gschmitt Blog – The SONG, developing the idea

Hey everyone. Thanks for checking in and keeping up with what I’m doing.

I’ve definitely been keeping myself busy producing a project for another songwriter, Gaspar; steady Television and live gigs with the jazz group I play with, Pasado Meridiano; and my own gschmitt songwriting project – the main reason for this site! If you’re following me on Twitter (www.twitter.com/gschmittmusic), you’ll know that I’ve been going out of my mind a bit with everything that’s been going on, but man, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My last blog entry was the first of a few that I decided to write about actual songwriting. If you had the chance to check it out, you know that I think the absolute most important aspect of the craft of songwriting lies in whether or not the original idea is good enough to work. I definitely put more emphasis on it than any of the other steps in the process. What I want to discuss this time is what happens once I have an idea that I deem “worthy.”

I guess we could call this next step the “development” step. This stage is where a little bit of discipline is needed; as opposed to the first stage, where I could only describe what was needed as “magic.” This is the part where you have to work through your first concept and start molding it into something you can build a song around… and this step can often take up to a few YEARS to happen. It’s one of the reasons I keep organized files (pretty organized, anyway) of all of my song ideas. They can get lost and be forgotten immediately, only to be revisited at another time and developed… and sometimes, those are really the best ones; you are a different musician than the one who originally came up with the idea.

This begins the more disciplined side of songcraft, so you have to sit down and START taking your ideas to the next level and actually decide which of the many you’re going to do it with. I named three possible song beginnings (“song zygotes”) in the last blog, but if you cut through the way the song ideas come to me, you begin to see that it’s always in the form of a melodic vocal line/hook. (Be it through random singing, instrument noodling or a lyric concept that “sings” to me.)

Once I decide on the idea to develop, I’ll put the guitar in my lap and a pencil in my hand and identify what the song is going to be about in its lyrics and it’s harmony (read: backing music). Most of the time, the original idea tells me where to go at this point, but sometimes it takes more molding. Assuming I know exactly where I’m going with the tune, I start filling in the blanks as far as vocal melody in the verses, or the verse chords, or maybe the rhythm. I always have the tape recorder with me to capture whatever comes up, since sometimes the best way to make this work is to just jam on it a bit.

One thing I can say about this is that whatever work I do in the beginning of the week can and often does change completely by the end. I made a rule for myself a while back: the original idea can’t be changed, but everything else after it can. (Think about it: if I came up with something to motivate me to WORK [not an easy task], why the hell would I alter it and change that first impression? Doesn’t make sense.)

This “plugging in” verses and lyrics and rhythms, etc. is really all about trial and error, so I can’t stress too much about what I put in there to make it work. There are songs of mine that have 20 verses written for them… and they’re only 3 verse tunes. It’s just how it works. I should be careful about quotes because I always manage to screw them up, but Leonard Cohen once said, “If I get one line out of an entire day of writing, it’s been a good day.” (Caveat: I guarantee I messed that up, but the point still stands: it takes a lot of misses to get a hit.) Now, I don’t know if Leonard’s exaggerating to make a point, but I’m saying that this idea underscores my point: let the “error” part of “trial and error” be an error….and be subsequently thrown away….even if it’s 17 superfluous verses that each took a LOT of consideration and time. (That may be the ultimate songwriter’s maturity test right there.)

Okay, I’m going to shift gears a bit and end this with a note for those who struggle through songwriting dry spells: one of the coolest things about writing is that the more you develop your ideas, the more you get that creative need to come up with new ones. It’s a cycle: writing and working on songs begets more writing and working on songs. I tend to go through song idea waves. I’ll get three or four song ideas that could turn out to be very cool in a matter of a week – a few days, even. And then, I’ll just fall off a cliff and nothing will come for a month or two. As a younger writer, this used to piss me off to no end, but I’ve found it to be just my natural creative cycle telling me to focus more on developing some of my older ideas and I’ve learned to listen to it.

Really, it relates to the last blog’s mention of “understanding the creative environment around you” when you get an idea. This, however, is more about understanding yourself and how you naturally go through the process over a much longer term. You must be in touch with it because it’s easily something that will throw you off track completely if you let it. (Years ago, I’d stop for months and call it writer’s block… well, most writers know that writer’s block is best averted by writing.) I know myself well enough now to recognize the early warning signs of a potential dry spell. Developing older ideas is a fantastic remedy.

So, that’s it for me. I hope I’m helping some of you out here with these blogs. I’d love to hear what you think about it, be you a songwriter, poet, journalist, doctor, housewife, whatever. Just hit the “leave a comment” link under this and follow the steps!

‘til next time,

Greg

PS – songwriter quote I once heard: “Songwriting is the opposite of a crossword puzzle: the more you fill in, the harder it gets.” (or something like that… hehehe)