt like it needed one more section, so I wrote a chord progression in the relative minor key C#m which then modulates back to the E major key. I used this chord progression as a middle 8 section before the final chorus and a stripped back outro. This gave the song a final structure of ABCABCADAA. I added quite a large instrumental accompaniment to this song, giving it a thick contrapuntal texture.

My historical research based method of lyric writing used in this song is very similar to Damon Albarn's approach to writing music for his opera Dr Dee, which required him to do a lot of reading on historical figure John Dee before he could write his lyrics. I allowed room for improvisation in a lot of the instrumentation which is a similar approach to songwriting that Bob Dylan used. He liked to go into the studio with his band and let them play along to what he had written, which was similar to the way I wrote the piano and bass parts as well as some of the guitar parts.

On The Hill:

The first part of this song that I wrote was the chord progression for the verse which is Cmaj7 E Dm Am G G# A Dm7 DmMaj7. I wrote this on an electric guitar in a finger picked style. After this, I wrote the lyrics for the verse as well as the chorus before I had written the music. I then worked the opposite way around by composing music to fit the lyrics for the chorus, with the chord progression Am E Am Cmaj7 Am E Am G F# E which I wrote in 6/8. I then structured these two parts of the song into an ABAB form. After recording the main guitar part for the verse, I wanted to thicken the texture and give it broader instrumentation, and used the piano part and lead guitar parts as a means of decoration. I had the lyrics for another two verses written which I hadn't yet used, but knew the direction I wanted to take the music in to accompany them. As the lyrics were a lot happier in theme, I wanted to reflect this in the music, by making it sound happier and lighter with less minor chords but at the same time I wanted it to clearly resemble the first verses. To achieve the sound I wanted, I shifted the verse up a tone bringing into the key of D major, and instead of playing the different chords from the original progression, I just changed the root note of the D major chord so the root notes followed the same pattern in the new key: D F# E B A A# B then a D sus4 chord. I repeated this section again and that bought the song to its end with a final structure of ABABC. The last part of this song I wrote was the vocal melody for the chorus which I wrote by working it out with notes on the guitar to the rhythm of the lyrics instead of singing, I had written the melody for the verses earlier in this same way. I used the same vocal melody for the final part of the song but I transposed it up by one tone to fit the new key. I gave this song a more simple homophonic texture, as I felt it worked well more stripped back as a melody and accompaniment.

The first part of this song I wrote with the chord progression first, which is how many Smiths songs started written with chords first and lyrics second, however the rest of the song I wrote in a style more similar to Bob Dylan where the lyrics came first and I built the music around them. Also for this song, I originally recorded it with a band musical accompaniment but later changed this to just an acoustic guitar. This is also very similar to Bob Dylan, as he wrote the song first and would then often record it in different arrangements and also play them live in a different style as he feels the actual song writing itself is the most important par of a song. The technique of playing the same chord with changing root notes has been widely used, but I discovered this when practicing for my solo performance of Time In A Bottle, as well as playing other songs written by Jim Croce.

Orange Excuse- Untitled:

My approach to writing this song was very different as it was a collaborative effort with my band. I came up with the initial idea for the guitar hook while jamming along to a drumbeat, which we then built the rest of the song around, making it a riff based song. In my initial riff, I was trying to play both melodically and rhythmically as I was the only guitar player in the song, and did't want to sacrifice either aspect. The next thing we set about writing was a chorus, which I wanted to be very legato in contrast to the staccato verses. We came up with a chord sequence, again through a jamming process, and then we worked on joining the two parts together. We decided that this worked best through a brief build up and stop and then put together the binary structure ABAB. After this we tried using the same verse, but felt that it was too repetitive, so decided to come up with a new section. It was at around this time when a second guitar was incorporated into the song, which meant I no longer had to focus on combining lead and rhythm playing, so made my part more about the rhythmic element. We wrote the chord progression to this third section together, and kept it as a simple C D progression, which is the same interval as the original motif. We then found that this new progression transitioned smoothly into the original chorus, and a repetition of the original riff for the outro which completed the song with a final structure of ABABCBA.

This song was written with a lot of jamming and improvisation which is similar to how many bands write their music. My original riff idea was written with a very similar style to Johnny Marr, who would try to cover the role of both lead and rhythm in his playing, which is what I tried to do.

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