This column today is, virtually word for word, something I wrote recently when a Tradewinds fan overseas, himself venturing into songwriting, wrote me, asking that I elaborate on the process to help him in his efforts. It’s a question that comes up from time to time, and one I have answered only in snippets, mainly because, as with any creative undertaking, there is no one way, or one technique, for the work. If one were to ask a dozen songwriters anywhere to explain how he/she goes about writing a song no two replies would be the same; there is no one formula that fits all. Indeed, to press them would be to find out that the process is somewhat mysterious to most writers, so what I’m about to delineate here applies only to me; another writer would tell you something completely different.
For example, my initial response is to say that you have to be fairly competent with a musical instrument – keyboard, guitar, violin, saxophone, etc. – through which you can express some melodic idea that may come to you. But even that is not set in stone. While it may be harder to create without actually playing an instrument, musical forms can be established purely in the mind, from imagination, and later noted or recorded to be elaborated on, or, as is often the case, simply discarded. So while the instrument can be important it is not absolutely essential. With only a basic knowledge of music notation, one can put on paper musical phrases to be used as a starting point leading to a finished piece of music, but it is a significant advantage for many, me included, to be familiar with a musical instrument – in my case, guitar.
To start with the frequent question of “where do songs come from”, there are as many answers as there are questions and, as noted above, twelve different writers will give you twelve different responses; overall, the answer is “the creative process is mysterious, and songs originate everywhere”. They can come from an emotion the writer is experiencing, or an encounter in a relationship, but they can come from reading something, or hearing a piece of music, or watching television, or even about to fall asleep – literally, everywhere. For example, some 60 years ago, my brother-in-law, the late Joe Gonsalves, told me a joke at Atkinson Field that was the basis of the song “Honeymooning Couple,” which I wrote in Toronto when Tradewinds started in 1966 – that became a hit across the Caribbean and launched the band. It came from a joke. “Blade O’ Grass” came from a Venezuela/Guyana border controversy. “Boyhood Days” came from, well, boyhood days in West Demerara. “Play De Ting” came from a street musician I saw in Berbice playing on the ferryboat crossing.
It’s difficult to summarise, but very often song ideas are the results of observations on life, or a way of seeing things. Glenn Campbell’s “By the Time I Get to Phoneix”, for example, is a love song without the word “love”. The concept there is that the writer’s partner is away on a trip and in the throes of love he is imagining where she is at various times as he goes through the day. Notice he is leaving us with the clear impression that he is obsessed; he is with her in his imagination all day long. He never uses the word “love” but it comes across as if he’s shouting it; he has found a different way to express the emotion. Very often, the emotion is conveyed by the melody, as in “I Will Always Love You”, or “Moon River”, and this approach is also in play for songs with some positive approach to life with Paul Anka’s “My Way” or the Weavers’ “This Land is your Land”, being examples of that. Emotion is driving the observation via melody.
Sometimes, it is an observation, pure and simple, that is the trigger. I don’t remember the details of writing the song “Bluenose” when I lived in Canada, it’s so long ago now, but I had noticed the embossed ship on the Canadian dime, got curious, and asked about it, but most people had no clue. Someone told me it was the East Coast sailing ship Bluenose famous as a racing schooner, and I did a bit of research and learned it had been built in Nova Scotia in the 1920s, that it became famous in races for its speed, and that it had sunk off Haiti in a storm. Writing the song wasn’t all that difficult, the story was pretty well there, and by the time I wrote it the Bluenose replica had been built and was being used for tours in Halifax. The lyrics ended up being used in a history textbook in Ontario schools. I don’t recall how long it took, but usually if a song gives me trouble, I remember it for that reason. “Wong Ping”, I remember, took me almost a year to complete. What takes time is to figure out “how” you’re going to compose, or present the idea that has caught you, how to make it interesting, and, importantly, not to manufacture or insert anything simply because it sounds good, or sings well. In general, once you have the idea for the song, the actual music comes directly out of that, so the “Bluenose” melody has a kind of sea shanty feeling, and the words capture that as well – “the ocean knows her name,” “she looked just like a young bird in flight” etc.- and also this is a positive, feel good story you’re telling, so the music shouldn’t be slow or mournful; it’s a celebration song, the music should convey that.
When composing, as a rule, I try to write a very singable chorus first, that sort of summarises the story, as in Blade O’ Grass, for example, and then I go back and fit in the verses to convey that topic. And also, as a rule (although there are exceptions), once I have the “how” figured out, I will usually finish a song in a few days, five or six, where I’m working every day on it and stay the course. What delays you sometimes is that there is one word (or two) in the song that fits musically but is somehow still not quite right; every time you sing it, you feel, I have to change this. If you don’t, once the song is recorded, every time you hear it, you cringe when you hear that part, so you learn – fix the damn word. For some reason, sometimes you can be stuck on that one word for days before you finally solve it, but sometimes nothing works and you end up throwing out the entire line and replacing it with something completely different just to get rid of that word that doesn’t pass the okay test. It may sound like a minor matter, but in fact, if you don’t fix the word, every time you hear a recording of the song, when that word comes around, it actually makes you wince to hear it; it reminds you how wrong it is, so the next time you’re writing a song and have that one-word problem in your head, “Fix it, bobo, otherwise it will come back to haunt your backside.” And it doesn’t matter if nobody points out the bad word to you; you know it’s below standard; you almost feel it physically – it bothers you; it has to go.
Writing all this down for my musical friend, it occurred to me that this would be a good subject for one of my newspaper columns, and that’s how I ended up here. To all the wannabe writers, more on this topic later, but for now I hope this helps to create some clarity.
