An interesting view. However, music is limited to a few notes, it is the placement of the note, the octave and speed. English has well over 500,000 words, not to mention a carefully crafted period or comma!
I often think how amazing it is that musicians can come up with wonderful and sometimes purely terrible music that is different to what has been written before.
The combination of words or notes is a skill. I suspect more music compositions get thrown away than we could count. The same for the writer.
Before I read this post today, I was feeling a little nervous that I hadn't started an idea for tomorrow's newsletter. Now? I am so glad I could read this before beginning my next piece. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Game changer Matt, truly. I always have to include the line that makes me lol: "we desperately want to get the words right. If we don’t, the reader might miss our meaning, obvious consequence of which is the swift and merciless collapse of humanity." Brilliant.
I love this conversation. One of my passions is in looking at the similarities between different creative fields and processes and how we can pull from and learn from each. It’s why I started a creative community and conference years ago. Being a designer, martial artist, and newer musician with a partner who is a professional composer and musician, we have conversations constantly on how studying and creating music are so similar to martial arts AND professional design. Now that I am moving back into writing, I see it there, too. I so appreciate your post!
Nice post Matt. The answer from my perspective is all of the above. I have written songs I really like from so many different angles. Some I just let my muse run wild, and as you say, I picked up the guitar and something happened. Some songs take minutes, some take years. Studying songwriting at Berklee I gained lots of tools for writing with a purpose. Sometimes it was an exercise or an assignment. Write a sense bound song about a location. Say an airport. I wrote The best part of going away is coming home. Another was about a supermarket, which became Love in the Grocery Store. One song I wanted to write something authentic for soldiers who were serving in theatre. It took me a year to research that, which became Another Stretch in Iraq.
Ralph Murphy of ASCAP used to talk about self indulgent songwriters, which is often where people go with a muse and no idea of where a song is going. Often songs with poor structure, no clear hook with topics of poor me, life is tough, which have little hope of becoming hits. But when I heard him say that, my thoughts were about the purpose of the song, in fact often there is no purpose at all, its just something that happened. I picked up my guitar, started jamming, sang some lyrics, liked it, kept it, maybe recorded it, often forgot about it altogether, and that is also fine.
So here are the 2 basic rules for the everyday songwriter (as opposed to someone who is trying to do it to make a living.
An interesting view. However, music is limited to a few notes, it is the placement of the note, the octave and speed. English has well over 500,000 words, not to mention a carefully crafted period or comma!
I often think how amazing it is that musicians can come up with wonderful and sometimes purely terrible music that is different to what has been written before.
The combination of words or notes is a skill. I suspect more music compositions get thrown away than we could count. The same for the writer.
❤️❤️🔥
For some music analogy writing tricks, have you checked out these Palahniuk musings: https://chuckpalahniuk.substack.com/p/try-this-write-like-a-broken-record
And
https://chuckpalahniuk.substack.com/p/under-the-influence-of-music
Before I read this post today, I was feeling a little nervous that I hadn't started an idea for tomorrow's newsletter. Now? I am so glad I could read this before beginning my next piece. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Game changer Matt, truly. I always have to include the line that makes me lol: "we desperately want to get the words right. If we don’t, the reader might miss our meaning, obvious consequence of which is the swift and merciless collapse of humanity." Brilliant.
I love this conversation. One of my passions is in looking at the similarities between different creative fields and processes and how we can pull from and learn from each. It’s why I started a creative community and conference years ago. Being a designer, martial artist, and newer musician with a partner who is a professional composer and musician, we have conversations constantly on how studying and creating music are so similar to martial arts AND professional design. Now that I am moving back into writing, I see it there, too. I so appreciate your post!
❤️❤️🔥
Nice post Matt. The answer from my perspective is all of the above. I have written songs I really like from so many different angles. Some I just let my muse run wild, and as you say, I picked up the guitar and something happened. Some songs take minutes, some take years. Studying songwriting at Berklee I gained lots of tools for writing with a purpose. Sometimes it was an exercise or an assignment. Write a sense bound song about a location. Say an airport. I wrote The best part of going away is coming home. Another was about a supermarket, which became Love in the Grocery Store. One song I wanted to write something authentic for soldiers who were serving in theatre. It took me a year to research that, which became Another Stretch in Iraq.
Ralph Murphy of ASCAP used to talk about self indulgent songwriters, which is often where people go with a muse and no idea of where a song is going. Often songs with poor structure, no clear hook with topics of poor me, life is tough, which have little hope of becoming hits. But when I heard him say that, my thoughts were about the purpose of the song, in fact often there is no purpose at all, its just something that happened. I picked up my guitar, started jamming, sang some lyrics, liked it, kept it, maybe recorded it, often forgot about it altogether, and that is also fine.
So here are the 2 basic rules for the everyday songwriter (as opposed to someone who is trying to do it to make a living.
1. There are no rules.
2. Refer to rule one.
I like rules 1/2
Great post, I had just been listening to their Christmas version: ‘I want you for Christmas’ 🎶🎵😂👍🏻🎄🥳
🙌🙌
I like this comparison between writing and music playing. I'd never seen it before. Thanks.
P.S. Cheap Trick is awesome.....
Writing has a natural musical rhythm, a ‘cadence.’ Excellent. Also: I love that Cheap Trick song!