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In Production . . . Available 2007 or 2008 Title: How Songwriting REALLY Works!, Vol. 1: Research Findings     on the Musical Differences Between Great Songs and Ordinary     Songs ... How You Can Transform the Way You Write Music Authors: Wayne Chase and Tom Johnson Publisher: Roedy Black Publishing, Vancouver, Canada ISBN: Not yet assigned. For the first time ever... these research findings will show precisely     how great songs differ musically from ordinary songs, and how     to apply these findings to your own songwriting. Scroll Down for Book Details      Title: How Songwriting REALLY Works!, Vol. 2: Research Findings     on the Lyrical Differences Between Great Songs and Ordinary     Songs ... How You Can Transform the Way You Write Lyrics Authors: Wayne Chase and Tom Johnson Publisher: Roedy Black Publishing, Vancouver, Canada ISBN: Not yet assigned. For the first time ever... these research findings will show precisely     how great songs differ lyrically from ordinary songs, and how to     apply these findings to your own songwriting. Scroll Down for Book Details

ABOUT THESE TWO BOOKS

• How Songwriting REALLY Works!, Vols. 1 and 2 (available in 2007 or 2008) will present the findings of a research study comparing the use of technical elements in two equal-sized groups of songs:

Group A—The "Great Song" Group: A sample of the world’s greatest popular songs by the world’s greatest songwriters. This sample is drawn from the www.GoldStandardSongList.com

Group B—the "Ordinary Song" Group: A sample of songs with no significant distribution by relatively unknown songwriters and bands aspiring to music industry success.

• These research findings will show exactly how the music and lyrics of "great" songs differ from the music and lyrics of "ordinary" songs on the use of technical elements.
    

• "Technical elements" refers to the use of musical and lyrical variables covered extensively in How Music REALLY Works, 2nd Edition.
    

• Here are some examples:

USEFULNESS FOR SONGWRITERS

• Songwriters who mishandle the technical aspects of music and lyrics unwittingly sabotage their own creative work.
    
• By pointing out the specific differences (using real-world examples) between the use of technical variables in the music and lyrics of great songs, compared with the use of the same variables in ordinary songs, How Songwriting REALLY Works!, Vols. 1 and 2 will show you:

-  Where you're making technical musical and lyrical
   blunders that unnecessarily doom songs that might
   otherwise have "classic" potential; and

-  Where to go in How Music REALLY Works!, 2nd Ed., to
   find out how to avoid making such blunders.

PRELIMINARY RESEARCH FINDINGS: 10 EXAMPLES OF TECHNICAL BLUNDERS

Based on the preliminary findings of this research, here are just 10 of the many technical blunders songwriters make, and how to avoid making them. (NOTE: The final results may vary from these preliminary findings.)

1.
 
Using Musically Unpalatable Chord Progressions

• Songwriters who have no knowledge of harmonic scales tend to write, clunky, musically unpalatable chord progressions. Such progressions mitigate against the human brain’s natural tendency to want to process intervals and harmonies that reflect simple frequency ratios.
       

• Our preliminary findings show that the chord progressions of "Great Songs" tend to follow the natural clockwise flow of the harmonic scale to a much higher degree than "Ordinary Songs":

• For more information, see How Music REALLY Works! 2nd Edition, especially Chapters 3 through 6).

2.
  
Incorporating Too Much “Unique” Melody

• When you take the entire vocal melody of a three- or four-minute song and subtract out all the repetitions of the melodic parts, you have the core "unique" melody of the song. In our preliminary findings, Great Songs averaged only about 20 seconds of unique melody. Ordinary Songs averaged 38 seconds—nearly twice as much unique melody:

• Your short term memory (and the collective short-term memory of your audience) can only hold a few pieces of information.

• In pre-literate times, songs served the purpose of transmitting news. Any successful song really functions as a mnemonic device. It employs as many memory-helping elements as possible—rhyme, regularity of rhythm pattern, repetition of catchy melodic phrases, etc.

• Songwriters who are not aware of the importance of short term memory limitations overload their tunes with too much unique melody. They do this to try to prevent the song from becoming monotonously repetitive. Big mistake.

• The subjects of memory and melody are covered in detail in Chapters 7 through 9 of How Music REALLY Works!, 2nd Edition.

3.
 
Employing a Musically Unpalatable Melodic Range

• Our preliminary findings show that most Great Songs have a melodic vocal range of 12 to 17 semitones (the pitch range of the lowest lead vocal note to the highest lead vocal note, ignoring all vocal harmony).

• By contrast, Ordinary Songs tend to have much greater variability of melodic range. Many have a melodic range of fewer than 12 semitones or more than 17 semitones.

• The subject of melodic range is covered in Chapter 9 of  How Music REALLY Works!, 2nd Edition.

4.
  
Failing to Firmly Establish Tonality

• Our preliminary findings indicate that Great Songs establish tonality quickly and maintain it throughout the song, even when modulating to other keys.

• Many Ordinary Songs often lose their way and fail to firmly establish tonality (40% of the time):

• You can avoid getting lost like this by understanding the meaning of tonality and its importance, covered in Chapters 5, 6, and 9 of  How Music REALLY Works!, 2nd Edition.

5.
  
Not Building in Enough Sequence-type Repetition

• A sequence is a melodic or harmonic phrase or configuration that gets repeated at a different pitch.

• For example, in the Lennon-McCartney tune, "Eleanor Rigby," think of the melody that goes with the words, "Picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been." The three notes corresponding to the words

"rice in the"

form a sequence that gets repeated on the words

"church where a",

then on the words

"wedding has."

• Using sequences like this enables you to repeat melody, but not exactly note for note. Sequence introduces variety while preserving necessary repetition (unity). Our preliminary findings show much more sequence-type repetition—about three times more—in Great Songs than in Ordinary Songs:

• The subject of using melodic sequences effectively is covered in detail in Chapter 9 of  How Music REALLY Works!, 2nd Edition.

6.
 
Paying Insufficient Attention to Metrical Concordance

• According to our preliminary findings, the melodic line and the lyrical pattern in Great Songs adhere closely to the same metrical structure. We did not find this to be the case with Ordinary Songs:

• Chapters 7 and 10 of  How Music REALLY Works!, 2nd Edition, explain how metrical structure works in music and lyrics.

7.
  
Writing in 4/4 Meter Exclusively

• All of the Ordinary Songs in the preliminary study were found to be in 4/4 time. By contrast, Great Songs showed metrical variety. While most were in 4/4 time, nearly a quarter were in 3/4 or 6/8 time:

• Metrical structure is covered in Chapter 7 of  How Music REALLY Works!, 2nd Edition.

8.
 
Failing to Edit Lyrics That Go On and On and On

• Our preliminary findings show that Ordinary Songs have less lyrical repetition and are longer than Great Songs. With Ordinary Songs, the overall effect is verbosity.

• The significance of word count (in both non-rap and rap songs) is discussed in detail in Chapter 10 of  How Music REALLY Works!, 2nd Edition.

9.
 
Not Using the Connotative Content of Words Effectively

• Our preliminary findings show that the lyrics of Great Songs demonstrate more and better use of the connotative elements of language.

• Connotative meaning is a major aspect of emotionally effective lyric-writing, and is discussed in detail in Chapter 10 of  How Music REALLY Works!, 2nd Edition.

10.
 
Spending More Time and Energy Recording than Songwriting

• The Ordinary Song demos and independent releases we studied tended to be slickly produced. The songwriters and bands who made them were obviously spending copious amounts of time and energy (and money) on creating perfect recordings of ordinary songs, rather than the other way around.

• T-Bone Burnett, ace producer of dozens of great albums (including the movie soundtrack, "O Brother, Where Art Thou"), put it this way: "These days, instead of musicians playing instruments, instruments are playing musicians."

• Bob Dylan once commented: "See, when I started to record, they just turned the microphones on and you recorded . . . Whatever you got on one side of the glass was what came in on the controls on the other side of the glass."

• The truth is, anybody can write a song in 10 or 15 minutes. Writing "a song" takes no special talent whatsoever. The same goes for painting "a picture" or writing "a poem." Anybody can create a mediocre piece of "art" in a few minutes.

• The real question is the question of quality, substance, emotional staying power. Most songs written in 15 minutes, "in a burst of inspiration," actually have no emotional impact on anyone except possibly the songwriter and his or her mother.

• A truly great song with nothing more than a guitar-and-vocal or keyboard-and-vocal presentation, will sound brilliant to perfect strangers. Vocal skill matters little. Only the tune, the chords and the words really matter. If the song does not make it in a bare-bones rendition, it does not make it.
    

• These topics are covered in Chapters 11 and 12 of  How Music REALLY Works!, 2nd Edition.

If you would like to be notified when How Songwriting REALLY Works, Vol. 1: Music, and Vol. 2: Lyrics, become available, send an email to:

booklist@roedyblack.com 
  

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