Springboards. Sparks. Influences and Inspirations. What are yours? What do you model your music after?

When it’s time to create your next song, you can always benefit from others’ works by extracting out the spirit, concept, or essence of the work and translating it through your own Voice and perspective.

As artists mature, they are still influenced by the music of their predecessors and contemporaries, but rather than copying, imitating, or emulating the styles of their heroes and teachers, they engage in the modeling process.

Just as researchers have methodologies, companies have business models, professionals have career tracks, and economists have schools of thought, musical artists can decide upon the approach they take to their craft, before composing any words or music. A consciously chosen approach can be based on a number of elements, including:

• timeless topics
• successful song-formulas
• proven assumptions behind song-crafting
• time-tested strategies for creativity and productivity
• undeniable grooves, moods, or vibes
• modes of storytelling
• a compelling perspective

Songwriters can extract the spirit, structure, or conceit of a great song and use it as a springboard for their own compositions. We can Song-Model.

A song-model is different from a genre, a sound, or a tradition in that it has nothing to do with how the music sounds or what it is made up of. It’s more like a mood encoded into the music and lyrics or a borrowed approach to the songwriting structure. A model exists apart from the actual content of the song.

Join the Song-Modeling discussion and JP explores three common qualities that have been modeled in countless songs: sex/passion, romance/imagination, and compassion/love.

 

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Crooked phrases. Deceptive cadences. Internal rhymes. Uneven meters.

Have you ever experienced a song that subverts your sense of “how it’s supposed to go” and yet simultaneously feels totally right?

Music is full of opportunities to throw off expectation and surprise, awaken, and even enlighten listeners. Despite the fact that nursery rhymes and metronomes have trained many of us to expect our music to be even and predictable, most folk traditions have always been (and continue to be) full of asymmetrical elements. Songs can defy our expectations using everything from from uneven measures to sudden shifts of tempo…from spring loaded phrasing to complete changes of groove.

Join this SOS episode as JP shares the delight of songwriting that falls outside the narrow confines of symmetrical composition and ventures into the realm where music and lyrics stay off-balance while remaining on-target.

 

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What’s your story and how do you tell it?

Are you a provocateur? An abstract, evocative storyteller? A painter of fables? An abstract teller of tales? All (or none) of the above?

When music and lyrics are understood in dramatic terms, rather than in purely musical terms, the process of songwriting becomes less about verses, choruses, lines, or hooks and more about characters, actions, scenes, and narration. A switch of context like this can help you bring some fresh material to the table and enliven your music in some interesting ways.

Listen to this special SOS episode (recorded on the road in rural Massachusetts) for a glimpse into JP’s understanding of the relationship between music and drama. Apply the concepts to your own writing and the results might surprise and delight you!

 

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Do you ever find yourself spontaneously creating something and having no idea whether it is any good? What do you do? Do you ignore the impulse? Do you follow your original thought? Do you try to transform an imperfect seed into a viable work? Do you stop the flow of ideas, waiting for something “good” to come along? 

In this unique SOS episode, the discussion about how the process of improvisation can turn into a composition takes a sudden turn when JP stops talking and starts playing…taking the closest instrument to where he is sitting (in this case, a ukulele) and exemplifying in-the-moment the very process he addresses in words. The result is both raw and revealing. 

 

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Good songwriting may be based on considerations about key, tempo, harmonic progression, lyric form and structure, but somewhere along the line, you have to lay down your weapons and surrender to the unknown–the mystery of music. But does that mean it’s all up for grabs? Can you know exactly when and how to give up control and in what proportion? There are some tried and true techniques for subverting the rational mind in order to allow the pure spirit of the music to come through. Listen in as JP takes you on a brief journey into the non-rational spaces of musical creativity.

 

 SOS Episode #11: Getting Out Of Your Head: The limits Of Rationality In Songwriting and In Living (or “When To Stop Making Sense”): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download