Recording - January 2015 - 55

Continued from page 52
Melody: The human animal is an interesting
beast. Melody, no matter how small, is vital to
hits. Melody is part of what invites the human
animal into the song. The story, no matter how
"lightweight," keeps them there.
So what invites you in is melody, and what
keeps you there is lyric. So I have friends that
say, "Hey, I don't know the words to that song.
Come on, man." You play it for them, they
know every single word. Classical composers
knew that, by the way. Whenever you have
melody, the human animal will automatically
defer to melody. And I've said this to you
before, it's a physical characteristic of the
human animal. Classical composers knew that,
so they would always start with [he sings]
"Bomp-a-da-bah..." Then the next patch is [he
sings] "Bomp-bomp-pah," next one "toot-toottoot," and then they play all that stuff at the
end. And you'd hear them all and you'd go,
"Oh, wow, I heard it all." You didn't. You heard
one and remembered the other. So wherever you

that changes from genre to genre is vocabulary
and technology. So the job of the songwriter, as
opposed to the singer/songwriter... Because
remember, with a singer/songwriter, you are
two people. You are this wonderful artist, and
you are the scriptwriter for that artist, and your
job is to make that singer look good...not to
make him look bad. So remember
singer/songwriters, get over that. The
songwriter is supposed to write a script that
makes the singer look good to their audience,
number one, invite the listener in, create an
expectation, and then fulfill it in 60 seconds.
That is your job.
So, can things be, excuse me, assembled? Yes,
they can! Do you need to assemble? Is craft a
major portion of everything you do? Yes, it is!

It is so important. If you want to be a great
player-a piano player or a guitar player, or
whatever-the first thing you do is you learn
your instrument. The only thing that we feel
that we have a mandate to do... Oh, anyone can
write a song. Yeah, anyone can write a song,
anyone can play golf, anyone can play tennis,
but if you want to be the best at it, you need to
learn! And being here at TAXI is one of the
best places to learn.
I want to thank you all for coming, and thank
you for listening to my ravings. I find out this
stuff and I want to pass it on. And thank you,
Michael Laskow, for having me.
Thank you, Mr. Ralph Murphy, ladies and
gentlemen! [applause]

"I don't go to the Olympics for bronze
or silver. That's why I only ever
study #1's."
- Ralph Murphy
tell your story-and an old friend of mine,
Harland Howard, characterized it best: You
don't change your chord until you change your
thought. [He sings] Wherever you are telling a
story, you have to remain linear.
This, of course, brings me to rap. When I was
watching the rise of rap back in the '80s, I
thought, what a cool format-it's so innovative
and so brand new. However, I'm thinking to
myself in the back of my head, what invites
you into the song is 100% melody, what keeps
you there is the lyric. So how is this gonna
work? At some point in time they're gonna get
bored with it, as innovative as it is. So they
started using a lot more samples, which was
cool and created an expectation and invited the
listener in. And then they wore that out, so
they started taking whole choruses-Rhianna,
"Love the Way You Lie," and Eminem. So suddenly there was this huge chorus, which invited
the listener in, and then the rap. So there was
total balance in it. What invites the listener
into the song 100% of the time is melody; what
keeps you there is story.
So...tempo, theme, accessibility, pronouns, rhyme
schemes, melody, create an expectation and fulfilling it are all factors that are pretty much a
constant in monster hit songs. In actual fact, all
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Recording - January 2015

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