songwriting – Page 3

June 4, 2013June 4, 2013

SONGWRITING MONTH DAY 4: Learn a Crowd Pleaser

Originally my prompt was going to be “Learn a Beatles song,” which is probably how I will approach this assignment, but then I decided to open it up a bit. Though I think hating the Beatles is silly (it’s like refusing to read Harry Potter–not a real aversion to the books, just an aversion to what’s “popular”), I wanted the prompt to appeal to Beatles-haters, too. (My version of crowd-pleasing.) Also, to get more at the essence of what I want to gain from the prompt itself.

Okay, so playing songs that other people might a) be able to sing along with, b) recognize, and/or c) request is not my strong point as a musician. I have a green notebook that serves as a song archive. (It now has a songwriting month section–hurray!) I bring this book to jam sessions or singalongs and stuff and then realize, again, that I tend to learn how to play songs that nobody has ever heard.

The most “known” song in the book might be “Shot in the Arm” by Wilco.

Actually, it’s “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” and “What Child Is This?” Not songs people are requesting most months of the year.

(Oh wait–I just remembered that recently, I learned “Let’s Give ‘Em Something to Talk About” for a fundraising event, but before that the most popular song in my book was “Shot in the Arm,” or a few Radiohead songs, or whatever. You get my point.)

This is the Woody Guthrie in me speaking, but I believe music, in general is meant to be a communal experience. We’re not learning to play all these songs so we can sit in our rooms and listen to ourselves sing (though I will be doing a lot of that this month). It’s a good thing to create songs and learn songs with the purpose of sharing them. For instance, my friend Laura, who is also musician/fiction writer (there are a few of us!), sings and plays Destiny’s Child’s “Jumpin’ Jumpin” on the guitar. It’s funny but more importantly, it is fun. She does this for the sole purpose of making other people happy (also, perhaps, for letting the world see how awesome she is).

So, today learn a song that you know will please a large group of people–not just yourself.

SONG OF THE DAY: Dusbowl Refugee

Since I mentioned him, I’m sharing a Woody Guthrie song that he wrote to delight and connect to a specific crowd. That’s his whole life, by the way–he wrote songs to lift up people. It’s why I tend to refer to him as “Saint Woody.”

June 3, 2013

SONGWRITING MONTH DAY THREE: A Sonnet Song

Happy Songwriting month! Are you ready to write a song now?

We’re going to be writing a new song every three days so that we can come out of this adventure with 10 new songs.

Intimidated? I get it, so am I, but we can do it. Remember, the songs don’t have to be brilliant, just workable. We have all month and then the rest of our lives to make the song spectacular.

TODAY’S PROMPT: Write a sonnet and put a tune to it.

It’s okay if you don’t know or remember how a sonnet works because I’m about to tell you.

It’s simple: The only rule is it has to be 14 lines. In a song, that’s probably going to look like three verses and a rhyming couplet at the end.

You can go Shakespearean on the rhyme scheme:

ABAB

CDCD

EFEF

Or Petrarchan:

ABBA

CDDC

EFFE

Or you can do whatever you want! The only rule is that it has to be 14 lines.

You can be super formulaic and write each line in iambic pentameter, but in my experience, ten syllable lines sound terrible in songs. (Yes, I have tried to fit iambic pentameter in a lyric line before. Have I mentioned that I’m a nerd?)

One thing you might try, which works wonders in getting the song to move, is to try the traditional sonnet form for subject/verse relationship. It goes something like this:

Verse one makes a statement or proposes a problem.

Verse two develops that statement or problem.

Verse Three counters the statement, or tosses a curve-ball into what you’re developing.

The end, or rhyming couplet somehow brings conclusion to the problem you’ve set up.

Have a go!

SONG OF THE DAY: Ol’ 55

This song has nothing to do with sonnets. It’s the first Tom Waits song I ever loved. The real reason I’m choosing it is because I’m hitting the road real early this morning to embark on a long drive home. It is the world’s best song for an early morning’s drive.

By the way, someone posted the whole Closing Time album on Youtube and that’s what I’ve posted. Listen to the whole thing! It’s so good. And sexy. Young Tom Waits is actually sexy.

He’s also a poet, which makes him appropriate for sonnet day.

You’re a poet too, Shakespeare. Now go at it.

June 2, 2013

SONGWRITING MONTH DAY TWO: Roots

TODAY’S PROMPT: learn a song written before 1900.

This site is a fantastic resource.

Once upon a time (hey nonny), I took a rhetoric of song class at Miami of Ohio that alerted me to the fact that our music history (“our” as in “American”) is chock full of songs that tell really dark, complicated stories. Ballads are the HBO dramas of the past. We’ve got songs about infanticide (“The Cruel Mother”), songs about murder guilt (“Edward”). “Mary Hamilton” is a first person account of a woman waiting for public death because she got pregnant by the king and killed the baby. Dark stuff, yo. And really dramatic.

Not all the old songs are dark. Some of them are about feeling like mack-daddies in a world gone right (“Sittin’ on Top of the World”). These songs came from overseas and morphed on American soil; their journeys help us understand where we came from and maybe where we’re going.

All the cool kids are doing it, by the way.

Everybody who is anybody knows how to play “Saint James Infirmary.” I mean, I have my version. So does Janis Joplin, despite the fact that Louie Armstrong is probably the true owner.

Gillian Welch has a fantastic “Make Me Down a Pallet on your Floor.”

These songs are great because you can play them in any setting and not worry about copyrights. Right?

TODAY’S SONG: “I Wish My Baby Was Born”

I learned about this song in my aforementioned rhetoric of song class. There’s a great version on the COLD MOUNTAIN soundtrack.

This one isn’t Jack White (who is fantastic all over that soundtrack), but it does have the potential to destroy a listener:

Lyrics:

I wish, I wish my baby was born
And sitting on its papa’s knee
And me, poor girl
And me, poor girl, were dead and gone
And the green grass growing o’er my feet
I ain’t ahead, nor never will be
Till the sweet apple grows
On a sour apple tree

But still I hope, But still I hope the time will come
When you and I shall be as one

I wish, I wish my love had died
And sent his soul to wander free
Then we might meet where ravens fly
Let our poor bodies rest in peace

The owl, the owl
Is a lonely bird
It chills my heart
With dread and terror
That someone’s blood
There on his wing
That someone’s blood
There on his feathers.

June 1, 2013

SONGWRITING MONTH DAY ONE: Transcendence

It’s here! June! AKA Super Songwriting Month.

I have been waiting for this month since April, when I came up with the idea. I am so excited about it, that I actually wrote this post the night before.

!!!

My friend Lindsay, the piano player smiling here,

asked me how she can participate if she’s a piano player? This is a good point. I play the guitar (see in the picture? I’m the giant with the guitar…) so I will be writing/learning songs on that. But I really hope Lindsay participates (because two are better than one, of course), so here’s my answer:

Write songs for the piano!

Or whatever instrument you play. My friend Paul rocks the melodica (besides the piano). I say, if you play the melodica, this month can be for you too. And you too, recorder/trumpet/flute players. It might be harder for you drummers. Basically, just try to learn a song a day. On days where I give a songwriting prompt, write a song that goes well with your instrument?

Okay, so here’s how I’m hopefully going to go about posts this month. Each entry will have one prompt and one song of the day with some thoughts about the significance of that song. They may or may not be related.

PROMPT FOR DAY ONE: Learn an old hymn.

Not a contemporary (Christian) song. An old hymn.

Now, I understand if you are one of those folks who gets all squeamish at the idea of anything that has to do with your corrupt church experience. If this is the case, you might get a similar experience out of choosing some song to learn that inspires some sort of feeling of transcendence for you. More props for you if you can find an old song that makes you feel this way.

Because Salman Rushdie told Bill Moyers that, “All art began as religious art.” I don’t know if Rushdie is right but it makes sense if he is. Music is mysterious. It invokes (in me, at least) ideas of the supernatural.

And so, songwriting month begins with a religious song. These are usually songs that have lasted centuries and often come from crazy deep places. You might want to investigate the story from where your hymn came. Most of them have Wikipedia pages, I think. There are lots of people on the internet obsessed with old hymns and their stories.

There are hymns all over the Internet. Choose one for any reason at all: because it’s pretty, because it hits you as somehow true, because the words are hilarious and gory (there is a lot of blood in hymns– fountains of blood in hymns), because it was your grandma’s favorite, because you’ve never heard it before and it has a cool title. Figure out how to plunk it away on the guitar.

SONG OF THE DAY: In the Garden

I love this Willie Nelson version.

Here’s why I chose this song:

1. It brings back memories of my performing arts high school in Detroit, when a group of students competed in a speech/drama competition with an eight-person version of the play, Rimers of Eldrich. This is a tremendously creepy play about a corrupt little town, and there is nothing like a group of city kids trying to pull it off (and they pulled it off well, if I recall). They returned to this song throughout, as a sort of motif. It was totally creepy. Now the song has a sort of creepy-awesome connotation in my mind, and so I like that complexity. (Don’t worry, I am fully aware of how weird I am.)

2. My mom sings hymns every week with residents at a local Detroit nursing home and this is one they sing together. I love to hear the old folks singing this song. No matter where I am, they seem to be singing, I can get to the garden with Him. From an inner city Detroit nursing home, that shit is inspirational if nothing else is.

Recommended Listening: “My Mother’s Hymn Book” ~ Johnny Cash

May 29, 2013May 29, 2013

SONGWRITING MONTH: An Invitation

I have decided, at least this summer, to be a genre-by-month artist. I did Poetry Month in April and was so happy to see thirty new poems at the end of it that I’m going to try to be productive like that always–by tackling a creative project one month at a time.

May is Revise the Novel Month (as you know). Now the novel’s in the hands of some trusted readers. I do plan on thinking about it during the month of June, maybe doing some free-writes associated with my protagonists, but I decided that I would dedicate June to songwriting.

I’m a songwriter, too.

I have a Facebook page for my music: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nora-Bonner/44922051108

And a (really old) Myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/norabonnermusic

I have come up with a Thirty-Day curriculum that’s pretty ambitious. I’m thinking it will require that I set aside at least an hour a day for playing my guitar and then some. I have geared up for this by playing five songs a day—you know, for the calluses.

Each day this month has a songwriting assignment. Some of them are to learn songs that already exist. Some of them are to write songs in different styles. My hope is that I’ll be able to get through a song without stopping (rather than say, nail it). I’d like to learn a bunch of songs that I can have in my repertoire for later nailing.

I will post the assignment on my blog and perhaps, if I have time, I’ll also post a link to a song that holds some significance in my life—not sure if it will be related to the assignment.

I will, if all goes well, come out of June knowing how to play thirty more songs than I did when I started. Ten of these songs I will have written and twenty of them are from other artists.

I invite anyone who wants to write songs to participate in that aspect. Lots of the assignments are lyric-driven. I’m a writer, remember? I think about the words first.

I also invite you to share songs and musicians with me. I want to know what you’re listening to. I want to know why—the significance of this music in your lives.

I don’t know if anyone will join me on this semi-crazy endeavor but if you feel compelled to do so, please do.

I can’t even tell you how excited I am for this.

(I’m also expecting this month to feel a bit like Cash in this song:)