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Reverse Engineering.... pleas
If you’ve followed previous articles here varying speech patterns, including
in Write Away, you already know a few jamming in a lot of words really fast…
songwriting “tools” that absolutely That is a LAST resort, not a regular
should never leave the toolshed (in my feature. Less is more, economy of
humble opinion….humble or not, these verbiage…you’re simplifying a complex
drive me crazy!) Let’s review: thought…don’t write an encyclopedia!
1. Do NOT, under any circumstances, 5. An analogy from live
try to drum up sympathy for your song performance: sometimes some of my
by killing off a main character…..if your blues friends will try to “wing it”
song is so bad that it needs a funeral to without an organized set list…. Often,
make us feel something, give the song a the impulse “this would work right now”
quiet funeral in the backyard…. is actually reacting to what worked a
perhaps a cremation! Unless that’s the minute ago. There is a TREMENDOUS
exact story you need to tell, I guess. human tendency to write the previous
Otherwise, quit it! song over again (both musically and
lyrically)... search out and destroy this,
2. Do NOT invent an oddly-named it will try to hide in your subconscious...
character or setting just in time to just adding a bridge to what went before
rhyme!! That is the OPPOSITE of is not enough.
creative! That is both lazy and stupid
(what the bluesmen call “doubl-dumb!), 6. Don’t write what you don’t know
and will alienate your listener. No little 7. Flip side of that…..usually, I talk to
sister Nell, who has no other function in you about the kind of song that tells a
the story. story ( my favorites). There is another
type, which just floats on a cloud of a
3. If you have a beautiful story with one powerful emotion. That type is
weak rhyme, try reversing the order, so perfectly valid… but beware!!! I hear
your story LANDS on the better line. that that emotion called “love” is really
Don’t land on the filler! That will great. I hear it’s really powerful. I hear
underline the weakness. it’s universal. I hear that that floating
feeling is simple ( unlike all the rest of
4. Have you ever heard the expression it). Unfortunately, that has led to more
“Art is not what you put in, it’s what you cliche-ridden crap than any other ten
take out”? Go back to your subjects. If Paul McCartney wants to
masterpiece and remove every word write “Universal, simple, silly love
that expresses something they already songs” that DOES not mean it’s
know (based on the rest of the song). anything but poison for an aspiring
Rap has opened your listeners’ ears to songwriter on the way up. If you’re
12 www.writeawaymagazine.co.uk
