Knowing Your Songwriting Strengths Welcome Back!
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Discovering Your Successful Songwriting Process John Chisum Module 7: Knowing Your Songwriting Strengths Welcome back! I hope you’re already getting a lot out of the principles and techniques we’re talking about in Discovering Your Successful Songwriting Process. The best songwriters I know have taken a long time to perfect their craft, so I hope you’ll be patient with yourself as you begin to understand the work you need to do around your process and methods to get where you want to go. I think we can sometimes be like the kid who wants badly to play piano or some sport they really haven’t learned to do well yet - - They play “at it” more than they commit to learning it well and they get frustrated, angry, and even quit, All the while blaming the piano or the ball and bat or whatever it is for being “stupid” or “dumb” and having a sour grapes attitude that spoils the whole thing for them. © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. It’s like the guy who got so frustrated and yelled out, “This computer sure can’t spell right!” Even we adults can act like children sometimes when we don’t want to take the time to really learn the proper ways of approaching a discipline. And I’ve seen it over and over in songwriting. I’ve had hundreds - literally hundreds - of aspiring songwriters tell me how called they are to it, but who then never do what it really takes to fulfill that call. It’s as if they want the world to recognize where they are in the beginning stages of their craft and call it world-class. They believe they should be on the radio or sung in a thousand churches at their current level of development, without stopping to recognize that their work is a lot more like the middle-schooler’s water color that got hung on the fridge, but would never make it to a museum. Now, every song written from a pure heart is a treasure to God. There’s no such thing as a “bad” song, but there are levels of commercial songwriting that reach more people. © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. Along with a general misunderstanding of the real song process, I think many aspiring songwriters are trying to operate from a desire to write and not from the true knowledge of how to write. If I were to sit down to try to paint a great watercolor, it would result in something pretty childish, at best. A few years ago, in fact, I took a picture of a beautiful red cardinal and then decided I wanted to try to paint it. I spent a couple of days sketching it out and then doing my best with the canvas to represent one of the prettiest birds I’ve ever seen…. I was quite proud of my creation, but when I showed it to my wife she said, “Yep - that’s a bird!” I painted over it. So coming back to the process of songwriting, it would be very helpful for you to rightfully assess your musical and lyrical strengths, and to understand more of how you think about it. That way you can determine where you need the most growth and begin to go after it. © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. So let’s look at a few general types of writers and maybe you’ll identify with one or more of them. First, there’s the • The Big Idea Guy This is the songwriter who easily recognizes big ideas, big titles, hooks, and the kind of messages that can reach a lot of people. One of the greatest big idea people I’ve ever met is my friend Nancy Gordon, a songwriter I managed at Integrity Music. She’s responsible for many big ideas like Firm Foundation, Because We Believe, and many more that became title songs of albums. She also created a major children’s character with many supporting albums and one of her big songs God Can was featured on the hit television show Touched By An Angel. Nancy just has a knack for recognizing and creating big idea titles and hooks that can then be developed into full songs. She is a fine lyricist, as well, but not all Big Idea Guys or Gals are and need co-writers to help flesh out the full song. © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. If you think of titles but don’t quite know how to finish them, you may be a Big Idea kind of songwriter. One way you know this might be your style is if you have a ton of ideas, but very few finished songs. That tends to happen to this type of songwriter - you just KNOW this particular idea would connect with a lot of people, but you just don’t seem to have the skills to finish it out the way that it could be to reach them. If that’s you, the best thing you can do is to connect with great co-writers. Find writing partners who know how to help you flesh out the ideas, putting meat on the skeleton of your idea. You can grow in the other skills of songwriting, sure - - but you have to decide what’s most important right now - - spend your time trying to learn it all on your own? Or, maybe through co-writing you’ll begin to pick up the other skills to compliment the big idea skill you already have. © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. Let’s face it - - not finishing songs often can get very frustrating, so what if you start sharing your big ideas with potential co-writers who can help finish them quicker than you can? You might be surprised with the new output and how great it makes you feel. Then, there’s • The Producer The Producer is the writer who hears the final production of the song in their head, everything from the drum track to the string section, the guitars, horns, and bass lines…. The Producer’s the one who who hears everything down to the final mix already playing in their head even while the song is being written. The Producer can be a great asset in some ways, but often gets the processed bogged down in thinking about particular parts instead of letting the process unfold. Producers often spend their time playing with gear instead of writing actual songs and could benefit from delaying the production until the song is written © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. I always know when I have a producer in our NCS Boot Camp because the weekly demos are tricked out and they’ve spent far more time producing than writing a great song. That’s when I encourage them to only do single piano or guitar tracks with one vocal on it for the weekly submission. This is hard for them but the quality of the actual song increases for it. You’ll know if you’re a Producer because you’ll be thinking more about layering guitars than the lyric. You won’t care as much about the meaning of the hook or the lyric’s impact because the final master is playing loudly in your head, distracting you from the power of the raw lyric and melody. As I said, the potential pitfall of Producers is bogging down the process when writing, or, even worse, settling for inferior lyrics and melodies because all you’re thinking about is groove and ear candy. If you believe you’re more of a Producer than anything else, I recommend that you stop to realize that production is a vehicle for the real song. Great production is important, but only after a great song exists to produce. © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. Train yourself to step back from all the plug-ins and pedal boards and reverbs and flanges and a million buttons and lights to realize that a song is ONLY a lyric and a melody, at least at first. Be willing to wait on the production until a hit song has been written, existing of a killer lyric and melody that can stand out above the rest and THEN start thinking about the ear candy. Now, in today’s songwriting world, the current co-writing method can often be three people in a studio where there is a top-line guy who works to start the lyric idea, another melody writer guy, AND a track guy, or Producer, actually laying down tracks while the song’s being written. If you’re more of the Producer, try putting yourself in that kind of a co-writing situation so you can shine in your best strengths. But if you’re writing alone or with just one other person, you may need to calm the production jets, at least until you’ve got a great song going.