Recording - April 2014 - 32

C
Em
Where were you?
C
Em
Where were you?
C
E7 Am
B7
Everywhere weren't you?
C
B7
Ubiquitous
C
B7
Ubiquitous
You follow that with a quick recording into your phone, and you title
both the .doc file and the memo 'Ubiquitous 02'. Every time you come to
what you feel is a point of accomplishment (the melody forms, the structure gels, or a bridge appears), you will continue to leave these sorts of
signposts for yourself along the way, so that you can track your progress,
or back up if you hit a dead end.

Song Sheet 5 lets you place chords with lyrics,
annotate a song, and use standard guitar chord
diagrams and tablature.
Let's say, for example, that upon revisiting the
notepads and audio memos, you take up where you
left off, playing through the chords and singing the
same wordless melody. Only this time, you start to
sing the words "Where were you?" sort of unconsciously, in an almost meditative way. You come to
a place where you want to say "You're
Everywhere", but you don't want to use such an
obvious, almost lackluster word. You look up "everywhere" and the word "ubiquitously" is among the
many choices offered. Chuckle at first, but then you
hear the word "Ubiquitous" with a melody in your
head: D#, D#, F#, G.
After a little more time exploring these new options,
you come up with at least the start of a song structure,
so go into your word processor, set it to a 20 point
font size and make a chord chart for what you have
so far, doing your best to line up the chords over the
correct syllables, etc.:
32

RECORDING April 2014

Charting your course
If you're looking for a dedicated chord chart maker, one that lets you edit chord
patterns and do key transposing, the program Song Sheet 5 (from dsbsoft.com)
offers a few features that could make their way into your creative process. Within
the chord editor, for instance, there is a "preview" function that plays the currently selected chord. If you're looking for the next chord in your song, you can click
and audition chords you suspect might be right, or just see what arrives from clicking through different chords at random. Or try variations on the chords you have
and see if they bring any new ideas forward.
Sometimes we just can't get our hands to play the music in our heads.
Perhaps we habitually go to all-too-familiar chord shapes, or just aren't
strong enough on our instrument to accurately realize the music we envision.
Band-in-a-Box (pgmusic.com) is an excellent aid in this more compositionally-oriented method. Band-in-a-Box lifts the chord chart approach up to a
whole new level, by not just previewing chords, but performing them from
start to finish, complete with drums, bass, guitar, piano, strings and more, in
a variety of styles. Type in your chords and away you go, free to experiment
with tempo, key, and style. There's even an automatic melody generator provided, to further provoke your own creativity from unexpected musical places!
A few years ago, I produced an album for singer/comedian Happy
Ron, called Terribly Happy (www.cdbaby.com/cd/happyron). He had
composed, arranged and demoed the whole record, complete with chord
charts, lyric sheets and audio CDs, entirely within the Band-In-A-Box environment. This degree of organization is invaluable in the studio and could
be immensely helpful to your songwriting as well.
Now, some or most of these tools are available inside many DAWs,
including notation editing; there are also notation-specific programs that you
might find inspiring, some of which contain composer-friendly additions like
built-in sound libraries and audio recorders. Some famous examples are
Sibelius (avid.com), Finale (makemusic.com), and Notion and Progression
(notionmusic.com). I won't say more about them because they're not products I have experience with, but I've worked with a lot of artists who have
drawn great inspiration from them, and I expect you'll see more mention of
them in upcoming issues of Recording. I will discuss my DAW of choice
below, in the context of a different sort of compositional flow.
Bait & Switch
Band-in-a-Box can also be used to play an existing song, over which you
can audition an endless variety of original lyrics and melodies, in a kind of
karaoke songwriting approach. Sometimes, we just need to sort of trick ourselves into doing something different, to help break ourselves out of old habits
that may have begun bringing diminishing returns. For instance, lyricists can
also benefit from the tactic of "hanging it on another song's structure."
There is a legend (which may or may not be true) regarding the pop
songwriting duo of Chris Difford & Glenn Tilbrook of the band Squeeze.
Difford was the lyricist and Tilbrook wrote the music. Allegedly, Difford

http://www.dsbsoft.com http://www.pgmusic.com http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/happyron http://www.avid.com http://www.makemusic.com http://www.notionmusic.com

Recording - April 2014

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