Going With The “Feel”

(This post is reproduced from Jeremy’s blog.)

Sometimes songwriting is about going with the “feel”.

You can’t really teach someone how to write a complete song. You can teach the principles to songwriting, such as tonality, chord progressions, harmony, lyrical accents and metres, etc…but you can’t exactly teach someone how to write a complete song.

There is no formula to songwriting.

You can’t say “first you start with the C note, then you write an E, then an F”. Or you can’t say “every song needs to be in 4/4 timing” or “every song needs to go from C chord to Am to F to G”.

You just can’t.

That’s why I say songwriting to me, is sometimes about going with the “feel”.

I’m always asking myself the question “Where do I want to go from here?”

(As in, where do I want to take the song to. Do I want to change tonality, do I want to leap to a high note (climax), do I want to introduce an interesting chord, do I want to introduce a pause, etc.)

First I start with an idea…a little intro I like, or a melodic line or a lyrical line which I like.

Then I play it over and over and over in my head, until that moment whereby that gut feeling in me decides to add on to that bit. Then if I like that new bit, I’ll latch on to that, and I’ll continue the same process until the song gets more and more complete.

So it’s like building on bit by bit until you get the full song.

For instance, sometimes I’ve got the verse and chorus down, and I need a bridge.

I’ll keep playing the song through and through until I reach the (yet to be written) bridge part…and sometimes by sheer musical momentum, I’ll get that gut feel as to how to start my bridge, i.e. where to go next with regards to the chord progression.

I’ll say “Hmm…ok this feels like it needs to go to Am at the bridge”. And I’ll go to Am and try to latch on to the momentum from there.

So that’s how songwriting goes for me. Most of the time.

Going with the gut feel.