Following on from my previous post about bass lines, here’s a bonus idea:
The Pedal Note
My chords are in C, and there’s a C note in every chord. So I’ve written a simple bass line using only C notes.
4 ways to write a bassline
A bass line- the lowest pitched part in the music, can make or break a song.
What do you do if you’ve composed a song with chords and melody and you want to add a bass line?
Rhythm
The bass instrument and bass drum have a similar job. They mark out the basic groove of a song. For example a rock song needs to emphasise the strong beats 1 and 3 – solidly and without interruption for the entire song. So you would have both bass drum and bass guitar playing a note on those beats.
Harmony
The bass line also has a harmonic job. Often it will spell out just the root notes of the chord progression.
In fact if you put together the basic groove of the bass drum with the root notes of your chords, you’ve got the most simple bass line:
Here an example of a C Am F G chord progression with just cheesey synth chords and drum beat:
And here’s the example with the bass playing root notes on the same beats as the bass drum:
Melody
Bass lines often use more than just the root notes: they provide an interesting counter melody.
How can you write a melodic bass line?
- With chord notes, for example the classic arpeggio bass line used in rock ‘n’ roll:
- With passing notes – that is a note, placed on a weak beat, that is NOT part of a chord. Instead it fills a gap between two chord notes. Eg. in a move from a C chord to an Am chord you might have a B note:
- With leading notes – that is a note that naturally rises or falls towards a chord note. For example A could fall to a G, B could rise to a C
Summary
There’s more to bass line, much more, check out some good bass players to see what else you can do. But these ideas should get you started.
Please leave comments if you found this helpful.
I need your help – Songwriting Clichés
I need your help!
I’ve been thinking of putting together a list of songwriting dos and don’ts. To do this, I’m really interesting in getting together a list of songwriting clichés.
What do I mean?
I mean either a cliché that other people use all the time, like rhyming ‘together’ with ‘forever’, or shifting the key up a tone for the final chorus
or
A cliché that you use too much in your own songwriting, that you wish you could get away from. For example, I like to use Emaj #4 chords (E major with an A sharp in them) way too much.
Songwriting clichés – send them too me! Either in the comments, or to tomslattermusic AT gmail.com
The Essential Secrets of Songwriting
There’s a new songwriting blog (or at least, a new one to me) called ‘Essential secrets of Songwriting‘. It’s written by a man named Gary Ewer who, like me, is a music educator who writes about songwriting.
I’ve just been reading his post about what he calls Chord Planing.
I’ve not heard the term ‘planing’ used in this context before, but I know exactly what he means when he says:
…you can take dissonant chords (chords that seem to have no basis in normal keys or tonality) and plane those, and it opens up a whole new world of sound possibilities.
The basic idea he’s trying to get across with the post is that you can take any chord, for example D minor 7 chord, and move it to any other minor 7 chord (eg. Bbm7) regardless of key.
He’s right, you really can. As songwriters, we often get obsessed with the ‘rules’ for chords, but staying in key isn’t really too important. One slight niggle I have with Gary’s post is when he says:
Once you start planing a chord, the listener ignores its function, and focuses more on the overall sound of the chord stripped of its function..
I don’t that’s entirely true. Any listener of Western music is going to have a load of harmonic preconceptions, for example the gravity of a dominant 7 or diminished 7 chord. We expect them to go to certain places, and hearing them do something unexpected can be very interesting.
So when you move to an ‘unrelated’ chord that I wasn’t expecting, the chord hasn’t been stripped of it’s function, I was expecting it to perform that function. The fact that it didn’t potentially (hopefully) entertains me.
I’ll leave you with Gary’s example chord progressions, and a last request that you check his blog out: Click Here.
- Csus4 Dsus4 Csus4
- Caug+7 (CEG#B) Ebaug+7 Daug+7 Faug+7 Baug+7
- Am7/G Gbm7/Gb Am7/G C#m7/B
Oh, and don’t forget to take out a free subscription to Songwright.
Quick Songwriting Tip – repeating a phrase a third higher
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt-IBJpEMzA&feature=related]
When composing a melody, I often find myself stuck after only the first line. I’d guess that a lot of songwriters have the same problem: one killer line, but nowhere to go afterwards.
Here’s one idea: Try the same thing a third up.
What does that mean? In the example above, a song from Les Miserable, the first line after the intro is ‘I dreamed a dream in time gone by…’.
The notes for this are (I’ve changed key for simplicity’s sake) D D D D C# D E F#.
To go ‘a third up’ in a scale, you start on your first note, and then go along to the third. So if D is the first note, you just find the third note, D E F#. And then you start there instead:
F# F# F# F# E F# G A….
Which is exactly what we find on the line ‘I dreamed that love would never die.’
The rest of each line doesn’t follow exactly, because there’s no requirement to follow the ‘up a third’ idea perfectly. However, using the same rhythm and melodic shape, but at a higher place, gives the song this rising, growing feeling and a sense of added momentum.
In Summary
If you’ve got one line of melody, and don’t know what to do next, try going up a third.
If you need further convincing, listen to the chorus of No Woman No Cry.
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Songwriting Worksheets
In my everyday life as a music teacher, I tend to design quite a lot of worksheets.
In my online life trying to share songwriting ideas, I’ve never put this skill into use. Until now, that is.
You see, a written worksheet can be a very useful thing. As songwriters we’re often scribbling on random bits of paper. A worksheet, properly designed, can give order to the chaos of our ideas, doodlings and scribbles.
It can help us make sense of what we’re writing.
Worksheets for the Songwriting Guitarist
That’s the working title for my new ebook, which I’m going to gradually publish over the next few months. Here’s the first installment:
The Lyric Brainstormer
Lyric writing can be one of the most difficult parts of the songwriting process. Part of the problem can be the sheer size of the task. Where do you start? Simply writing down the first line and going on from there isn’t always the best thing to do.
The lyric brainstormer is here to help!
This sheet is designed to help you order your thoughts before you start writing lyrics.
I find the keywords/ideas boxes particularly useful because they allow you to draw parallels and connections. In my example, a song about the fear of new technology, I had the theme of futuristic technology, and words, like stars, sun, machines. This neatly chimed with both the phrase ‘nothing new under sun’ and the idea of luddites smashing machines.
Here’s the song:
[audio=http://www.wellwrite.co.uk/songwright/tomslatter_ropesaroundthesun.mp3]
Ropes around the Sun
Will we wait till men are up there,
Tying ropes around the sun?
Will we still be scared of reason
Will we walk or will we run?
We made a prison of our nightmares
Conjured locks and books and chains
Will we move with change of season?
Or will we fall behind again?
Got that hammer in our hands now
Time to smash these cold machines
Oh won’t we live the same centuries again?
Splitting light and chasing fusion
Soon we’ll cut the sky in half
Will we still be scared to leave here,
When we’ve stained the sky so dark?
Finally, when all the clouds boil away,
We will need the ropes around the sun.
And here’s the worksheet for you to have fun with:
Lyric Brainstormer.pdf
Lyric Brainstormer.doc
Stealing Ideas From Bush’s Machine Head
I’ve chosen this song for two reasons: It isn’t hugely well known, and I loved it when I was thirteen. Bush were a pretty good rock band (and Gavin Rossdale is still making music) who did very well in the States but not as well in their native England.
It also has a few ideas that I think are worth stealing. They’re not unique to this song, but they are all neatly packaged up for you to hear.
In no particular order:
A simple but memorable riff – The riff at the start, in octaves rising up a C# minor scale – C# D# E F# is very simple, but combine it with first a C# minor chord then an A major chord and you get an effective, memorable little hook. (incidentally that chord progression – chord I then chord VI in the natural minor scale is used in most bush songs. It’s also used in a lot of heavy metal songs, particularly in the big, majestic ‘sing along’ parts).
A common chord progression - E B C#minor A in the chorus. That’s I V VI IV in E major
The tonality – C# minor for the verse, but the chorus is in the relative major key E major. There’s a definite contrast in mood between the two sections because of it.
The arrangement – in particular the fact that the guitars play a lot less in the first verse, giving the vocals lots of room. Also, the first chorus is quiet with no drums. We’re used to the chorus being loud all the time, but as you can hear in Machine Head, it’s often very effective to have the first version of the chorus quieter and more subdued. You can save the big singalong version till later.
So, steal away. Machinehead is a great example of how interesting a song can become with just tiny tweaks to common ideas.
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Songwright – A Manifesto (kind of)
A little while ago, I was interviewed by Sean McGaughey for his For the Sake of the Song podcast.
He asked me why I started Songwright, and why I was blogging about the theory and structures we use in songwriting. Despite this site having been up since last summer, until Sean asked me, I hadn’t really given it much thought. Songwriting is something I love, something I’ve done since I picked up a guitar, so it seemed obvious to start writing about it too.
But he asked, and I had to find an answer. I’ve thought about it a little more, and decided to share some of the reasons for Songwright’s existence. Here’s the first:
1. I love songwriting.
I love vocal music. But being a musician, rather than just a fan I love it in ways that non-musicians might not. Why? Because there are different ways to listen to a piece of music. You can just listen to the words, and enjoy them. You can hear the music, let it take you on an emotional journey, not thinking, only feeling.
That’s how most people listen to music and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But I’ve found I get a whole new level of pleasure if I know what’s behind the sounds I’m hearing. Hearing that unusual chord or key change is good, but knowing exactly what the change is, that’s even better. It’s like the difference between an ordinary person and an architect when entering a well designed building. The ordinary punter knows it’s a good space to be and enjoys it, but the architect understands all the structural details, the use of space, light, materials, airflow and design. They see the building differently, appreciate the craft in a way that the ordinary member of the public never will, and never needs to.
Music is like that too. The more you know about what’s happening, the more involved you can become, more moved, more attuned, more within the piece.
So one of the motivations for Songwright is to share my love of the architecture of songs.
So many blogs
There are already blogs about personal songwriting, songwriting circles, songwriting diaries, songwriting interviews, music business (so many of them), music technology, even songwriting zen and samurai songwriting.
There aren’t a great deal of blogs about songwriting architecture, about the craft of song, particularly if you want to talk about something other than lyrics. Songwright, in a small way, is supposed to be about for that.
There are other reasons, but I’ll share those at a later date.
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How to write lots of songs quickly
“All the posts about changing key and arranging instruments are useful, but before I start doing that, don’t I need a song to arrange? How do I get things written!”
There’s no point worrying about the bassline, the drop chorus or the guitar solo if you haven’t written anything yet. This post should give you a couple ideas about how to get things done.
Last month, as I’ve mentioned before, I took part in February Album Writing Month.
I’ve been writing songs for a good few years now, but in all that time I’ve never been forced to compose to such tight deadlines.
In the end I didn’t quite get the 14 and a half songs written, but I did write a lot more than I thought I would. Doing so meant changing both my working methods and my judgements.
Here are the ideas that helped me:
- Be prepared. I made sure, for the whole month of February, I had a microphone set up in front of the computer, a guitar and tuner nearby and a notebook constantly at hand. As soon as I had an idea, or even before, I could start recording.
- Just do it! Two of the songs I wrote were near enough improvisations. Rather than thinking about structure or lyrical ideas, I just started noodling.
- Start with a first line Which obviously is where you’d usually start, but those two improvised songs started as a first line. That first line informed me what the melody and mood would be, and also what the story of the song would be. Both were on subject i never thought I’d touch in a song.
- Don’t judge This was the toughest and most important idea to get hold of. The point of the FAWM excercise was to write fourteen songs, not to write fourteen good songs. I had to forget whether the song was any good, and just make sure it was written
- Use up old ideas Thanks to my trusty notebook and computer archives, I could dig out all those ideas that I hadn’t finished and finally put some work into them.
All of which are ideas that are worth following in songwriting generally.
Before you can perfect a song, you need to write it!
Stealing Ideas from Bacharach and David’s ‘Say a little prayer’
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad-J4aaL_IQ&feature=related]
Yesterday I mentioned Outkast’s use of an ‘extra’ 2/4 bar in ‘Hey Ya’.
I’d definitely advocate cutting out or putting in extra beats when necessary. A song needs to convey the words, and sometimes you have extra syllables that don’t quite scan in a 4/4 bar. Sometimes it’s possble to stretch or shrink the words to fit, but often the best option is to say ‘hang the bar line’ and do something different.
‘Say a little Prayer’ by Burt Bacharach and Hal David is a more sophisticated and interesting example of this idea.
Time signatures in the verse:
Three bars of 4/4
One of 2/4
Three of 4/4
Time signatures in the chorus:
One of 7/4
One of 4/4
One of 7/4
One of 4/4
One of 7/4
Four of of 4/4
Listening to the song, it’s quite clear that this unusual time signature changing fits perfectly with the lyrics. It’s also a technique that really stands out in Bacharach and David’s work, just one of the things that makes them such a unique and interesting songwriting duo (I could write a whole series about the songwriting ideas you could steal from these two. Perhaps I will at some point…)
If it’s good enough for Bacharach and David (and Outkast) surely it’s an idea worth trying yourself?
Oh, and when listening to Bacharach songs, I would advise searching for the Dione Warwick recording. the songs were often written with her voice in mind (and anything is better than Aretha Franklin in my opinion!).
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