Disclaimer – this isn’t an advert, Gary Ewer doesn’t know I’m writing this. I just like his blog.

Seriously, Gary Ewer’s ‘Essential Secrets of Songwriting’ is a great blog, with some fantastic posts on the technical side of songwriting. Recent posts that I think are particularly useful include:

‘The Tonic Note – Be careful How You Use It’

In this post Gary Ewer analyses a song by Cobra Starship to make the point that the tonic, or ‘home’ note of your key has a specific role in melodies. He gives some great advice on when and when not to use it.

‘Want to Write a Great Melody? Draw a picture’

This post has a nifty technique for visualising your melody to make sure it has an effective pitch structure.

Gary regularly posts on technical songwriting issues, and I would heartily recommend subscribing to his blog.

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

Ben Walker is a songwriter from Oxford. He achieved a small amount of fame in the last few months with his song ‘You’re No-one if you’re not on Twitter’ which he wrote for the 50/90 songwriting challenge.

I like Ben – his website looks lovely, his songs are infectious and fun, and he writes some interesting stuff on his blog, and he’s well worth checking out.

He agreed to do a post 50/90 interview for Songwright. Here’s the first half.

Tom: 50 songs….. how on earth did you manage that?

Ben: I have always been interested in creativity as a skill that you can learn and practise. I was aiming to spend the summer writing loads of songs, just being as prolific as possible. I came across the 50/90 Challenge online, and it offered both the challenge of writing 50 songs in 90 days and the support structure of constant feedback and encouragement from fellow songwriters. It turned out to be a really positive and fun community of creative people.

So the 50/90 Challenge got me going. I told loads of people that I was taking the challenge and wrote about it on my blog. Having people ask “How are the 50 songs going?” every time you see them is a big motivator.

I wrote 19 full songs, and I really like them all.They were all written and recorded quickly, so they capture a specific moment.

Then I wrote 12 songs that are 12 seconds each, made videos of them and uploaded them to 12seconds.tv as a 144-second album called “12×12″. That took about 4 hours and really boosted my numbers.

But I got to the last weekend before the 50/90 deadline and still had 19 to write.

I put a shout out on Twitter that I was going to video stream a live songwriting session, and set up my gear. In the end there were about 6 or 7 people watching for the full 2 hours, and I improvised 19 songs based on titles submitted through my website and suggestions from the audience. It was a blast, and was the highlight of the 50/90 for me.

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The second half of the interview will be online tomorrow.