On Songwriting

[Marksman45]

This is an article I wrote a few years ago. A few of you have probably read it before, but I thought I'd share it again.

On Songwriting:

I do not believe that a songwriter creates the songs he writes; I believe they are channeled from somewhere else, another plane of existence. The gift of the songwriter is a connection to this other plane. The songwriter went out and found his songs, or they found the songwriter.

Some songs are potatoes; you find where they're growing, dig them out of the ground, wash them off a bit and scrape some things off, and then it's edible right away. And there are Sooo many ways you can cook a potato. Other songs are flowers, they're nice to look at but you can't eat them. Others are animals, usually ones you have to kill before they're useful; but others still make good sideshows while alive, the only thing is you have to feed them and take care of them, which is a lot of effort.

It's great finding the occasional potato and mushroom and rare flower, but what I'm mostly interested in is the animals. Strange animals that no one's seen before, or rare ones they've only read about or seen in zoos. Anyone can go out and bring back a duck or a deer; I'm interested in bringing back elephant birds, jabberwocks, bloomwhales, bonedogs. Sometimes I'm not very successful; those are pretty rare creatures (of course, this sort of meat isn't for everyone, but it's what I'm interested in). Also, it's not only the meat you bring home; you hang the head on your wall, you reconstruct and mount the skeleton; there's the ornamental songs that are basically like flowers; nice to look at (sometimes to smell?), but you can't do much else with them. And then there's the inedible parts that have practical uses, like using the hooves to make glue, using skulls as bowls, making canes out of femurs, making soap out of fat. But as nice as practical and ornamental songs are, the classic ones are those that are edible, because you can get them inside you and they become part of you.

The selection of weapon is also very important when you go song hunting. I don't consider myself a guitarist; I'm a Marksman. My acoustic is a longbow, my electric is a rifle (of varying sizes, depending on how I rig up the rest of my equipment; it can be a .22, a 30-ought-six, a 12-guage shotgun, or a tranquilizer gun, and anything inbetween). You have to be careful what you use; shoot a crow with a 30-ought-six and you'll blow him to pieces (especially if you shoot him 16 times), and a bow just doesn't cut it against a charging rhinoceros. If you use the wrong instrument when you're trying to write a song, you'll either never bring the creature down and it will run away or you won't have enough left of it to bring home, and you'll have to find another one (which is very difficult if you're hunting for rare creatures). Every instrument is its own weapon; brass and winds, depending on how they're played, are either cannons, flamethrowers, or blowguns; drums are explosives, snares, nets, or bear traps. Keyboards can be as devastating as mounted guns or as subtle as a telephone crank generator with a line running down into the water to paralyse fish.

Once you hunt down the song and bring him home, you can do whatever you want to him, but you have to be careful. Cut him up the wrong way and you'll ruin him. Leave him in the oven too long and he'll burn, not long enough and there's the risk of trichinosis. And if you leave him sitting long enough he'll spoil. You've only got so much time to make something useful out of the corpse, otherwise you'll have to go kill another one. And there's never two that are just alike. Of course, you can bring them back alive if you don't think they'll keep for the journey home (the really good stuff is far, far away in the jungle, on the bottom of the ocean, in the desert) or you don't have any ideas for them right away. But if you do that you have to make sure you feed them until it's time to get the axe and you have to make sure they don't escape. Sometimes it's better this way, 'cause you can use this time to fatten them up if they don't have enough meat on them. But a lot of things won't grow too well in captivity, and others are hard to accomodate (just try keeping an elephant fenced up in your back yard. And then feed him).

And that's the way I approach songwriting. The same concept of hunting/harvesting also applies to other art forms. It's all about that other plane, that other dimension: unlock the door with the key of your imagination. Like the Twilight Zone.

Do not attempt to adjust your set...



...oh, no, wait, that's the Outer Limits

[Doreen Peri]

This is a terrific article, Mars!

we have a new forum, btw... an articles forum.... maybe you could repost it there, too?

http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=40

just an idea..



I'm working on a Beatles medley on the piano... do you know what geniuses they were? all the songs are the same... lol... i've got 5 in the medley so far.....Michelle, Fixing a Hole, Nowhere Man, Across the Universe, When I'm 64, ...... Your Mother Should Know!... no wait there are more than 5... I have to work on this more... anyway... glad to read your take on songwriting ..... it's an article, for sure... thank you!

[Marksman45]

Thanks
I'm reposting it as we speak. I forgot that new one was there. I'm forgetful like that

I play a mean "Yellow Submarine" on piano. I do it with a lot fewer chord changes too. Some people change chords too much. I like to use as few changes as possible. I've got several songs that stay in the same chord all the way through

[Lightning Rod]

mars,
this is a great article. I love the way you sustained the hunter image. I've written on this subject numerous times. Who knows where songs come from?

I have thought about it as catching butterflies or lightning bugs. It's the same hunting theme.

Sometimes I think about songs and poems and all creative ideas as being like radio waves that are out there for anyone to pick up on thier little crystal radio, if they have it tuned properly. This is why new ideas or styles seem to pop up at the same time in different places.

good write