If you and I haven’t seen each other in a while and you want to meet up for a drink, I’m exhilarated by your presence and in awe of your company… But please donate the money to the people who really need it…. Please
If you research successful songwriting guidelines, pop psychology suggests:
There are dozens more rules and guidelines which offer the persistent songwriter the tools in order to edge the art of creating a song slightly towards the rigidness of science without compromising on the origination of artistic integrity… The context and destination of a song, however, is a subject which rarely gets spoken about.
One realisation which I have recently stumbled upon came from the great Pat Pattison who discusses how people respond to mental stimulus in the form of art and music. If you ‘Tell’ somebody something, they are likely to retain less than if you illustrate the points, settings & scenarios and let them draw their own conclusion. Colourful language, setting a scene, demonstrating who, when, where and why are all a lot more powerful than telling people ‘what’ and assuming they will ‘get it’….
Let’s say you were listening in on a conversation and you heard a lack of descriptive vocabulary explaining “he said, she said” and it was all very dormant with respect to the intrigue of language, we would be inclined to stop listening. We don’t know who these people are, we don’t know under what circumstances the conversation took place, and we don’t have any insight into the when’s where’s who’s and why’s.
Take the flip-side of this scenario and the conversation goes on to explain what these people looked like, what emotional situations had happened to instigate the debate, what relationship these people have, the who’s the what’s the when’s and the where’s….. Now we are talking about songwriting.
The biggest thrill for me, and the reason i continue to write songs is for that brief moment when somebody approaches me and says something to the extent of “This song expresses exactly how I feel but I didn’t know how to say it” or “This song describes my boyfriend and I down to a T, it’s like you wrote this song for us”. This reward is staggering for me and drives me on to write more, but it is important to point out, for the relevancy of this post, that this scenario arises because we put feelings and emotions out there, via song, drawing pictures with melody and chords and offering people resonance with certain aspects that apply to their life in the same why a psychic would use a barnum statement to the extent of:
“You can be a very considerate person, very quick to provide for others, but there are times, if you are honest, when you recognise a selfish streak in yourself.”
It applies to everyone, everyone can imagine that this rule/statement applies to them. This is the effect we look for in successful songwriting. The most successful writers of our time have tasted success because not only are their chordal, melodic and structural musical ’sciences’ in place, but their words resonate with a vast range of demographics and cross genres because they connect with people on an emotional and story telling level.
I continue to create music in the hope that I can one day connect with you on such a constant, creative plane.
In peace and love
GK
There’s nothing quite like the turn of a new decade to put things in perspective, inevitably giving us the ability to get altitude on our lives.
I wish you all a happy new year and the determination to have the best year of your life… Bring on 2010 !
GK
