KVR Audio

harryupbabble · Post by **harryupbabble** » Mon Oct 03, 2016 5:40 pm

I just became aware of the "songwriting methods" thread. I was going to post my opinion there like any other butwhole (kidding) but I thought my post is not really about "songwriting methods" and it might seem like my post is going to derail that thread and so I created this separate thread instead.

Anyways, I don't have a songwriting method that I've settled on yet. I'm still experimenting. But I keep thinking what's the point of trying, I am not a freak. I maybe need to collaborate. Or quit songwriting altogether because I may not be even an average person, I may be a person who will forever suck at both writing lyrics and making music. I have this belief that songwriting can only be done excellently by freaks. By freaks I mean a person that is actually two persons in one person. Most persons are one person. That's silly, that's moronic, you say? Of course a person is just one person, you say? Hahaha. Hold on. Wait. Please.

Songs consist of two main things, lyrics and music. I believe (maybe wrongly) that the average person can be good at writing lyrics but they can't be good at making music too and conversely they can be good at making music but they can't be good at writing lyrics too. That is why, seemingly, you rarely get the Shakespeare person and the Mozart person in one person? Basically, that is what really good songwriters are to me: Shakespeare + Mozart.

I think people like Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Sting, Roger Waters, Robert Smith, Kate Bush, Frank Black, etc, are freaks. Sure their flair with words may not be (or maybe it is) as good as Shakespeare's nor their music be as good as Mozart's (I prefer Beethoven) but their songs are better than the songs made by non-freaks or average person. No? This statement probably can't be easily proven but even if people say pop music is crap, what the Beatles (Lennon/McCartney) did is not easily achieved. I'm just guessing but Elton John is not a songwriting freak. Bernie Taupin is not a songwriting freak. Together, Elton and Bernie, they were songwriting freaks? Kurt Cobain may have been a songwriting freak. It seems subjective. But maybe brain scan science can prove that yes, real good songwriters are freaks... that writing lyrics and making music are two extremely different brain functions and the average person can't be good at both. But even if science has not proven it yet or never will, I can't help but believe my beliefs. It has to be disproved.

It's weird, by the time I finished typing my last (I believed so at the time) sentence above, I had this sudden 180 degrees turn of mind and re-justification. I decided I am going to spend more time on songwriting and keep writing subpar songs and less time creating threads for a while (I promise, I myself am getting sick of my too-much-thread-starting ways even though I still believe that composing long posts is good for the brain, or maybe short three-word posts are just as good or better, a matter of style and preference). Who said people need to write excellent songs. To me, doing something hard but not impossible, even if fecal and nowhere near excellent, is enjoyable most of the time. Sort of like defecation. It's not impossible but if you are constipated it's hard. Either way, it's got to get out. Fecal, subpar songs may be good enough. Fit right in. At YouTube, I mean. Not to say that YouTube is universally fecal. It probably isn't. Not totally. No?

nineofkings · Post by **nineofkings** » Mon Oct 03, 2016 5:47 pm

You don't need to be a freak. What you need is a wealth of experiences. I find when I lock myself in a room and consciously say I will write, the results are nothing special. The songs I'm proud of are the ones that came to me based on a situation or observation from the real world. It's about opening yourself up to your daily life.

Now, maybe songwriters seek crazy experiences, and crazy experiences can make one into a freak.

Doug1978 · Post by **Doug1978** » Mon Oct 03, 2016 5:55 pm

Harry - you need to stop over-thinking this and just get on with song-writing.
All experienced and successful song-writers learnt via hard work and correcting mistakes.

Freaks, magicians, geniuses blah blah blah... they all LEARNT via the words they put down on paper, scribbled out, and re-edited to time demands.

As for Lennon and McCartney, well many of the Beatles' songs were amalgamations of two separate songs stuck on top of each other. ''A Day in The Life'' is one such example.

OzoneJunkie · Post by **OzoneJunkie** » Mon Oct 03, 2016 11:16 pm

Argue for your limitations, and their yours.

Excellence comes more from persistence and work, than talent.

People who argue the talent side are often making excuses because they don't want to do the work required, whether that is conscious or not.

KBSoundSmith · Post by **KBSoundSmith** » Mon Oct 03, 2016 11:22 pm

Music is just music. Lyrics are just lyrics. You get better at them by writing them. Don't get ego attached to it -- that WILL hold you back. Talent is important, but it's useless without the will to simply sit your ass in a chair and do the work, regardless how you feel about what you're doing.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Mon Oct 03, 2016 11:31 pm

Just like with anything, passion should be a major factor.

harryupbabble · Post by **harryupbabble** » Tue Oct 04, 2016 12:13 am

I don't know guys/gals. I am not sure. I need solid disproving. How come Einstein was so good at science and yet he wasn't good at everyday normal stuff, like tying his shoelaces? Maybe the scientific mind is not magical. Maybe the lyrical mind is not musical. And the musical mind is not lyrical. And when you get a musical mind and lyrical mind in one brain, it kind of seem freaky.

Sure if you have a lyrical mind and keep honing it then yes it's possible you can get good at it. Same with music-making. But with lyric writing already difficult and music-making already difficult, and maybe songwriting possibly being a multi-field thingy, it seems impossible to get good, I mean super-ultra-mega good, at both even if you have the passion. Unless one is a freak, that is. Maybe.

I mean if you have passion for physics but you don't have a physical mind, hahaha, an airhead, forget about about being a physician. Okay, I guess physicist is the right word?

Unless you are a freak, a two-field expert freak, which songwriting probably requires, forget about about writing excellent songs? Maybe excellent songwriters are really just modern day Leonardo Da Vincis. I'm just guessing of course. I think I will Google this topic later on, I should have done that in the first place. But I thought there could be people here that could set me straight, if I am wrong, that is. KVR is like my second Google.

PS. Did you know the music for Greensleeves existed hundreds of years without it's current lyrics? Two different people created something that seems made by one person. Two minds. But it wasn't till the lyrics was added to the music of Greensleeves that Greensleeves became a """""hit""""?

thecontrolcentre · Post by **thecontrolcentre** » Tue Oct 04, 2016 12:48 am

Learn to play songs by other people. It can be great for your own creative process.

Boone777 · Post by **Boone777** » Tue Oct 04, 2016 1:00 am

Lyrics can be a poem, a made up story or just your boring day at work. Even a fake language totally random sounds. You don't need a degree to write some stuff. The quality varies from one artist to another I agree. Everytime I sit down to get satisfying lyrics done it takes me about an evening, sometimes less sometimes more. I don't find it that difficult but it used to be way more complicated than that. It eventually became easier. You can summarise a story you read. I know Dan Swano hates lyrics with a passion he takes his lyrics from buddys or simply write some broderline passable non sense lyrics !

emcee · Post by **emcee** » Tue Oct 04, 2016 3:06 am

And then there's Elton John/Bernie Taupin which goes with Harry's mode of thinking.
Elton does the music and as we know, does ok and Bernie does the lyrics.
I suck at lyrics and acknowledge it. Happy to hand that part over to my vocalists.
Then again - lyrics don't need to be a Shakespearean masterpiece.
I present exhibit A

I'm worse at what I do best
And for this gift, I feel blessed
Our little group has always been
And always will until the end

What does that mean?

A mulatto, an Albino
A mosquito, my libido, yeah

Yet, I know that song word for word, note for note. Too much thinking leads to paralysis by analysis.

xoxos · Post by **xoxos** » Tue Oct 04, 2016 3:27 am

i was going to link a translation of the tao te ching for one of your recent threads. too much believing going on (can u c my sig?) loads of things could be typed, eg. in soviet union song writes et c.

you know you guys on the internet and in the world all about need to remember that people are liars. reach for the event horizon potential in yourself, not in some rendering of public expression. being so eager to fill up on lies for most of our "young" lifetimes, the benefit of wu kong is profound.

where do dreams come from? they are experienced instantaneously, even with music and songs in them. if you forget that, if you forget your own life to adopt some nice conventional poster's expression on the internet, what kind of songs will you write.

but yes, in this day and age, pragmatic epistemology is freakish. the contemporary proleteriat are certain that knowledge exists and have a tacky religion bearing its name.

oh you'll like this

"you're surrounded"

"but there's only one of you!"

"i said, you're sir ow! 'n' dead"

stillshaded · Post by **stillshaded** » Tue Oct 04, 2016 4:50 am

Yea I remember having these thoughts back in the day.

Thing is, there are tried and true methods and excercises to get better at both of these things. Yes they are two separate things so what? Is it possible to be good at jump roping and baseball? Speaking and writing? Kissing and fighting?

Work on them both really hard for like 5 years and then reassess. Most people who don't get better fall into the trap of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Also, just throw the genius stuff out. I think what makes people really impressive is their willingness to do something weird and take chances. Eventually you'll end up with something really interesting this way.

Good luck

harryupbabble · Post by **harryupbabble** » Tue Oct 04, 2016 4:08 pm

xoxos wrote:i was going to link a translation of the tao te ching for one of your recent threads. too much believing going on (can u c my sig?) loads of things could be typed, eg. in soviet union song writes et c.

you know you guys on the internet and in the world all about need to remember that people are liars. reach for the event horizon potential in yourself, not in some rendering of public expression. being so eager to fill up on lies for most of our "young" lifetimes, the benefit of wu kong is profound.

where do dreams come from? they are experienced instantaneously, even with music and songs in them. if you forget that, if you forget your own life to adopt some nice conventional poster's expression on the internet, what kind of songs will you write.

but yes, in this day and age, pragmatic epistemology is freakish. the contemporary proleteriat are certain that knowledge exists and have a tacky religion bearing its name.

oh you'll like this

"you're surrounded"

"but there's only one of you!"

"i said, you're sir ow! 'n' dead"

Oh hey there you are. Great. Glad you are back. DC 2016 is going to be more interesting and deciding who to vote for will be harder. If you are participating, that is.

I guess developers have all kinds of reasons for participating other than competition.

Anyways, the Developers Challenge has a lot of similarities with scrabble championships. There are ony two that really really counts. The World Scrabble Championship and the North American Championship. The WSC uses the much bigger British scrabble dictionary and the NASC uses the American scrabble dictionary. For some reason, a few years or so back, many many American players "defected" to the other side. Now, whenever anyone wins the NASC, the winner has got to be thinking "I only won because all the many many great American players are not playing here anymore".

About songwriting, I ask all these questions because I do value other people's opinions. Some people sometimes give answers that makes one think "Hey, that's totally new to me, very interesting, and probably very true, I will have to deep-research that.".

Songwriting Can Only Be Done Excellently By Freaks?