Jez Ashurst

Meddling With Melodies.

So, you love your song, you’ve spent days working on the lyrics and the chords, you sing a melody and record it and TADA! The song is finished. You listen to it and play it to people and it’s OK but it’s not ‘grabbing’ people. They can’t put their finger on what the problem is. It sounds OK, nice or worst of all ‘pleasant’. How are we meant to spot the weaknesses in our melodies? It’s like trying to draw with smoke. It’s intangible isn’t it? Either it’s catchy or not. We either nail it or we don’t. Well I wonder if there aren’t a few areas worth looking at to improve our melodies. Let me try to explain.

A melody is a series of notes in time.

Simple isn’t it? No, not really.

When I analyse and try and improve my melodies I look at the following attributes.

1. The tension and resolve in my note choices
2. Which beat I start each melodic phrase on
3. The contrast in range and rhythm between sections of the song
4. The length of the melodic phrases

Let me expand a bit. The tension and resolve in melody is absolutely fundamental to creating something special. If each note of the melody lands on one of the notes in the underlying triad then it can seem too ‘nice’ or ‘pleasant’ or God forbid- boring. Put simply, if you’re playing a C major chord and you sing the note C, E or G it fits, but can sound too, well…. Blah! Conversely, if too many notes of the melody lie outside the chord below and don’t resolve to where the listener’s ear wants them to go then the melody can seem ‘uncomfortable’ ‘challenging’ and more importantly- hard to sing and to remember.

Let’s take ‘Yesterday’ as an example. The first note of the song (‘yes…) isn’t in the chord below (it’s a second). When this note resolves to the root of the chord (…terday) the listener feels that tension resolve. Ahhh! Feels good doesn’t it? Why not have a look at one of your melodies and see how many notes fit the chords too closely. The notes that build the tension are an important ‘rub’ or ‘grit’ that stops a melody sounding too neat and possibly boring. Does your melody have tension and resolve?

The beat you start the melody on is really important. The earlier you put it, the more momentum and energy the melody will have. Notice how in Katy Perry’s Firework the melody in the verses starts on the second beat of the bar so it feels like the music leads the melody. However, when we get to the chorus the melody leads the chords. Here, it starts with a pickup on the third beat of the bar before the chorus (baby you’re a….). This brings excitement and momentum to the chorus. Also listen to how the chorus melody works primarily with stresses on the beat baby you’re a fire…. These kind of melodies could be described as ‘statement melodies’. They have confidence (especially married to the ascending chords). Why not have a look at one of your melodies and see whether you start each section on different beats? Altering the start point of your melodic phrases is a useful way of giving each section an identity.

The contrast in range between sections of your song is also worth looking at. Often the chorus of a song has the highest notes. This helps it stand out and catch our attention. Also have a look at the intervals between your notes in each section. If one section has a lot of intervals that are one note apart then to contrast that with larger intervals in the next section can be very effective in creating melodic identity. A good example is in The Beatles ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’. The verse has a lot of single step melodies, the bridge has a larger intervallic leap (do you need anybody…..) this is effective in adding interest and variation. It’s worth mentioning the verse starts on the first beat and the bridge starts with a pick up on the 3^rd beat of the last bar. This is the same trick as Firework. Maybe I’m onto something? Both songs also have a strong shift between high legato notes in one section and lower staccato phrases the other. Does your song alter the rhythms between sections like this?

Finally, the length of melodic phrases is pretty vital. If all the phrases in your song are the same length it can get boring. It’s a bit like. If I wrote. Each sentence. the same length. It would get. Quite boring. And predictable. Quite quickly. Often the hooks of successful songs are one are two bar melodic phrases as they can be repeated lots of times! The shorter melodies are often more memorable (with many many exceptions!). Most writers seem tied to writing melodic phrases that are 2, 4 or occasionally 8 bars long. Why not try a 3, 5 or 6 and a half bar melodic phrase? It could keep the interest of the listener.

I’ve only scratched the surface here of the important attributes of a successful melody. Perhaps the most important of all is writing a melody that has a ‘clear sense of direction’.  A meandering melody undermines the power of a song like nothing else! It’s like watching a public speaker constantly referring to their notes or losing their place. The listener doubts the veracity of what they are saying. The other massive part of the equation is how well the melody supports the lyric. Perhaps we’ll explore that another time.

Keep on writing!

“Only Bored If You’re Boring”

My mum used to say this to me on rainy days when I was moping around the house as a small child. I remember being bored was part of growing up. I wonder when the last time was when you were bored? What seems to be apparent to researchers on creativity and innovation is that boredom is good for you. I’ve been reading a book called ‘Imagination –How Creativity Works’ by Jonah Lehrer and it’s well worth a read if you’re interested in where inspiration and ideas come from.

There are way more many distractions in the world we live in than the one I grew up in. When I was young there was no internet, no mobile phones, half-day closing on Wednesday and all of Sunday? Imagine that! Wow, no wonder I have memories of staring out of my bedroom window tracing the raindrops running down it and trying to guess which would get to the bottom first. Compare this to the world we live in now, this constant background static in - this chatter- means that we experience less silence, solitude and space for ideas to germinate.

This is why that first quiet cup of coffee in the morning or a long bath (technology doesn’t like water), or a run, can spark ideas for me because my brain is empty and waiting to be filled with something from the outside.  Whether you call it inspiration, the muse or divine intervention, the genesis of a melody or lyrical idea often depends on these moments of calm. For some people this is traditional meditation, for others it’s a quiet walk somewhere (Dickens used to walk 8 hours a night and he was pretty creative, as well as being an insomniac). Burt Bacharach used to drive in silence to let those synapses loosen a little. However you plan it, try and make time in your day to have nothing to do.

According to research, and also anecdotal evidence from the many song-writers I’ve worked with, the wheels of the unconscious are always turning but often our conscious isn’t aware of this. This might be because we’re busy playing Angry Birds, Facebooking, Tweeting, Texting, calling people or frantically rechecking our emails for the fifteenth time. Sound familiar? It does to me.

So it seems that if you want to feed creativity don’t starve yourself of boredom. Those fifteen minutes of staring out of a window might just save you three hours of slaving away trying to make an uninspired idea sound better. Perhaps my mum’s quote could be re-written as ‘boredom is the father of the most interesting ideas’. I hope this wasn’t too boring to read, no, actually- i hope it was and you drifted off into a more creative place.

The Locked Door Of The Music Industry

I’ve been doing some guest lectures on songwriting recently. One lecture was on ‘writing to pitch sheets’. Pitch sheets are kind of ‘who is looking for songs lists’ that are circulated by the major publishers. it is frowned upon if songwriters pass these around and especially give them to unsigned writers. The elephant in the room at these lectures is the audience thinking and sometimes saying ‘it’s alright for you with your publishing deal but how do we get into this industry? The doors are shut and i’m tired of being ignored’. 

Ah yes, the frustration of the unsigned writer. I know it well and I sympathise. I thought long and hard and thought about this conundrum and came up with this answer.

firstly, i wanted to get this chip off everyone’s shoulder. I explained that there was a very good reason that publishers don’t circulate the who’s looking lists to unsigned writers. Unsigned writers are unknown. The publisher has no guarantee that a song sent in by an unsigned writer is available, or even written by them. By that, I mean that if you send in a song that’s perfect for One Direction and by some longshot the publisher thinks it would be great for that artist, the publisher would want to hear you have other amazing songs before making you an offer of a deal, and then you’d probably approach other publishers to get a better offer and then 6 months has passed….. Why would a publisher need this? They already have a roster of writers writing great songs that are available. so what’s the answer?

The answer is to write with up and coming artists. I pointed out to all the students in my lecture that a couple years ago Ed Sheeran most likely played in a pub to 30 people within 20 miles of where they lived (he was playing 200 shows a year). At this point he was talented and unsigned and may have been open to a co-write if approached by a great writer with a good showreel of songs or by a talented fellow performer. Some time in the next 3 months, the newest great unsigned artist will be playing a venue near them and they should be going to see as many gigs as they can to network and discover new talent. If not playing at a venue, these new artists will be on youtube covering songs and trying to make inroads that way.

But that’s the A&R person’s job I hear you cry. It’s your job too. As a songwriter in today’s industry you have to be a songwriter, producer, A&R and hustler sometimes. There may be other skills you can bring to the table to help you get in on the ground floor. I know many songwriters who started off playing guitar, keys or singing (often for free) with new artists. I know other writers that would spend their evenings being the sound engineer at local venues (getting paid to discover new artists!).

It’s all very well turning up to Wembley in your England kit, standing by the tunnel and hoping someone will give you a game, but it’s much more likely you’ll get a Sunday league game and work through the ranks that way. The music industry is no different. This lack of interest in your songs isn’t because you’re not a great writer-the bottom line is that banging on the locked door of the music industry is a waste of time. What you have to realise is you come through the floor.

Good Things Come To Those Who Wait…..

But the shitty stuff seems to turn up almost straight away….

I’m paraphrasing the very funny Rich Hall here but i think it is true that most of the people i know who are having any kind of success in music (or in anything artistic) have struggled along the way and many times have wondered how long it was going to take before they got some somewhere. It seems to me that no one who got there ever wondered If they were going to get there though. They were all single-minded enough to overcome rejection.

It always takes longer than you think to get anywhere worth going to. The obstacles appear at the first corner and this can be disheartening. If you’re having a hard time realising your dream then I hope you find solace that almost anyone who has embarked on that perilous journey has had dark days too.

Jezx

How many songs in a guitar?

It’s a little known fact that some guitars have lots of songs in them and some don’t. It isn’t based on how much the guitar costs or how old it is (some vintage guitars have had all their songs milked already) it just depends on what mood it puts the player in when strummed. I’m pleased to say my new Duesenberg Mike Campbell Starplayer TV is full of songs ready to come out. I’ll put a picture up. It’s gorgeous

Footnote: Midi keyboards only come with one song and i’m sorry to say it’s Axel F by Harald Faltermeyer. They do come loaded with the keyboard solo from Van Halen’s Jump though.