System of Love EP by The Swimming Pool Q's- MP3 Album
Jeff Calder's Personal Archive > Living By Night in the Land of Opportunity: (9) > Living By Night Section 4
Writing songs begins as a private pursuit, and as
with many private pursuits, the site of composition is the bedroom.
There's a tape deck, an instrument (guitar or keyboard), and no
awareness of "the general listener," whoever that might be. One writes
to please oneself. Lyrics were my initial orientation: the music was
there to serve the words.
Most of my first songs were overly long narriatives. Every time I came up with a new plot twist or good line, I'd write another musical part. Now, a song can be many things, but it's noot a novel or short story, even if it uses literary devices. By stages I learned that if a song is tedious, verses and details have to be cut at the expense of the
narriative.
An example of tedium in song: "Shoot a Quick Nine," circa 1979, the story of a Durham family man who gambles away his house on the golf course.
The kids are hung on the latest kick
Mommy's fallen for a toothpick prof
Heart pumping like a two dollar trick
Can't turn his tummy off
From a third story office on a Durham street
He looks through venetian blinds:
Shoot a quick nine
About ten minutes later he loses the house and the LTD, and we usually lost the audience. As their eyes glazed and jaws went slack, I eventually got the idea that this sort of thing might read better than it sang.
The first two things to transform songwriting are the band and the live performance. The writer subtly adjusts to the strengths, weaknesses, and pecularities of the band. On a subconscious level he begins to imagine different musical possibilities for new songs. While songs were definite and rigid during the bedroom phase, the become more
plastic when introduces to others who have abilities the songwriter doesn't. Once the band is cooking, ideas can be developed collectively by jamming at the dreaded rehearsal (this is not advised during Bad Head). The jam can be taped and taken back to the bedroom, where it can be fashioned into a song. This kind of collaboration can lead to some good work. On the other hand, when five people have five different
ideas about how a song should be structured, the possibilites for confusion are extraordinary. This, too, can lead to Bad Head.
As touched upon during the "Shoot A Quick Nine" episode, performing live can change one's songwriting as well. The grinding routine of one-nighters affects the pleasure one derives from singing and playing. As opposed to the big-layout tunes over which the audience might rub their chins to stay awake, songs with more emotional and
melodic content become more rewarding for the singer. The oddball things stay, but they function as pace changers and releases. Whether or not this is pandering to the audience is beside the point. The words and phrases become simpler as one begins to fuse them more deliberately to the music. One begins to lose the quirks that gave the
songs their unique character in the beginning. Now the challenge becomes giving the new approach an equally personal distinction.
The Royal Road has its own special impact on songwriting in that it provides a portal to the world of rude experience. Travel can be a jarring ordeal that can influence the shape of songs, their emotional qualities. The alienation and fragmentation of the road can only have a deleterious effect on ones personal life. This can lead to much
whining, which is the source for much song. It's not uncommon for many songwriters to seek out trouble simply for the sake of new material. This is known as The Scientific Pursuit of Pratfall. A not atypical scenerio: songwriter develops a drinking problem for about twenty-four hours, pursues a half dozen indiscretions, gets in a fist-fight that
breaks his glasses and lands him in the pokey allowing for a thirty-minute peek at The Underside of American Life, after which he crawls back home and pleads forgiveness for something he denies ever having done in the first place.
At this point, if one isn't too preoccupied with selecting a parole officer, the process of recording begins to make serious alterations upon songwriting. Recording a song on tape and hearing it played back for the first time can be an enlightening, exciting, and
often depressing experience. Besides discovering one's incompetency as a musician, the songs that everyone thought were so brilliant-the real crowd pleasers-sound terrible. On the bright side, the certain embarrasments show promise.
Awareness of one's artistic deficiencies increases as the band moves from the home studio to the more serious and expensive twenty-four track professional studio. Simultaneously, the artist begins to improve as he becomes more comfortable in the studio environment. This is where the trouble known as The Hundred-Dollar-Per-Hour Dupe begins.One is made cocksure by the overwhelming bigness of the studio sound.
A vision of thousands screaming in a riot of approval dances in the head. Forty-eight hours later the cassette tape you made for free at rehearsal sounds better. Technology conned you into thinking you were better than you were.
Slowly one develops the capacity to penetrate the deception of modern studio fantasy. In addition to avoiding any future high dollar quandary (usually the result of being unprepared), a recognition of musical clutter emerges, and the songwriter reminds himself of the revealed stylistic excess the next time he writes a song. At some point,
too, if the band has the opportunity to spend huge amounts of time in a sophisticated studio, it can develop a half-baked idea into a full-blown song in ways it never could have when jamming in the rehearsal room or playing live. The songwriter and the band are hearing the thing blasting back over the studio monitors as they're creating the music and as any casual listener will be hearing it in the future.
Then there's the factor of radio airplay and its impact on the songwriter. If you're lucky, the recording is boomed over the vaster lake to the vaster audience you no doubt deserve. Suddenly the work is subject to the most intense mass scrutiny and self-analysis. An even greater responsibiliy suggests itself, but to whom and for what? The songwriter is no longer alone in his bedroom with the tape deck. He's internalized his experiences over the years and, perhaps, evolved from the more intellectual and eccentric to the more emotional and "sensible." He's begun to learn what's "effective," and what's not, but effective for whom? himself? some imagined listener? a perceived
radio audience? After a while can he even distinguish among the three? These bewildering questions loom on the horizon, but before they can be answered, one has to make The Album.
Most of my first songs were overly long narriatives. Every time I came up with a new plot twist or good line, I'd write another musical part. Now, a song can be many things, but it's noot a novel or short story, even if it uses literary devices. By stages I learned that if a song is tedious, verses and details have to be cut at the expense of the
narriative.
An example of tedium in song: "Shoot a Quick Nine," circa 1979, the story of a Durham family man who gambles away his house on the golf course.
The kids are hung on the latest kick
Mommy's fallen for a toothpick prof
Heart pumping like a two dollar trick
Can't turn his tummy off
From a third story office on a Durham street
He looks through venetian blinds:
Shoot a quick nine
About ten minutes later he loses the house and the LTD, and we usually lost the audience. As their eyes glazed and jaws went slack, I eventually got the idea that this sort of thing might read better than it sang.
The first two things to transform songwriting are the band and the live performance. The writer subtly adjusts to the strengths, weaknesses, and pecularities of the band. On a subconscious level he begins to imagine different musical possibilities for new songs. While songs were definite and rigid during the bedroom phase, the become more
plastic when introduces to others who have abilities the songwriter doesn't. Once the band is cooking, ideas can be developed collectively by jamming at the dreaded rehearsal (this is not advised during Bad Head). The jam can be taped and taken back to the bedroom, where it can be fashioned into a song. This kind of collaboration can lead to some good work. On the other hand, when five people have five different
ideas about how a song should be structured, the possibilites for confusion are extraordinary. This, too, can lead to Bad Head.
As touched upon during the "Shoot A Quick Nine" episode, performing live can change one's songwriting as well. The grinding routine of one-nighters affects the pleasure one derives from singing and playing. As opposed to the big-layout tunes over which the audience might rub their chins to stay awake, songs with more emotional and
melodic content become more rewarding for the singer. The oddball things stay, but they function as pace changers and releases. Whether or not this is pandering to the audience is beside the point. The words and phrases become simpler as one begins to fuse them more deliberately to the music. One begins to lose the quirks that gave the
songs their unique character in the beginning. Now the challenge becomes giving the new approach an equally personal distinction.
The Royal Road has its own special impact on songwriting in that it provides a portal to the world of rude experience. Travel can be a jarring ordeal that can influence the shape of songs, their emotional qualities. The alienation and fragmentation of the road can only have a deleterious effect on ones personal life. This can lead to much
whining, which is the source for much song. It's not uncommon for many songwriters to seek out trouble simply for the sake of new material. This is known as The Scientific Pursuit of Pratfall. A not atypical scenerio: songwriter develops a drinking problem for about twenty-four hours, pursues a half dozen indiscretions, gets in a fist-fight that
breaks his glasses and lands him in the pokey allowing for a thirty-minute peek at The Underside of American Life, after which he crawls back home and pleads forgiveness for something he denies ever having done in the first place.
At this point, if one isn't too preoccupied with selecting a parole officer, the process of recording begins to make serious alterations upon songwriting. Recording a song on tape and hearing it played back for the first time can be an enlightening, exciting, and
often depressing experience. Besides discovering one's incompetency as a musician, the songs that everyone thought were so brilliant-the real crowd pleasers-sound terrible. On the bright side, the certain embarrasments show promise.
Awareness of one's artistic deficiencies increases as the band moves from the home studio to the more serious and expensive twenty-four track professional studio. Simultaneously, the artist begins to improve as he becomes more comfortable in the studio environment. This is where the trouble known as The Hundred-Dollar-Per-Hour Dupe begins.One is made cocksure by the overwhelming bigness of the studio sound.
A vision of thousands screaming in a riot of approval dances in the head. Forty-eight hours later the cassette tape you made for free at rehearsal sounds better. Technology conned you into thinking you were better than you were.
Slowly one develops the capacity to penetrate the deception of modern studio fantasy. In addition to avoiding any future high dollar quandary (usually the result of being unprepared), a recognition of musical clutter emerges, and the songwriter reminds himself of the revealed stylistic excess the next time he writes a song. At some point,
too, if the band has the opportunity to spend huge amounts of time in a sophisticated studio, it can develop a half-baked idea into a full-blown song in ways it never could have when jamming in the rehearsal room or playing live. The songwriter and the band are hearing the thing blasting back over the studio monitors as they're creating the music and as any casual listener will be hearing it in the future.
Then there's the factor of radio airplay and its impact on the songwriter. If you're lucky, the recording is boomed over the vaster lake to the vaster audience you no doubt deserve. Suddenly the work is subject to the most intense mass scrutiny and self-analysis. An even greater responsibiliy suggests itself, but to whom and for what? The songwriter is no longer alone in his bedroom with the tape deck. He's internalized his experiences over the years and, perhaps, evolved from the more intellectual and eccentric to the more emotional and "sensible." He's begun to learn what's "effective," and what's not, but effective for whom? himself? some imagined listener? a perceived
radio audience? After a while can he even distinguish among the three? These bewildering questions loom on the horizon, but before they can be answered, one has to make The Album.