Happy 50th birthday to me.
But, on to song-writing.
What is the difference between a poem and a song? some may ask. Virtually none, is my answer. A song is a poem set to words. A poem is an unfinished song (in the view of at least this song-writer). I have sat down to write a poem many times, and I’ve met with very little success. My attempts are cumbersome, inane, or just plain contrived. Until I decide to turn them into songs.
Of course there is a distinction between a good poem and a bad poem. Roses are red…is a bad poem, but a poem nonetheless. My attempts are poems per se, because that’s what I call them–the actual criteria, in my mind. Just as literature is something that is written down. Not much of it is worth teaching in English courses, but if it’s scribbled on a sticky note, it’s literature.
I know I am a song-writer, and not a poet, because it is only when I start crafting my offerings into songs do they become anything worth sharing. Many of my song begin as poems. When I sit down to the guitar or piano, they show me all their flaws. This might be a good time for me to tell you what I consider the hallmarks of a good song. There are several questions that lead us in the right direction.
Is it rhythmic–and rhythmically compelling? Rhythm is a lot more than putting the same number of syllables in each line. That in fact could fail to produce a rhythmic song. There’s a flow that can only be heard in the actual singing of the line.
A few more thoughts about rhythm, and related topics: Sometimes emphasis is required in specific places of a line of song, to either make it match–or make it different than–a previous line. Alliteration is crucial. You also have to pay attention to the final sound of a line. Hard sounds, especially p‘s, and t‘s are bad. That’s not always true. Like everything I say about song-writing, it is dependent on a wide variety of factors, and may not always apply. In other words, rules are meant to be broken.
Is it original? Very few ideas start out as original. I like to think of evolution. In that process, most changes takes place through mutation. Accidents. Such is the original idea. It is a very rare thing, and no one really deserves credit for it.
I was stymied (shall we say impotent) as a writer when I was struggling to be original. I spent a lot of time staring at blank pages. This is true of writing stories, as well as writing poems and songs.
I understand that University level art classes begin by making students copy the works of masters. Michaelangelo, Van Gogh, Cezanne.
But doesn’t this educate painters to be unoriginal–their work pale copies of the masters’?
I don’t paint, but I can see the wisdom of this method of teaching. When I let go of the self-imposed imperative to be original, I became prolific.
And yet: to be somewhat ironic, if a song isn’t original, it plain sucks. At some point in the process, the author has to put his personal stamp on it. The originality comes from combining influences and ideas to make something new.
I’ll talk about other song-writing criteria in future posts, but let me just sum up to say the writer has to internalize these criteria, and then he imposes them on the poem or song as he goes. It’s a process of negation: God, that sounds like Barry Manilo, or I’d better put a bridge in here, or else it’s a virtual copy of that Rita Hosking song I just listened to. You see a fault, and you change it.
As a reminder to myself, I think I’ll share some musings about Bob Dylan (the original rule-breaker) in my next post.