The Problem With Unconditional Love in Songwriting

Don’t fall in love with your songs before they’re finished.

____________"From Amateur to Ace: Writing Songs Like a Pro"

“The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle  is now SEVEN eBooks for only $37. (Comes with this FREE eBOOK: “From Amateur to Ace: Writing Songs Like a Pro”.)
_____________

Randy Bachman - Takin' Care of BusinessIt’s not hard to understand the analogy of thinking of your music as your “baby.” Many of the same emotions seem to apply. When your song starts out, it’s only a shadow of what it will eventually become. You shape it, hone it, and stick with it even while it isn’t at all close to being finished. And in a very real way, songwriters tend to love their music unconditionally, just as parents love children.

There is a problem with unconditional love in songwriting, though, and it’s this: there are times when you need to take your song and, for lack of a better phrase, tear it down and start over, or at least almost over.

As composers of music, we can tend to feel very defensive of the product of our musical mind. Once we see a song naturally going in a certain direction, we’re likely to stick with it, and see where it winds up. It’s difficult to admit that a song can go quite naturally in the wrong direction. Occasionally a bit of editing can fix that, but every now and then you just need to courage to start over.

Or at least, almost over. Sometimes you’ve got a great chorus, but the verse just isn’t working. Or sometimes the verse is fine, but the chorus just isn’t making it.

When Randy Bachman wrote his  hit, “Takin’ Care of Business” for his band The Guess Who to record, everyone loved the verse, but hated the chorus. Burton Cummings famously told Bachman that he was ashamed of him. (I would pay to have heard that conversation!) It required a complete change of approach with the chorus, a change of lyric, and the song eventually became “Takin’ Care of Business”, one of Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s biggest hits. (Read more here.)

It takes courage to toss out large chunks of your music, and if you’ve ever done it, you know exactly what I mean. You can feel cruel to this bit of music that was trying to get a foothold.

The point is this: In the process of getting music to work well, you need to do a lot of editing, changing and experimenting. But sometimes, the only thing to be done is to toss a large part of it out the window and start again.

In either case, it’s important not to fall completely in love with your music before it’s a finished product. The first ideas you get about melody, chords and lyrics may not be the best ones.

And it takes courage to realize that and act on it.

______________

Gary EwerWritten by Gary Ewer. Follow on Twitter.

Download “The Essential Secrets of Songwriting” 6-eBook Bundle$95.70 $37.00 (and get a copy of “From Amateur to Ace: Writing Songs Like a Pro“ FREE.)

Posted in songwriting and tagged , , , , .

2 Comments

  1. I meant to say that Rhythm is exactly what it states you have the chosen tempo Rhythm
    that the drummer sets out , you then have the melodic rhythm of each phrase you write.
    Meter in songwriting is the measurement or duration of each note Greek Meter has been used in poetry long before people started writing Popular songs , and Constant Meter with built in variations is one of the secrets of Great Songwriting. there RE around seven popular meters that are used constantly in Hit Music, learn them propaly and you are halfway to writing a good song

  2. Falling in love with a fairly limp idea even a stupid idea Let’s face it we have all done that, trouble is if you are new at the art of songwriting, sometimes we think every thing we write is written in Stone. When you mature and stop listening to silly friends who haven’t a clue what makes a great Song, we can then start to get somewhere.

    First thing to do is read all the good books that are out there, For beginners I would say Jason Blume’s books are okay, and no more than that , he’s probably a very nice guy
    but reading his books I get the impression he’s been a lucky guy who’s face happened to fit.
    In one example he states that Rhythm and Meter are the same thing, and many believe that is true, Good Meter and it’s Variations, in a song, can make or break it

    Oh I would definitely recommend the books of Professor Gary Ewer, I don’t know him personally, but he often reminds me of great songwriting ideas , I may have used in the past, Owing to the fact I’m quite a lot older than Gary,

    Lennon and Mac Cartny had that wonderful knack of choosing a meter that suited the emotion of their songs lyric, not many can do that persistently, and they must have used every known meter known to man, study there songs some of them coming up to 60 years old, and still Little masterpieces of songs.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.