Photo (“Music Man”) by chelseajg
How does an artist paint a picture?
Well, first I believe he decides what subject he wants to paint.
Then he’ll start to conceive the entire painting in his mind, and think about aspects such as perspective, composition, colour and perhaps brush techniques.
In other words, the artist has the entire picture all planned out before actually painting it out.
What about songwriters? How does a songwriter write a song?
I guess most of us tend to “grasp for tunes from the air”, so to speak. Or perhaps sometimes we bang it out on the piano or guitar until we hit upon something that we like, and then we work from there.
Recently in my songwriting, I’ve been trying out a new approach, and that is to “hear” the music before attempting to write it out. And it’s been working out pretty well for me.
Yes, I know it sounds weird…but hear me out.
What I’m doing is that I’m actually trying to envision the song in my mind. I have a somewhat nebulous idea of what I want to achieve, and what direction I want to take. I have a vague concept of the feel of the song and the shape of the melody. I roughly know where the song is supposed to go at what point.
And after that, what happens is I merely “flesh” it out on the piano or guitar. As in, fill in the actual notes and the chords.
Yes, it’s weird…but hey, if artists can envision what they want to paint before doing it, why can’t songwriters do it with their musical creations as well?
I think a big part of songwriting is having a firm idea of what your song is going to be about, and being able to take the song where you want it to go.
You might want to try it next time you write a song. Try to “hear” the song in your mind, the song you want to write. Then once you manage to hear the music…then you write it out.
Who knows, it just might work for you.
[...] Yew has written an interesting post about hearing your song before it’s [...]
Interesting post, Jeremy. Come to think of it, I tend to take both approaches in writing songs. Sometimes the song develops from a tune (like a painting developing from a few dabs of paint). And sometimes I have something specific and work from there (like sketching out a painting and filling in the colours).
Also, in using software like GarageBand, I’m able to visualise the song too. There are different tracks, represented by different colours. And you can see what you’re playing.
Having dabbled in both painting and songwriting (amateur standards btw), I’d say there are more similarities than differences. :)
love what you have going on with this site, wish I was closer to Singapore
I think it’s a great point -’visualizing’ in your mind song before recording and mixing etc… Isn’t that what composers do (in a very advanced way)? I think it’s a very important skill to develop if you want to arrange and mix…
I’m finding with mixing that it’s like shooting in the dark, and that can waste a lot of time if you experiment so much. Particularly with laying down drums or beats for the rhythmic section in a song.
Wow,
That was a great post. I stumbled across your website after purposefully seeking out this exact same technique after struggling to define it or verbalize it.
I’ve been intrigued ever since hearing that Jay-Z writes his lyrics in head and they come straight form his mind out of his mouth and into the microphone. Sometimes in one take!
Also Berry Gordy was limited at his job at Ford before he started Motown. He learned to write songs in his head as he was working on the factory.
I’ve also heard that Justin Timberlake does this and I’m wondering if Pharrell William of The Neptunes does.
If you have any links or previous research I would be EXTREMELY grateful
Aston