Page 14 - Feb InDesign

Daryn Wright

We all know that February is Valentine’s The OTHER
month, and thist means this is the “LOVE”
issue of Write Away. ANNNND, we all
know by now that I consider sappy,
generic, “Love is Great” songs to be the
greatest quagmire that an inspiring son Part
gwriter can fall into. (Did I just end a
sentence with a preposition A preposition is
nothing to end a sentence with)......
ANYHOW......watch me dodge the pitfall-- Of Your Song.....
-there’s another entire area of songwriting
upon which we haven’t touched (sounds
stilted but I couldn’t risk THREE
prepositions in a row).

This is my sixth (or is it seventh) article for
Write Away, and we haven’t discussed the
MUSIC part once. The obvious reason is
that, as tricky as talking about lyrics can
be (Talking about art is like dancing about
architecture - Steve Martin), it’s childs play
compared to talking.....about.....notes! Let’s

try:

If you start with a blank page, and are
thinking music first (a lot of us start more
frequently with lyrics first, which we’ll get
to in a minute), you SOULD perhaps have a
rhythm in mind..... build a chord
progression off that, see if the progression
suggests a melodic line, and see what lyrics
fit..... a bunch of hit songs started with
demo’s of “Pa, pa, papapapap.....pa” in
places that didn’t have words yet..... some
even ended up that way.. ‘Janie’s Cryin’
supposedly fit so well in the Aerosmith song
that they left it in, with no clear plan about
Janie, or why she’s crying. “Girls go crazy
‘bout a sharp-eyed man! was later deemed
a “not quite right” lyric, but what words
would “scan” in a similar way..... perhaps

14 www.writeawaymagazine.co.uk