write more songs! advice

from people who know better.

Keith Richards starts with the music:

First I find a riff and a chord sequence. And if that's any good, then I start to play it with some other guys and pump it up. If that's great, then I check the attitude and the atmosphere of the track. What the hell is this putting out? There's no point in writing songs on a sheet of paper, going verse, chorus, verse, chorus, and regarding this as a song. No, it ain't. A song is music, and I'd rather start with the music and then get into the attitude of the track and put something on top of it. What are you going to put on top of it, because you could have spent months trying? I can't divorce lyrics from the music. Songwriting is a marrying of the both. To me, the easiest way is to get the track.

Still:

The ideal thing, of course, is when [words and music] suddenly appear together. When there's only one phrase that fits and it says it all, and all you have to do then is fill in the gaps. But it's not often that it happens… Gimmie Shelter is a classic one. That, I just slapped down on a cassette while waiting for Mick to finish Performance. Honky Tonk Women is another. A lot of times you're fooling with what you consider to be just working titles or even working hooks, and then you realize there's nothing else that's going to slip in there and fit in the same way. So you're left with this fairly inane phrase.

John Prine works from the other end, and starts with the melody:

To me, the melody usually comes along hand in hand with the words. It’s very rare that I’ll get a little piece of music that I keep playing over and over, like something I’ll do at a soundcheck that I can’t get rid of. And in order to get rid of it, I’ll write a song to it. But usually they start with the idea or the image and I want to say one thing. Just one sentence. And I’ll figure out who would say that and how can I build a song on that?

and

Sometimes [I use my guitar while at the typewriter]. And sometimes when the melody is so apparent, I can just sit with just the words.

The process is instantaneous:

I edit as I go. Especially when I go to commit it to paper. I prefer a typewriter even to a computer. I don’t like it, there’s no noise on the computer. I like a typewriter because I am such a slow typist I edit as I am committing it to paper. I like to see the words before me and I go, “Yeah, that’s it.” They appear before me, and they fit, you know, and I can see that the line fits with the previous line and the line after it. I can see the inside of the song as well, not just rhyming the last word so that the song sounds right. I pretty much do that as I go. I don’t usually take large parts out. If I get stuck early in a song, I would take it as a sign that I might be writing the chorus and don’t know it. Sometimes you’re writing the first verse or second verse and you’re actually writing what you want to repeat. And you gotta step back a little bit and take a look at what you’re doing.

Yet:

More often than not, I can’t jump into a song too quick. Because there’s always the danger of painting yourself into a corner. There’s no tougher corners to get out of than the ones that you paint. Because you can’t change the rules if you made up the rules. And then you get to the third verse that needs to be there, and you can’t define that line where you can just repeat the first verse. You can’t get out of it that way, so how are you going to get out of it? Especially if it’s a story song. You’d better be going somewhere. I think that’s what the listeners are always thinking that, hey, this is precious time I’m giving you, so you’d better be going somewhere. This joke better be funny.

Robert Hunter just finds the words that are already there:

I’m able to translate peoples’ scat. I hear English in it, almost as though I write down what I hear underneath that. I have the intention. It’s a talent like the Rubik’s Cube, or something like that, and it comes easily to me. Which might be why I like Language poetry. I can tell from the rhythms, or lack of rhythms, from the disjunctures and the end stoppages, what they’re avoiding saying - the meaning that they would like to not be stating there, comes rushing through to me. I understand dogs. I can talk to babies.

and

If I’m under pressure, writing a song and the band wants something right away, I’ll write whatever nonsense scans. Then once I’ve got the scene, seeing where the rhymes and accents are going to fall, it’s a fairly simple matter to translate it into English. And leave some of it untranslated, too. It’s interesting that way.

He has the most fun with it:

A cat dictated “China Cat Sunflower” to me. I twas just sitting’ on my stomach, purring away, and sayin’ this stuff. I just write it down, I guess it’s plagiarism. I’ve credited the cat, right?

Again - that's what makes them the Grateful Dead.

Okay, another vein - Trey Anastasio is just making it up as he goes along:

The whole thing feels a lot like improvising.

My relationship with all of the improvising and listening exercises has profoundly impacted my style of songwriting over the years. Improvising has taught me how to write songs the way I do. I’m not saying that I’m writing “MacArthur Park” or writing the way Carole King does or anything like that. I’m just writing the way that Trey writes. But no improvising, no “Hey Stranger,” no “Roll Like a River,” no “Life Beyond the Dream.”

Those are really improvised moments, meaning I’m walking around and I’m rolling with it. The only difference with songwriting is that it starts with improvising and you can return to it and improvise again. The parts that are good always seem to stay. Eventually, it just tells you it’s done. But it’s an improvisational mindset.

You can watch him do it here and wish you were freezing cold in New York on a white and steaming winter’s morning.

From all of these, it’s clear - you can go about it any damn way that you want!

Keith again:

When you’re writing songs, there are no fucking rules. In fact, you’re looking to break them. You’re looking to sort of find the next missing chord. You’re looking to find the next best way to express things. Writing songs is not about the lyrics one side and music on another. It’s about the two coming together. And you can be a great poet and you might write some lovely music, but the art and the beauty of writing songs is to pull those two together, where they seem to love each other, and that’s writing songs.

Write more songs!