The Bare Essentials of Good Music

I was remembering this morning a discussion I had with a drummer many years ago. This guy told me that he loved the band he was with because they were so rhythmically tight that he didn’t have to work very hard to “keep things together.” That meant, as far as he was concerned, that he could think of his contribution to the music as helping to define the overall sound, more than acting as an expensive metronome.

That really stuck with me over the years, because it wasn’t hard to hear what he was talking about. Some drummers feel that it’s their job to set the beat and tempo, but the good drummers know otherwise. A drummer’s job isn’t much different from any other player in the band, whether you’re the drummer or the harmonica player: to contribute to the composite sound of the group, and to do so with a strong sense of tempo, rhythm and style.

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In other words, the music should sound tight and stylistically appropriate whether the drummer is playing or not. As you take away instruments from the mix, the remaining instruments should still sound tight and appropriate to the style of the music. In good musical performance, no instrument has the responsibility to “fix” what the other instruments are doing.

In songwriting, that same notion of quality exists, no matter how stripped-down the music is. As you listen to each component of your song — the melody, the lyrics, the chords — you should notice that they work on their own, without the help of the other elements.

To say more specifically what I mean, try the following steps with a song you’ve recently finished:

1. Hum the melody without words or instruments. Does it work on its own? Can you pick up a sense of chords and harmonies being implied by the shape of the tune? You should. A good melody will give the impression of the progressions that could go along with it.
2. Read the lyric on its own. Allow your voice to move expressively up and down. Does it flow? Does everything make sense? Have you fallen into any common errors such as random switching of point of view, overused phrases or clichés, or are there any confusing glitches in the story that you’re describing?
3. Play through the chords on one chording instrument. Do the chords work? Are there any moments where they sound confusing?

Those are what might be described as the three “bare essentials” of songwriting. Melody, lyrics and chords form a kind of partnership that makes or breaks a song. And though they need to work well together, they particularly need to be able to stand on their own.

Once you’re sure that those three components are solid, put them together in a basic, unplugged version of your song. Do they partner well? Does the melody bring out the best in your lyric? Do the chords support the melody? Is the rhythmic feel of the melody a mirror of the rhythmic feel of the lyric?

Stripping music down to its bare components and listening to each part separately is a great way to make sure that your song is solid through and through. No one element of a song should be responsible for the others. Just as a performance should still sound rhythmically tight without the drummer, a song should work on some level even if you take out one or two of the components that make up the final product.

Written by Gary Ewer. Follow Gary on Twitter.

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