The songwriter's conundrum

[codec_spurt]

Fun thread, codec!

Famous folkie Richard Thompson did an acoustic cover of Britney's "Oops, I Did It Again" and it showed what a great song it is under all the production gloss.

Eh, I try to impress.

I feel for you, you little horror...

Sorry that was Richard Thompson:
A master. I try to get there. I never will. True genius:



Xenobt you got great taste!

[codec_spurt]

A few months ago here at KVR (yes, really!) :

Thanks for the input.

[Nanakai]

"The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, it's the way those atoms are put together"

I would say that uniqueness is not by virtue of a thing's constituent parts, and that creativity is not necessarily about doing something unique. As a society, we seem to foster a lot of anxiety about being individual and different, but is that really so important? Dylan didn't invent crooning over the same 3 chords for 5 minutes, he was just really good at it.

[rockstar_not]

Those four chords in the Axis of Awesome YouTube - that was also done earlier than 2011 with songs pre-2011 by a mashup of clips from the actual songs.

There's also the 'sensitive female songwriter' chord progression that has been parodied as well. The 6 4 1 5 progression. Here's a whole blog about it, with vids/songs going back for years: http://sixfouronefive.blogspot.com/ I think my fave is the Superdrag song, though I have to say that I've played Boston's Peace of Mind many times for fun and love the sound.

In fact, I think I'm off to write a 6415 song right now and see how I can get it different than the countless before it.

-Scott

[Xenobt]

Xenobt you got great taste!

Aw, shucks, just got big ears!

Found it on Youtube, (how did we bore others for so long without it?)!



KVR/eSoundz: Xenobt

[rockstar_not]

Gotta get me a beret.....

[codec_spurt]

"The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, it's the way those atoms are put together"

I would say that uniqueness is not by virtue of a thing's constituent parts, and that creativity is not necessarily about doing something unique. As a society, we seem to foster a lot of anxiety about being individual and different, but is that really so important? Dylan didn't invent crooning over the same 3 chords for 5 minutes, he was just really good at it.

This sentiment resonates with me very deeply.
I'm glad you expressed it.
Even if it was someone else's sentiment.
I guess there is recursiveness and irony there.

http://home.nvg.org/~venaas/jargon/jarg ... ml#TAG1482

Hackers joke.
If you have a copy of K&R, look up 'recursion'.
Sometimes my sides ache.

I'm a failed computer programmer.
The real rock stars for me, these days, are the coders.
The ones who slave over 10.000 LOC (lines of code).

I see poetry in good code.
Sometimes I even fire up windasm just to see.
It's against the law, but I am a rebel.
Sometimes I fire up softice.
In some countries, it is illegal to even own that program.

I never crack.
Though I know crackers.
I know the people that taught the crackers.
I have met them...


Poetry.
I know a few poets too.
I am not talking about people who are published.
I am talking about living, breathing legends.
To live the life of a poet, means to know misery at it's deepest level.
But never once wallow in it. And never accept it.
Catharsis. The songwriter is not a poet. But a good songwriter is the brother of a poet. And a sister too...


I've blahed on too long, as is my wont.
Carl Sagan. You can watch all his Cosmos series on the net. I have.

Sorry, when the muse bite.
I write.

[codec_spurt]

Those four chords in the Axis of Awesome YouTube - that was also done earlier than 2011 with songs pre-2011 by a mashup of clips from the actual songs.

There's also the 'sensitive female songwriter' chord progression that has been parodied as well. The 6 4 1 5 progression. Here's a whole blog about it, with vids/songs going back for years: http://sixfouronefive.blogspot.com/ I think my fave is the Superdrag song, though I have to say that I've played Boston's Peace of Mind many times for fun and love the sound.

In fact, I think I'm off to write a 6415 song right now and see how I can get it different than the countless before it.

-Scott

Oh, that is pure class. Thank you.
I take your 'sensitive female songwriter' and I raise you the truck driver's gear change. Hall of shame. Indeed.

http://www.gearchange.org/
http://www.gearchange.org/browse_by_artist.html

If you don't know it already, you are in for a treat.
Modulation. I thought that was what that knobby thing on my keyboard did.

I bet you could write something in that vein though, if you were good enough.
When you know the pitfalls... Bit like knowing what the rules are before you can break them.

But why reinvent the wheel? I'm off to check my back catalog. If I find more than one or two, I promise to give up. (Talking about your chord progression, not the gear change)

[codec_spurt]

Gotta get me a beret.....

Gotta get me a slight stutter too.
The man is beyond genius, he is a god.

Crass pop artist.
My kindred too.

When Bob Marley said:"Music like dirt", he really was saying something.

But now we are getting on to the subject of Alchemy and the philosopher's stone.

In with the sulfur and mercury they mixed in bits of their own ****.
Just to see what would happen, for shits and giggles. Didn't get them very far.
Then again they didn't have wikipedia, so can't blame them really. I probably would have done the same thing.


Songwriting and alchemy? Any takers?


eh eh.

[codec_spurt]

Xenobt you got great taste!

Found it on Youtube, (how did we bore others for so long without it?)!

We played them our songs!


Seriously, thanks for that link. Never saw it before. Made me laugh inside.
I thought he was going to burst into a Dead Can Dance track at the end.



Must have been the fast triple meter.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltarello

And though this was meant to be a 'lively, merry dance', I hear death and birth and the cycle of life in there. It brings tears to my eyes. I can hardly ever listen to it without crying. Though my feet are dancing. Music. The greatest gift. The greatest curse.

Oops. I did it again!

[Nanakai]

This sentiment resonates with me very deeply.
I'm glad you expressed it.
Even if it was someone else's sentiment.
I guess there is recursiveness and irony there.

I'm glad that you're glad

(Linguists are well acquainted with recursion, also)

[rockstar_not]

Those four chords in the Axis of Awesome YouTube - that was also done earlier than 2011 with songs pre-2011 by a mashup of clips from the actual songs.

There's also the 'sensitive female songwriter' chord progression that has been parodied as well. The 6 4 1 5 progression. Here's a whole blog about it, with vids/songs going back for years: http://sixfouronefive.blogspot.com/ I think my fave is the Superdrag song, though I have to say that I've played Boston's Peace of Mind many times for fun and love the sound.

In fact, I think I'm off to write a 6415 song right now and see how I can get it different than the countless before it.

-Scott

Oh, that is pure class. Thank you.
I take your 'sensitive female songwriter' and I raise you the truck driver's gear change. Hall of shame. Indeed.

http://www.gearchange.org/
http://www.gearchange.org/browse_by_artist.html

If you don't know it already, you are in for a treat.
Modulation. I thought that was what that knobby thing on my keyboard did.

I bet you could write something in that vein though, if you were good enough.
When you know the pitfalls... Bit like knowing what the rules are before you can break them.

But why reinvent the wheel? I'm off to check my back catalog. If I find more than one or two, I promise to give up. (Talking about your chord progression, not the gear change)

I have played in a band for far too many years where the gear change was standard fare at least once in a set - even if the original didn't modulate. I didn't lead the band, but it was a point of contention between me and the piano player - who also couldn't lay off his left hand either - and eventually I exited the band for want of a better attitude towards life!

Anyways last night while waiting for my daughters' piano lessons to finish, I started composing a vi V I 5 song in Garageband on my iPhone and with it's notepad for lyrics. Nearly done. Should be on SoundCloud by week's end. Maybe for reasons of demonstration and addition to gearchange.org, I will add an extra chorus after modulation. I'm bound and determined to do this entirely via Garageband in the iPhone, though I admit I now use an Akai Synthstation 25 controller with it - in my backpack always. Midibridge app makes it useful with Garageband and Alchemy mobile.

[rockstar_not]

Yet other parts of the Songwriter's Conundrum, are these:

1. Distraction by technology
2. Wrong tool for the job
3. Marriage to a song form or chord sequence before laying out a melody, or writing words first and not thinking hard enough about the cadence, etc.

I illustrate with an example from this thread. In participating in this thread I thought that there was plenty of fodder from which to construct a song - a parody at least.

Wrote the lyrics on my iPhone notepad while waiting for my 2 daughters piano lessons:
-----------
Conundrum - Copyright 2012 (as if it matters) Scott Lake

Today I sit down, no six string at hand
But for a fiver and an iPhone I got me this here GarageBand.
Do I start with a melody, the chords or the words?
Can I write an original, something no one has ever heard?

Since I'm asking these questions I guess the words have come first.
Now what will be the song structure, with I mate a chorus with this verse?

Chorus:

Songwriter's conundrum can put me in the doldrums
And when it's bad I'm like Jack when he was hearing "Redrum".

Songwriter's conundrum, where was that lyric stolen from?
I ripped off something unconsciously again, that's my songwriters conundrum.

Verse:
Dang I used that same chord progression known throughout the land
Did McCartney use it long ago, Hammerstein hammer out lyrics that I have planned?
I guess I won't find out until someone else has heard, a familiar lyric or melody of renown.
And turns my smile of songwriting success to a grin turned upside down.

-------------------
Then the next night (last night), I used GarageBand to construct this:
Conundrum sketch - Scott Lake

And I hit more elements of the songwriter's conundrum:

1. I was married to a chord progression of vi IV I V, sort of ahead of time
2. What I noodled on GarageBand was more about playing with GarageBand's incredible 5$ technology (found out about the leslie control for the Organ last night) than it was making a musical accompaniment to the lyrics.
3. Garageband is the wrong tool for songwriting, at least in the order that I went about things for this song because clearly the lyrical cadence (rough as they are) do not align at all with the music I've laid out.
4. Once I tried to mate the words with the rough verses/choruses, I got a bit deflated - in a conundrum - and I stopped.

While a bit discouraged, I realized that these might also be worthy topics in this thread about songwriting. I have about 8 of these song fragments in Garageband in my iPhone right now. Garageband as an asynchronous songwriting tool used the way I used it is not working for me. I see that iRig is $17 on musician's friend stupid deal of the day - might have to get that today.

[vurt]

jack didnt say redrum, it was the kid

[rockstar_not]

jack didnt say redrum, it was the kid

vurt thanks for the catch - I changed the words but perhaps even the change doesn't fit.

Chalk it up to another part of the conundrum: using cultural references of which one really isn't well informed, just to make a rhyme!

-Scott