{"id":195,"date":"2012-12-28T07:00:18","date_gmt":"2012-12-28T11:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chameleonred.com\/blog\/?p=195"},"modified":"2012-12-28T08:07:34","modified_gmt":"2012-12-28T12:07:34","slug":"on-songwriting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chameleonred.com\/blog\/?p=195","title":{"rendered":"On Songwriting"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"CRExchange1_sm\"I occasionally am asked, \u201cHow do you write songs\u201d?\u00a0 The real answer is this: I have no clear idea.\u00a0 I mean, I know about song structures\u2014AAA, AABA, and so on.\u00a0 I know about meter, rhyme, alliteration, and other poetic devices.\u00a0 I know something of music theory.\u00a0 These are all useful things to know, and I couldn\u2019t finish a song without them.\u00a0 But those flashes of inspiration that are the seeds of the songs\u2014where do they come from?\u00a0 Ah, now that is a mystery to me.<\/p>\n

Those flashes most definitely do not come from my conscious mind.\u00a0 If I sit down and try to consciously write a song, I will almost always fail.\u00a0 Although I can put myself into a frame of mind where I am more receptive to inspiration, I can\u2019t by force of will make it happen.\u00a0 Most of the songs I have written come from little bits of chords or riffs that come to me while playing the guitar or piano.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be playing, and then suddenly I\u2019m doing something that catches my ear.\u00a0 When that happens, I have only a limited amount of time to record it before it passes completely out of my brain.\u00a0 Once I have those little bits of music, it\u2019s up to my conscious mind to build a structured song out of one or more of them.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the ideas for lyrics come out of nowhere.\u00a0 Generally, when I want to write lyrics for a song, I try to come up with a title first.\u00a0 Often I\u2019ll wrack my brains trying to think up a title without success.\u00a0 Then one will pop into my head in the middle of the night, or when I\u2019m getting out of the shower.\u00a0 Particular lines of lyric will arrive this way, too.\u00a0 I usually think lyrics that come this way are superior to the ones I have to consciously squeeze out.\u00a0 Though sometimes I have only a vague notion of the meaning of the words. \u00a0Again, it\u2019s up to my conscious mind to put together all these pieces into a coherent song.<\/p>\n

When I look back at songs I have written, I often wonder, \u201cWhere did that<\/i> come from?\u201d\u00a0 I have heard some songwriters say that they don\u2019t write songs, the songs come through them from somewhere else.\u00a0 I understand why they feel that way; I sometimes feel a sense of awe and wonder when music is flowing through me.\u00a0 Whatever the source of that power, I\u2019m grateful to be a conductor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I occasionally am asked, \u201cHow do you write songs\u201d?\u00a0 The real answer is this: I have no clear idea.\u00a0 I mean, I know about song structures\u2014AAA, AABA, and so on.\u00a0 I know about meter, rhyme, alliteration, and other poetic devices.\u00a0 I know something of music theory.\u00a0 These are all useful things to know, and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"On Songwriting","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[19,7,26,71],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","tag-chameleon-red","tag-music","tag-rock-music","tag-songwriting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p30IoQ-39","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chameleonred.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chameleonred.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chameleonred.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chameleonred.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chameleonred.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/chameleonred.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/chameleonred.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chameleonred.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chameleonred.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chameleonred.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}