obligation to be interesting, which means bring in a good vocalist to deliver
them, or have a good voice yourself. You’re making the listener wait for that
lyric to unfold, and it had better be worth the wait! The same is true, of
course, of the music.
Eventually, like anything else, once you work with these forms, they become
second nature to you. You’ll also find that you will get yourself into problem-
atic situations for which you will have to find creative solutions. A substantial
amount of innovation in music is initiated by a need to find a graceful way out
of a jam. If you already have a repertoire of solutions, you’re ahead of the game.
In the beginning ..................................................................................
Sometimes the first five seconds of a song are the hardest to come up with.
You may know you want to write something, but you may only have a vague
idea or a feeling about what it is you want to express. Or you may even know
exactly what you want to say, but have little or no idea how you would get
your idea across to another person.
There is a lot of pressure put on songwriters to make that first five seconds
the most interesting for the listener, too. How many times have you flipped
around on the radio, listening to a second here, a second there, before set-
tling on the one song that grabs your attention?
The first couple of seconds of your song are also the most important because
if you start well, you’ll have a lot less trouble down the line. Once you get
past the beginning, many times, the music and lyrics dictate where it’s going
to go on its own, and you just have to grab hold and try to keep it on track.
Many times songwriters begin writing a song by grabbing an existing song
that they like and writing completely new lyrics for it. From there, they
modify the music to match the mood and then work on the lyrics some more
to match the new music, and continue editing and rewriting the music and
lyrics until they either come up with something they’re happy with or toss
the song into their “scrap file” to be worked on or used for something else
later. This technique works especially well when you’ve got a group of people
together to work with (your band, for example), where everyone can add
their input on where the original song should change and the identifying
traits of the new song should begin.
Another way to begin a song is to just play around with chord progressions.
Most pop songs use the same chord progressions — jazz musicians often
make fun of pop musicians for playing only three-chord songs — so, if the
basic chord progressions you come up with sound too familiar to you, don’t
sweat it.
Chapter 17: Composing Commercial Music and Songs 225