Six Weeks MODULE 3
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
SIX WEEKS TO SUCCESSFUL CHRISTIAN SONGWRITING with John Chisum MODULE #3 - WRITING LYRICS THAT LAST INTRODUCTION Welcome to Module #3 in Six Weeks to Successful Christian Songwriting, an online coaching experience that is aimed at helping you write better songs and to learn to think like a professional Christian songwriter. I’m John Chisum, Managing Partner of Nashville Christian Songwriters, and our mission is “to empower Christian songwriters worldwide,” which is why we’re doing this online course. I hope you’re getting a LOT out of this so far and are beginning to grasp the insights and principles of excellent songwriting. These principles have served me well as a publisher and writer, so I trust you’ll be using them for years to come, too. In the last module, we worked through the entire Songbuilder’s Blueprint, going line by line through every section of a standard verse/chorus song in hopes of demonstrating the FUNCTION of each section and line. It is my hope that that ONE module alone would be worth what you’ve invested in this course. I would recommend that you go back to that module again, maybe even before you listen through this one, and get as many of the principles firmly rooted in your mind as you can before moving on. We will be reinforcing those pieces, of course, and repetition is a solid key to learning. No shame in repetition or athletes would never have to go to the gym again. !1 of 62! © Copyright 2016 Nashville Christian Songwriters Int’l LLC All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized Duplication Prohibited. It’s good for us to go over and over these things and examine them from as many angles as possible. That way, they become second nature to us as we write and we don’t have to go back to a blueprint at all because the blueprint has become our working philosophy of songwriting. As a worship leader and worship pastor over many years, I’ve led thousands of songs. Well, maybe I’ve led hundreds of songs thousands of times, but nonetheless, I’ve led a LOT of songs. While there are plenty in that number I wouldn’t care to ever lead again, there’s a smallish handful that are just as meaningful to me now, decades later, as they were the first time I sang or led them. Yes, this is a small number, but the fact that any song you’ve led dozens of times has ANY meaning left in it is a miracle, I think. You know, songs are kind of like chewing gum. Some songs last a long time while others only bear a short chewing and all the flavor’s gone. Kind of like Wrigley’s Chewing Gum™, you know what I mean? Not to single them out, but, Wrigley’s tastes really good for about a minute after you pop it in your mouth. Then, suddenly, it’s really flat. I don’t know about you, but I have to GET IT OUT of my mouth, like, right then, or it’s disgusting. Quite honestly, there are a few songs that I find almost as distasteful as chewed up Wrigley’s, but I’m not going to tell you which ones! I’m sure you probably have your own list and that’s just fine. !2 of 62! © Copyright 2016 Nashville Christian Songwriters Int’l LLC All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized Duplication Prohibited. I think the analogy works, though, for writing songs that last. In the end, a song’s staying power is what’s important, in my humble opinion. Money aside for momentary pop hits, I would rather write one or two “racehorse” kind of songs than a whole bunch of mediocre also-rans, if you know what I mean. I want to look back and see a few that have stood the test of time and that people still love to sing. I have one song in a hymnal called O, Mighty Cross that I co-wrote with David Baroni, and, the fact that it’s in a hymnal and I’m not dead yet makes me feel quite happy. Incidentally, I found that hook in a ministry newsletter where the author was quoting an ancient text from somewhere and that phrase ‘O, mighty cross’ was repeated throughout the ancient hymn or poem. I thought it was cool and David wrote amazing music and additional words to my verses. The hymn-like setting makes for perfect prosody with the lyric and made it fit right nicely into the hymnal, thank you very much. My hope for my own writing has been that I could write songs that last. Now that’s my hope for you, as well, that you would gain such a depth of understanding through this course that YOU write songs people will want to start singing now and sing for the next hundred years or so. Wouldn’t that be awesome? But how does that happen? !3 of 62! © Copyright 2016 Nashville Christian Songwriters Int’l LLC All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized Duplication Prohibited. Well, it doesn’t happen by accident, let me tell you. A lot of trial and error, ups and downs, wins and losses, and downright hard work goes into learning how to write songs that stand out above the pack right now and also have the stickiness to last long after the others have faded. But the really, really good news is that you’ve ALREADY begun to learn how to do it! This is Module #3 and I’ve already shared with you a TON of information, principles, insights, and practical exercises to get you thinking about HOW to write lyrics that last. Even if you’re only paying a LITTLE bit of attention, you’re massively further down the road towards writing better songs than you were before you started this course. Congratulations! In this module and later modules, we will continue to reinforce the key principles we’ve talked about, specifically RECIPROCITY and PROSODY. Understanding and beginning to use those two principles alone will make you a way-above-average songwriter because now you know—each line RECIPROCATES and supports the line before and after it. Plus you’ve learned that PROSODY is both a basic and an over-arching concept that refers not only to the marriage of your lyric with your melody, but the overall strength and unity of your work. Both of those principles are extremely important to keep in mind. I know that you, like me, just want to “write what you/we feel,” but no one else lives in our heads but us, so we have to HELP everyone else understand what’s IN our heads through these two primary principles. !4 of 62! © Copyright 2016 Nashville Christian Songwriters Int’l LLC All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized Duplication Prohibited. WRITING LYRICS THAT LAST This module is about writing lyrics that last. What I mean by that is that the songs you invest your time and energy into have the potential to live a lot longer than many others that people write. You know yourself how many thousands of bad to mediocre songs are posted every day on Youtube and how many singer/songwriters, teen boy bands, and wannabe rock stars are posting. It’s absolutely astounding how many people want to write and play music, but expressing ourselves in song goes as far back as the Garden of Eden, I’m sure. People have been making music for as long as there’ve been people. Daniel J. Levitin noted in his book The World in Six Songs that, “…some of the oldest human made artifacts found at archaeological sites are musical instruments.” Song is the native tongue of humanity and we join an amazing line of Christian song and hymn writers as we seek to express our faith in songs. The output of some of the greatest hymn writers like the Wesleys and Fanny Crosby is just astounding—some of these people wrote and PUBLISHED over 8,000 songs! Maybe when you and I have written 8,000 songs we’ll begin to understand the dedication these people put in to accomplish that amazing feat, though I suspect it was the power of their own conversion and daily relationship with Christ that fueled this kind of passion and output. It is estimated that books containing Crosby’s songs sold over 100 million copies. Wow. That was long before the internet and digital publishing! !5 of 62! © Copyright 2016 Nashville Christian Songwriters Int’l LLC All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized Duplication Prohibited. It also goes to show you that we have to write a LOT MORE SONGS if we think we’re going to have a few that hang around after we leave the planet. None of us can identify all of the nearly 9,000 songs Crosby wrote, but many of us have been blessed by singing Blessed Assurance, All the Way My Savior Leads Me, Near the Cross, and the many, many other hymns she wrote. The extensive entry in Wikipedia about Crosby reports this about her song process: 'It may seem a little old-fashioned, always to begin one’s work with prayer, but I never undertake a hymn without first asking the good Lord to be my inspiration.’ Her capacity for work was incredible and often she would compose six or seven hymns a day. Her poems and hymns were composed entirely in her mind and she worked on as many as twelve hymns at once before dictating them to an amenuensis.