IndieSongwriter.net

Here’s the second half of yesterday’s interview with Ben Walker.

Tom: Your song about Twitter got quite a lot of attention. Of course the subject matter made it interesting, but what musical characteristics do you think made it successful?

Ben: The Twitter song is pure pop in that I wrote it to be catchy, relevant, and easily shareable. I wasn’t sitting in my evil genius chair pretending to be Pete Waterman, but I wanted the people I knew on Twitter to find it funny and tell other people about it on Twitter. It worked really well, and its initial success was down to its annoying catchiness. The YouTube feature was just a bit of luck. Someone at the YouTube office saw it on Twitter and posted it.

It’s all about the hooks:

• Hook number 1: “You’re no one if you’re not on Twitter” is the main lyrical hook, which is hopefully amusing to anyone who knows Twitter.

• Hook number 2: The “Twitaaaaaahhh” melody and backing vocals are the second hook, and that’s something everyone can enjoy.

• Hook number 3: The last line of the chorus “You might as well not have existed” acts like a punchline, and is a satisfying end to the chorus, largely due to its comedy rhyme with “missed it”.

It opens with the first hook. This is especially important with songs on YouTube.

The silly backing vocals amused a lot of people. I watched way too much Monty Python as a child, so I’m convinced that every song should have comedy backing vocals.

The harmony of the chorus is spot on. It starts with [IV, V, I], which grabs you by the scruff of the neck and drags you through the hooks: “You’re no one” (“Why?”) “if you’re not” (“Not what?”) “on Twitter” (“Oh.”/”What’s Twitter?”)

The video fits pretty well. I find it endlessly amusing to make videos where it’s tricky to tell how serious I am. So I sing funny lyrics completely deadpan, and leave the viewer to figure out what’s going on.

Tom: Thought or feeling – how much do you think about the nuts and bolts of your songwriting, how much is emotion, instinct and experience?

Ben: I’m a craftsman when it comes to songwriting. I spend most of my time thinking about the nuts and bolts. I find that the emotion, instinct, and experience will automatically infuse everything I create. The more I try to communicate a particular emotion the more phoney it sounds. I know there are writers who really go for the “channelling the creative spirit” method, but when I try that I tend towards endless noodling, tea-making, sulking, staring, planning and procrastinating. It depends what you want to do with your life. If you want to be an artist, wear crazy headbands, and expose your soul to your neighbours, that’s great. If you want to write songs, write songs. Hone your craft. Learn about scansion and stress, harmony and melody. It’s not magic.

There are as many different approaches to songwriting as there are songwriters. But most of them are either ridiculously inefficient or make for desperately dull songs. ;o)

Tom: Are there any songwriting clichés you try to avoid (eg. particular chord progressions, rhymes etc.)

Ben: Yes and no. It depends on the song I’m writing. I think it’s vital to be aware of clichés, but that doesn’t mean you should never use them. Musical clichés can be really handy for establishing a connection, creating a context, referencing a style or an artist or just making people laugh.

I try to avoid lyrical clichés. It’s generally accepted good practice in writing of any sort to use specific and meaningful, rather than stock, phrases to make your point (I wrote about this in my Orwell article). I can’t think of any examples of useful lyrical clichés, unless you’re going for a pastiche of a certain style.

I’m pretty traditional with my rhymes, which does leave me open to allegations of cheese and/or cliché. But if my verses don’t rhyme I forget them. I have a terrible memory for lyrics. So I rhyme them.

Tom: And to finish, an easy one – What makes a catchy melody?

Ben: An easy question, indeed. But a very difficult answer. Here are my thoughts:

A strong melody is catchy, and a well-crafted melody is strong. If you think of it in terms of words it starts to make sense. Open any book of famous quotes and you’ll find strong, well-crafted phrases that have not been forgotten. Move or change a single word and they lose their strength. It’s the same with melody. You try to balance the fulfilment of the listener’s expectation with an element of surprise. You move notes and rhythms around. You reharmonise, reverse, rebuild. Occasionally you find something that strikes a chord. Something that sounds familiar and timeless.

Writing a catchy melody is the central challenge of composition. It’s equivalent to sculpting the perfect torso, capturing the moment in a photograph, painting the light just right or writing the perfect opening line. It’s the necessarily undefinable process around which the craft of songwriting is built. It is art.

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Ben’s Site has some really insightful articles about songwriting. Here are just a few:
What Makes a Killer Song?
George Orwell’s Rules of Songwriting
12×12 – A really Short Album