This started as a song about wild wolves in Germany, then I realised they lurk everywhere in human form. I recorded the song in one take as I wanted to keep a raw feeling.
Wolves
Leave a reply
Isle of Noises: Conversations with great British songwriters By Daniel Rachel
I loved “Songwriters on songwriting” by Paul Zollo but it was practically all American writers. Daniel Rachel has filled this gap. It’s amazing how many great people were willing to talk to him. 26 writers including Noel Gallagher, Ray Davies, Paul Weller, Jarvis Cocker, Billy Bragg, Johnny Marr, Damon Albarn and Laura Marling. For each subject there is an overview of their career followed by a long interview. Daniel must have spent ages researching before talking to each person as he really knows the detail of their work. It’s exciting to see the original written version of many songs.
If funds are tight I recommend reading it on a kindle (£3.20) as the hardback version (£16.25) is a lot more expensive.
Best Bit: Sting explaining how he writes his songs backwards. It makes total sense that if you know where you are going you can build towards it but I hadn’t thought like this before.
Club59
A song about those clubs that used to lurk down side streets in the scary part of the city.
Hey Jude as a flowchart.
I like this because it shows the simple structure behind the song.
Hoozik
I went to an excellent song writing course by Martin Sutton and he has put this site together as a social area for songwriters to share ideas and chat. Click on the logo above to visit the site.
UPDATE: The site has now closed. Not enough people using it apparently.
If you want to know more about the courses that Martin runs you can find out on his site.
Men Have To Sing Love Songs
It is often easier to sing something than to say it.
BBC Introducing
The BBC have an amazing program of talks, workshops and shows to encourage new artists. BBC Introducing
As part of this they have master classes. Each masterclass has an hour long session on song writing. For some weird reason they are not available from the home page but they are still there is you search around.
Here is a great session from from Tom Robinson, some really good ideas here.
This session has an interview with Garry Barlow and a longer session with Mark Ronson.
This session has an interview with Brian Higgins
How Music really Works Wayne Chase
This book is not often available on Amazon so there is no picture link. I will give details of how to get a copy later.
It’s a big book (890 Pages) and covers a huge range of subjects. It is also pretty quirky as the author uses wild west stories to make some of his points, but there are some great insights that I haven’t found elsewhere so I recommend checking it out. The first 6 chapters are available free on-line so you have nothing to lose. Read them here
The book ranges very widely so I will focus on just one area here so that you can decide if you want to explore further. One of the most interesting topics for song writers is the Chase chart. This is a diagram showing the harmonic movement of a song. The chords of the harmonic scale are written in a circle and arrows show the movement between them. The arrangement of the chords is rather clever, as you move round the circle clock wise each chord moves down a fifth (with the exception of the bottom chord.) The major chords are on the right and the minor chords are generally on the left. Any chords that are not in the harmonic scale are outside the circle. Here is an example from the book, the Star Spangled Banner,I chose this example because most people will know it. . In just a glance you can see what the song is about harmonically.
If you want a paper copy then the best option is to buy a copy from the publishers website . If you live outside USA/Canada then shipping puts up the price a lot. Another option is to download a PDF, this is what I did as I live in the UK, the only snag with this is that the PDF is protected so you need a special program to open it.
Best bit: The chase chart in chapter 6.
I found it really hard to give this a star rating, some parts are very innovative and really helped my song writing and worthy of 5 stars.. It does vary widely in usefulness so I decided to give it 4 stars, but since you can check out the first half for free I recommend that you see what you think.
Songwriters on Songwriting Paul Zollo
This is an amazing book. It is a collection of Interviews published originally in Song Talk, the journal of the National Academy of Songwriters. The writers are mostly US based and are mostly from the 1980s and 90s. I didn’t read it from cover to cover initially, I jumped to the interviews with the people I admire most and then slowly read the rest. This is much better than the usual music magazine interview, much longer and far less showbiz, the focus is on the songs.He asks most of the writers where they believe their songs come from, if there is some kind of creative spirit. This is an interesting question as many writers do have some sort of answer. He also discusses their work patterns, do they treat it as a job or just wait for inspiration.
At 730 pages there is a lot of material and at the price it’s a bargain.
Best Bit: This is really hard to answer but there are three. The interviews with Dylan, Paul Simon and Lamont Dozier.
How To Write Songs On Guitar. Rikky Rooksby
If I was only reviewing page 42 of this book it would get 5 Stars. It’s a list of song chords for each key, apparently initially developed to allow you to work out the chords in a song you are listening to. It’s really useful for exploring other areas to take the harmony in a song. The table starts with the usual harmonic scale chords but adds in another half dozen that can work but you might not have though of.
My second favourite part of the book is a large section on song sequences. Rikky takes sequence e.g I-III-IV-V: (in Am this is Am-C-Dm-Em) and then gives lots of examples where it is used. For this sequence the list includes Elvis Costello “I want you”.
There are also good sections on song structures, key changing and melody. Most of the rest of the book is chord diagrams, a pity since most guitarists will already have those.
Best Bit Page 42 Song Chords table