Last week I mentioned that I was interested in dabbling with songwriting. Sure enough, over the week I ended up writing a first draft of a song. I had a short performance sharing with my class yesterday; we‘re working on creating full-length performances as part of our degree show, and we do sharings each week to show our progress and give each other feedback. My show is all about my relationship to music and how I’ve played instruments for ages but never done anything with it; because of this, I thought It made sense to write and perform a song.
The song I presented was a first draft that I wrote by improvising. I thought about the lyrics and just wrote them down, and then the melody and chord pattern came afterwards. The interesting thing for me with this was that the song became about the songwriting process, and ended up deconstructing itself. Here are the chords and lyrics (I gave the song the self-deprecating title of Shit Song Number One);
Shit Song Number One
By Tammy Millar
(4/4, no capo)
B
I’m kind of new to this
A
Making it up as I go along
B
Does this count as meta?
A
Maybe it does now.
Or is that wrong?
B
Crowbarring the rhymes
A
Instead of taking my time
Oh no…
E B
Where is this going?
A
Fucked if I know
E B
What am I doing?
A
Fucked if I know
B
I cracked up writing this
A
No idea if I can sing it onstage
B
Something something
A
I can’t think of a rhyme here
B
Poor excuse for songwriting
A
This is the shittest first draft I’ve heard…
E B
Where is this going?
A
Fucked if I know
E B
What am I doing?
A
Fucked if I know
E B
Why didn’t I rewrite this?
A
Fucked if I know
E B
Have I heard this tune before?
A
Fucked if I know
E B
Fucked if I know
A
Fucked if I know
Just repeating the chorus for the crack
E B
Fucked if I know
A
Fucked if I know…
B
Well I broke up the structure
A
So I’ve kind of lost my place
B
This must be the bridge
A
So afterwards is a repeat of the chorus
E B
Where is this going?
A
Fucked if I know
E B
What am I doing?
A
Fucked if I know
E B
Why didn’t I rewrite this?
A
Fucked if I know
E B
Have I heard this tune before?
A
Fucked if I know
E B
Why is this still repeating?
A
Fucked if I know
E B
When is this song going to end?
A (Hold chord)
Fucked if… Oh shit, it’s finished
(End)
During the writing process I thought that the song was quite funny, or at least I enjoyed writing it and found humour in the lyrics. It felt lighthearted and tongue in cheek, which is the tone I was aiming for. However, it was really interesting to see how my class reacted. They thought it was somewhat humorous but not funny, and the self-deprecation (And that they thought the song was well-written) confused them, particularly when I performed it quite strongly. The tone of the song didn’t match the way it was performed.
This was something that actually really excited me, because I hadn’t really picked up on the self-deprecation at all, or at least hadn’t consciously wanted to be self-deprecating. I had intended to maybe poke a little fun at myself, what with this being my first song and still trying to figure out how exactly to go about writing one. What actually came across in the performance of the song is that I was shooting myself down when in actuality I’m quite capable as a performer if not a songwriter.
There are a few really strong things that I think I’m taking from this is experience. Firstly, that the songwriter can reveal a lot more about themselves than they maybe intend to when they create a song. I can be very self-deprecating in everyday life, and that came through in my lyrics without my intent.
The other major thing that I’ve learned is that the tone and intent of a song has to be communicated in the performance of the song as well as the subtext of the lyrics. If you’re aiming to write a gentle song you can’t go charging onstage like you’re Meat Loaf. The musician needs to find the right tone and performance style to fit the feel of the song they’re playing. It’s a lot like acting, actually. If you’re delivering a monologue you need to find the beats and motivations behind everything you’re doing. The same applies to music.
Though the performance of this song wasn’t necessarily 100% successful, I feel I’ve learned a lot from the experience and am looking forward to developing it further. I think this song is one for the backburner, and I’ll maybe research some more comedic musicians to see how they write and perform their music.
In the meantime, I’m excited to continue working on my music. I’m very interested in learning more about time signatures – I found a song in 5/4 the other day and I was really interested in the beat and how it works. This is maybe something I will look at next time (Though that is a tentative statement; next week is hectic and I have never experimented with time signatures before.)