What song title does this picture inspire?
52 Things #8 – DeadPuppyRecycling
Thing #8 is a reworking of an old song that I wrote for FAWM a couple of years back. It’s also the penultimate in my Ep Papercut Sunlight Snow.
The guitar riff uses the whole tone scale on E (though the bass line contradicts that with an A natural) – the chorus uses the chords Gminor Bminor Bflat Dminor (very similar to a certain christmas song by Slade. Shhhh, don’t tell anyone).
The lyrics came out of a word randomiser, which i then hacked together to produce something that is probably about going to sleep in a rubbish bin.
Monday Morning Title Challenge #4
The Monday Morning Title Challenge is a simple one:
What song title does this picture inspire?
52 Things # 7 – 3 FAWM Songs
This year I’m challenging myself to release new music every sunday – mostly it will be finished songs, but not every single week.
This week, the Thing is three demo songs that I’ve written for February Album Writing Month.
The Time Traveller Suite part 1 – What We Say Three Times is True
Download What We Say Three Times is True
This is proper steampunky prog rock – 8 minutes of unabashed silliness, and the first third of a three part multi-song saga.
One of the most useful songwriting techniques I know is the recycling of old ideas – this is made up of lots of old songs that I’ve cobbled together into one absurd whole.
Emptiness
Download Emptiness
A couple of FAWMERS have been urging me to have a go at a proper metal song, so here’s my attempt at doing something sort of in the style of CYnic
Metropolis Creatures
Download Metropolis Creatures
Vaguely radioheadish, this one. The words turned up via a word randomiser, the chords occured when I was messing around with the presets on my new synth.
So there we have 3 demos – none of them the finished article yet. I’ll come back the first as I think that one’s the strongest so far. Whether I’ll ever do anything with the others… who knows?
Monday Morning Title Challenge #3
The Monday Morning Title Challenge is a simple one:
What song title does this picture inspire?
52 Things #6 – Shoot Every Ghost
This week’s new track is a song I wrote for last year’s February Album Writing Month. It’s called ‘Shoot Every Ghost’ and is about as pop as I get in my songwriting.
All in E major with some live percussion and a messy distorted keyboard pad that I really like. The title turned up when I using a word randomising gizmo, probably ‘titular’ from the fawm.org website.
Enjoy:
How to end your Musical phrases
A piece of writing with no punctuation or paragraph breaks even when the words involved make sense can be confusing and hard to understand it doesn’t let the reader know the rhythm of the words or mark out the different ideas a lack of proper sentence structure turns a relatively good set of words into a mass of nonsense.
- No-one would write language like this, but if you don’t understand musical cadences, you might be writing songs like this.
Cadences are the chord changes that come at the end of musical sentences. They occur at the end of pieces and sections, but also at the end of lines as well.
There are two basic jobs they do:-
A cadence can sound final like a full stop/period
or
A cadence can sound like it needs to carry on – like a question mark.
The ‘Classic’ cadences.
At college you learn of four common cadences:
Perfect – Chord V to chord I eg. G to C – this is the classic ending ‘full stop’ cadence.
Imperfect – I to V the opposite of the perfect eg. C to G – the classic way of making your musical sentence sound unfinished.
Plagal – An ending cadence you hear in lots of hymns – Iv to I eg F to C. This also sounds finished.
Interrupted – V to Vi eg. G to Am. This sounds unfinished because after the V chord we expect to hear I. Instead we hear vi – a minor chord that makes it sound as if the music has to continue.
These aren’t the only options however. In the various modes there are plenty of other chord changes that can sound finished, or unfinished.
The basic principle is: move from an ‘unfinished’ chord to a ‘finished’ chord and it sounds final. Do the opposite and it sounds as if the music is going to carry on.
Here are some other cadence possibilites:
In A aeolian G -> Am sounds finished, Am -> F sounds unfinished.
In E phrygian Dm -> F sounds unfinished, F -> Em sounds finished.
How to use this information?
Look at your songs – do you have the right mixture of ‘finished’ and ‘unfinished’ phrases? A good place to have an unfinished cadence for example is just before the chorus – end unfinished and you’ll set up the right energy for the start of the chorus.
Think about where you need moments of tension – that’s where you want an unfinished cadence. Think where you need an ending or a moment of release – that’s where you need to return to the home chord via something like the perfect cadence.
How to Write Simple Songs
A couple of work colleagues asked me to join their band recently on bass and backing vocals.
Having played a short notice gig with them a while back, I was more than happy to oblige.
Musically it’s a real change for me – if you’ve heard my music you’ll know I like weird time signatures, lots of layers and several changes in key every song.
In this new band, having a third chord is showing off. As the front man put it, “with this sort of music, any suggestion of cleverness and the audience will walk out”.
As a songwriter this is a great challenge:
a. Because it means we have to find ways of making the songs interesting without being too ‘clever’ – we have to stay simple.
b. It’s collaborative, and very much the front man’s project. I’m used to working as a solo artist, but this is very much someone else’s thing that I’m helping out with.
So how do you make a song interesting if you’re only going to use two chords.
1. Think about groove and layers
One song we have is literally two chords – A and G. How on earth can that be interesting? There are two basic tactics we’ve used. First, we made sure there was a killer basic groove. This is glam rock, the whole idea is to get people dancing. That’ll happen with this if we put it in front of the right audience because of a simple, infectious 4.4 groove.
We’ve combined that with simple layering techniques – the first verse for example is just bass and drums, the chorus big loud guitars and the midle 8 bass and drums, much quieter and in half time.
Choosing a half time groove (Snare on the 3rd beat rather than normal time – 2 and 4) creates an effective contrast, and allows us to crash back into a sudden normal time repeat of the chorus for the outro.
It’s all primary colour, big loud slabs of contrast rather than subtlety, but it works really well.
2. Pace and key between songs
If you’re not being clever within songs you need to make sure that songs next to each other don;t sound too similar. Don’t have everything in A in a row, don;t have everything a mid-paced rocker. Break it up with contrast from song to song. After all, we’re putting together a set, so each song is only part of the live show.
3. Structure FUndamentals
Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Middle Chorus. That’s basically it and straying too far won#t go down well, so we’re making sure each song has a really clearly defined structure.
4. It’s all about the hook
Lots of ‘hey’ or ‘ooh’ based vocal hooks – everyone’s a sucker for a pop hook right? If you haven’t got the subtle interplay of cross rhythms or other muso tricks, a good simple infectious hook will do just as nicely.
They’re arguably harder to write as well, but we’ve been doing well by sticking to the pentatonic scale and question and answer phrasing.
5. Performance
The front man, Paul, is a joy to watch. Even in a rehearsal studio he gives a fantastic performance – everything you need in a song is there in his body language.
I’ll share more about the project as it becomes available.
How do you make things interesting and still retain simplicity and accessibility?
52 Things #5 – Self Made Man
The fifth of my 52 Things is Self Made Man.
This is a song I wrote a few years ago, but I’ve only just got round to recording properly.
It’s in G minor and the melody is based on the G minor blues scale – in that it has a flat 5th note in it C#, but I decided to use A augmented as the second chord (A C# F), which makes it sound rather different to the blues.
It is about a man who graduallly replaces all body parts with mechanical alternatives.
Monday Morning Title Challenge #2
Last Monday I started the song title challenge as a means of starting the week creatively.
Here’s the second installment.
What title does this picture inspire?
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