Looking Back on What's to Come

Written by Ralph Murphy Monday, 08 March 2010 02:43

I'm straying from our usual format just a bit because I feel the need to speak to you about how to make your songs stronger in the long-term rather than in the short term.

Like most writers starting out in the music business, I was fortunate to have been adopted by several fine veteran writers. Why they took the time to give me a few words of advice, a moment of praise, a hard jab of criticism, or a cold beer of consolation was always a mystery to me. I never quite understood when they told me that a songwriter's best friend was not an artist, a label, a publisher, or a radio or TV station, but another songwriter.

While I worked on my craft, demoed my songs, hunted for a publisher, relentlessly chased that first recording, and hungered for that first hit, those veteran writers were doing all that and more: they were also working tirelessly to protect their copyrights and receive fair compensation for their work. In so doing, they were also looking after my rights and the rights of all fledgling writers.

At a recent NSAI's Pro Division, I was talking to some of my contemporaries when it hit me that we had become them; and the sheep had become the shepherds. Just as our mentors had carried on the fight for copyright protection, so have we been continuing that fight through NSAI.

The Next Generation

Now as we look forward to another year, remember that the technology coming down the pike will eclipse anything that we have experienced to date. The technology will have one function -- to use, in as many ways as possible, the work that we have dedicated our lives to creating. And if the history has taught us anything, it is that since the 1908 Copyright Law was put into place, users of music have done everything in their power to avoid paying creators for their music.

That's why it's important for you as a songwriter and a creator of music to join us in the battle for copyright protection: so that you will be prepared to take the torch and lead the next generation of creators forward in the age where technology will make it increasingly easier for others to rob us of our work.

[To find out more about ASCAP's work in the field of copyright protection and how you can get involved, please see the Legislative area on the ASCAP site.]

It's Your Life and Livelihood

Remember your songs are yours for Lifetime Plus 50 Years. So, long after you're gone -- if you have done your job well -- your great, great grandchild may be able to afford an operation, a car, or a college education, compliments of you. When you earn your first gold record, you'll find that it comes with something else -- a sword and a shield.

Your Best Bet for a #1 Song

Written by Ralph Murphy Monday, 08 March 2010 02:42

For a small business owner such as a songwriter/publisher, knowing the market is vital. Budgeting for success means looking at income (when it decides to come in!) and making informed decisions about how to spend it most effectively. Up near the top of the list of expenditures (almost right next to eating) are demo costs. The financial outlay for demonstration recordings has risen to $750 - $1,000 per song. So, if you write 30 songs a year and only have $10,000 in your demo budget, you're going to have to make some hard choices.

The Truth About Dogs and Chickens

Let's say you've written this song about a Chicken. You love it! Your mom loves it! The special person in your life loves it! However . . Radio is only playing Dog songs. Fortunately, you've also written four Dog songs, which everybody loves. Your dilemma? You only have enough money to produce a three-song demo, but you have five songs (four Dog songs and one Chicken song). What do you do? Now, unfortunately, I have suitcases full of demoed Chicken songs, so I know what the songwriter side of me says; however, I noticed early on in life that food is a good thing and that eating makes me happy. So, while grumbling and complaining about how radio should be playing more Chicken songs, I demo three of my four Dog songs so I can continue to support my nasty food habit! In the frustrating war between art and commerce, commerce wins.

Let's be honest. Though it shouldn't, radio drives the "commercial" aspect of the songwriting process. (Did I already mention that I like to eat?) It affects just about every decision we make creatively. In March, 1999, country radio did something seismic in nature, which impacted songwriters and publishers dramatically. As an experiment to maintain listenership, Country radio decided to slow the progress of records going up and down the charts in hopes of breeding the kind of familiarity that keeps listeners coming back for more - commercials, that is.

As a result, I became curious and decided to try an experiment of my own. I started by researching the Billboard Country chart for 1999 and found that a total of 18 songs reached #1. Taking a closer look, I began to wonder: what type of song is reaching the top in this brave new world of radio? A world in which, though yet another ripple effect of deregulation, big radio chains have been allowed to buy up and homogenize most of the "mom and pop" country stations resulting in:

Country songs being slotted between jingles and musical links that sound like they're written and performed by Metallica;
on-air personalities who, with rare exceptions, really don't know (or care) about country music, and
an increase in the amount of commercial time that effectively gets rid of two or three records per hour.

But, I digress! What we began to see on the chart before March is that records did indeed start taking longer to climb and began to linger longer, that is, taking longer to fall off completely. Before March, the total average time a song spent on the chart was 26.5 weeks. After the March changeover, that time increased to 32 weeks - adding more than a month to the life of a song! (In fact, Lonestar's "Amazed" was on the chart for more than a year.) What kinds of songs enjoyed success? Let's look at a few dynamics . . . .

Anything in common?

Common characteristics for the 18 #1s were that all of them were contemporary pop/country; 4/4 in tempo; romantic, primarily humorous, sad, and heartfelt. Half were stories; half were conversations. The average intro was 13.2 seconds.

Tempo

Let's examine the producer/A&R, mantra - "We are looking for mid to up-tempo positive love songs." Yes, you can say it in your sleep!

Surprisingly, though, ballads accounted for 50% of 1999's chart toppers, followed by up-tempos at 33% and mid-tempos at 17%. Now, before you crown ballads king, let's look at the amount of time spent at #1. Even though more ballads made it to #1, they tended to fall off quicker. In fact, up-tempos spent 49% of the year at #1, followed by ballads at 31% and mid-tempos at 20%. So, even though mid- and up-tempos combined accounted for only half of the #1s, they spent a combined 69% of the year in the top spot.

Strangely enough, you had a slightly better chance of having a #1 with a ballad, but spent significantly less time at #1 and on the chart.

Melody

75% of up-tempos went from a linear melody in the verse to a soaring melody in the chorus. Which means, basically, the listener got a story [linear - very little motion, few chord changes] and something to hum at the supermarket [soaring - significant motion and chord changes] in the same song and apparently liked that a lot!

It is almost impossible to tell a story over a soaring melody because the human animal can only hear one moving part at a time and, given choice, will always defer to melody. So, wherever the writer wants to tell a story, the melody is kept to a minimum.

As for ballads, five of the nine went from linear to soaring.

Form

Since you were born, radio has given you songs in any one of six variations.

As the writer leads listeners through a song, he or she creates an expectation in the audience's mind that they are being led through the story to a hook (conclusion) in a way that they are familiar with. The writer can alter the format slightly only as long as the listeners feel informed, included and satisfied (once delivered to the hook/conclusion). If that effect is not achieved, the listeners simply reach for the dial and tune out. The writer has failed structurally.

That being said, the 18 #1 records in 1999 used only three of the six forms:

2nd Form: Verse-(Verse Opt.)-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Instrument-Chorus-Etc.
3rd Form: Verse-(Verse Opt.)-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Instrument-Chorus-Out
4th Form: Verse-Lift-Chorus-Verse-Lift-Chorus-Instrumental-(Lift
Opt.)-Chorus

Five of the six up-tempos and 50% of all #1s were written in 3rd form. The exception to this in up-tempo was Terri Clark's "You're Easy On The Eyes," which was in 2nd form. This is significant because 3rd form is known as the most forgiving form because you can have a weak line or two in a verse but still have a huge chorus to save you. Plus, there's a bridge to add information or show the listener the other side of the coin. With mid-tempos, all the forms were equally represented. As far as ballads go, we find that four of the nine ballads were 3rd Form, followed by three in 2nd Form and two in 4th Form.

Person and tense

100% of up-tempos were written in first person (I/Me/My).

Additionally, 72% included the second person (You/Your) and 39% used the third person, generally as a device for conflict. As far as tense goes, 83% of up-tempos were set in the present, with 27% in the past and only 15% in the future.

As for ballads, 89% used the first person, 89% included the 2nd, and 33% added the third person.

The artist

Let's add one more dynamic to this mix. Six of the 18 #1s were written or co-written by the artist, with five of the six being ballads. So the old A&R belief that ballads are artist-driven gains some credence given this information.

Your best shot

So, you have Dog songs and you have Chicken songs. Where do you spend your demo dollar?

Your best shot for getting a #1 record is to write:

mid- to up-tempo
romantic/humorous or sad/heartfelt theme
4/4 time
contemporary pop/country style
story or conversation
1st person or 2nd person
3rd form
linear melody with a story to a soaring chorus
13 second intro

So much for Chicken songs!

The "Nut"

Written by Ralph Murphy Monday, 08 March 2010 02:41

The conclusion, the point, the message, the result of the story or action

For a song to be a living thing - sought out by singers,entertaining in elevators, delighting dancers or making people sing it for 50 years after you're dead - it's important to remember that it must be in perfect balance. A major part of this balance is the ratio of imagery or emotion or story to result. The reason for this Murphy's Law dealing solely with the "Nut" is that I go through about a hundred songs a week.At clubs, as I listen to writers in the round or on the half-shell, prepare new writers for their first publishing deal or help hit writers search for their next publishing deal, I am up to my ears in imagery, emotion and story. What is missing 90 percent of the time is the essence, the substance, the correct conclusion, the very thing from which mighty oak trees grow ... the Nut.

Origins of the Nut

To put a historical perspective on this process, and to understand the emergence of today's songwriter, let's go back to the dawn of society.There were the hunters, the gatherers, the teachers, the healers, the traders - group after group scrambling to guarantee its place in the community, its spot near the comfort of the fire. From a distance, watching the triumphs and failures of humankind, were the storytellers. They were charged with re-creating, bringing to life, with word or gesture, the profound, profane or comic events of society around them. In order to justify their warm place by the fire, they had to entertain, as well as inform. After all, any fool could come back from the hunt and say, "We killed the Woolly Mastodon," but the first one to say, "It was a dark and stormy night as the beast towered above us!" had the audience by the . . . ears. The best of these storytellers, scribes and minstrels became minor celebrities welcome at every fire. Striking the perfect balance between imagery and information, fluff and fact, they generally prospered, thriving on the phrase, "Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story." That information was passed on from the first songwriter on earth to the second songwriter on earth, who passed it on to Harlan Howard . . . at least that's Harlan's story!

Lead the listener to the Nut

When I'm asked to critique a song, no matter how explicit an idea may appear as I read the lyric or listen to the melody, I always ask the writer one question: "What is this REALLY about?" At least half the time,the answer the writer gives me does not appear anywhere in the song to which I have just listened. Therefore, when crafting your songs, make sure you lead the listener to the Nut (the point you're trying to make), which, many times, is the hook or title of the song. For example:

After references to "It must have been cold there in my shadow" and"You always walked a step behind," Larry Henley and Jeff Silbar lead the listener to the conclusion "If I can fly higher than an eagle / You Are TheWind Beneath My Wings." In this case, the title could be the Nut, but it could also be stated as "your selflessness makes my achievements possible."
After references to "When I heard that old familiar music start" and"It was like a dam had broken in my heart," Hugh Prestwood leads the listener to "After I'd forgotten all about us / The Song Remembers When." In this case, the title could be the Nut, but it could also be stated as "certain songs can trigger certain emotions and memories to make you re-live moments in your life."
After references to "She could telephone, tell a friend, tell a lie about where she's been" and "Send a pigeon, send a fax, write it on aPost-It pad," Phil Barnhart, Sam Hogin and Mark D. Sanders lead the listener to "I'd prefer a bad excuse to No News." In this case, the Nut could be stated as "any type of communication from my loved one would be better than none at all."
(It's important not to confuse the Nut with the theme. For me, the theme is best expressed in general terms regarding a struggle on a grand scale, such as right vs. wrong, old vs. young, virtue vs. venal, etc. TheNut, however, is the resolution of that struggle.)

In addition to being monster hits, each of these songs - as in 99 percent of all hit songs - contains an easily identifiable Nut. In fact, the only exception I can think of is a song like "Unchained Melody," in which the phrase "unchained melody" occurs nowhere in the song, and the title has no relevance to the song!

Locating the Nut

When searching for the Nut in your own songs, co-writing makes theprocess easier. To make sure your song is on target, read the lyric aloud and ask your co-writer, "What is this song REALLY about?" At that point, if his or her answer is not clear - re-write. When writing by yourself, finish your song, then on a separate piece of paper, write out the Nut in one sentence. Then, the first time you play the song for someone else, ask what he or she thinks the Nut is.If it doesn't coincide with your assessment, you are wrong. Remember, the listener is always right!

Strive for the "Oow" Factor

Judge your songs by what I call the "Oow" factor. Simply put, it means that it's not just a GOOD song; it's SO GOOD that, when you play it for people, they say "OOW!" At that point, you have a perfect song that is in total balance. It uses enough insightful detail to make the situation and the character(s) come to life, but never forgets to perfectly position the Nut: for example, it could be all the reasons that "you are the wind beneath my wings" or that "the song remembers when" or the fact that you can ask anyone you want, but there's still "no news." Once you isolate - and clearly communicate - the "Nut," you'll be welcome at any fire in any cave in the world.

More Tips

Written by Ralph Murphy Monday, 08 March 2010 02:39

After the obvious "Don't give up your regular job," there are more tips on songwriting than a golfer has excuses. A few that come to mind are:

1. Make sure you've told the whole story.

A song should have a beginning, a middle and an end. For an example -- you did that, I did this, and now we're doing that and (INSERT YOUR HOOK HERE.)

A hook is the main idea of a song, and usually, but not always, is the song's title. Your job as the songwriter is to lead the listeners step by step through the story and deliver them to the hook -- totally involved and completely satisfied. Remember that songs generally are either a dialogue between two people or a narrative simply told. After you've written your song, look at it all. If you wouldn't have said it naturally to a lover, friend or enemy the way it's written, then it probably should be rewritten. Poems make very boring songs.

2. When you're stuck, try another angle.

For those of you locked in what professional writers know as "second verse hell," I will pass on a tip that a wily old writer told me some years ago. If you've completed your first verse and chorus, and there seems to be nowhere else to go because you've said everything you wanted to say, make the first verse your second verse and write a new verse (to explain how you got to the second verse). This tip works often enough to make it one of the most valuable tips ever given to me.

3. Know when to quit.

Finally, never overwrite. After you've told your story, hit your hook and get out. Too much will always be too much.

So, on those notes, I'm out of here...