I Hate Mornings

I’m quite a technical songwriter. I have methods of writing. I can justify my choices of rhyme, structure and language. I studied songwriting. When I hear songs I analyse them. I see songwriting as a craft (ie. something you can learn and improve with practice).

A lot of songwriters I know don’t see it this way at all. They see songwriting as a pure form of artistic expression that can be ruined by overthinking. They see justification of musical choices as a weakness, as if you’re bowing to the demands of the imagined audience instead of being authentic and true to the soul or emotional message of the song.

It’s difficult to think about this objectively. The fact that I’m even writing this puts me firmly in the thinking camp. A feeling songwriter wouldn’t write about songwriting. They would just write songs. I’m sure a carefully balanced approach is best, but I can’t do that.

So I’m going to be entirely subjective and tell you why I think songwriting needs to be approached as a craft. I hope some of you feelers might be able to help me see your side of the argument.

Songwriting is a craft, not an art

There’s no such thing as a conceptual songwriter. As an artist you are free to choose from all sorts of funky media and part of the game is to work outside the box and provoke thought and criticism. Songwriting isn’t like that. Composition is like that, but songwriting isn’t. As a songwriter you’ve signed up to write songs, and the popular song isn’t a very flexible form. It’s not quite as restrictive as being a sonnetwriter, but it’s closer to that than, say, a novelwriter.

There’s nothing to stop you exploding the confines of the form and writing 15-minute one-chord freeform poetry, but that’s not a song. You could argue that it is, but you’d be wrong (the word song refers to a pretty specific musical form, and let’s assume we’re talking about popular song, even late 20th Century popular song to keep things simple).

Given that you’ve chosen to write in such a specific musical and lyrical form, it makes sense to understand that form as deeply as possible. To study the greats. To analyse and practise and learn, until you can write so fluently that the form becomes transparent to the listener and the message, the emotion, the feeling is transmitted as purely as possible.

As a listener, there are lots of things that can make you aware of the form, and distract you from the message:

• boring bits, where a song goes on too long, repeats too much or is too formless to follow easily
• uncomfortably dissonant moments
• surprising and unprepared musical moves
• embarrassing lyrics, cheesy rhymes and empty clichés
• unnatural turns of phrase
• words wrongly stressed

Any feeling songwriter can point out a bad song. If you can recognise a bad song from a good one, you must know on some level what makes the bad songs bad. And once you know that you can avoid the bad things in your own writing and do more of whatever makes the good songs good. All feeling songwriters do this more or less consciously. So how is there still this idea that thinking about the technicalities of songwriting can ruin the feel of a song?

Are thinker and feeler songs different?

At this point, I imagine a feeler would point out that we’re talking about different kinds of song. I’m talking about heartless, muso, technically brilliant Nashville-style thinker songs, they would say, while they are talking about good, authentic, passionate songs. They may even raise an eyebrow and mention Steely Dan or drop in a quick Beatles/Stones comment.

While it’s true that I’m partial to some ‘classic’ songwriters like Ben Folds, Carole King, even occasionally Neil Diamond, most of the music I listen to and love is good, authentic, passionate music – The Band, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, The Small Faces and all that. And all of this real, true, passionate music is played over carefully crafted song forms.

Songs and recordings are not the same thing

If I were a feeler reading this, I’d probably start listing great tracks that have almost no song structure. There are loads. So I think it’s important to remember that we’re talking about songs here, not recordings. There’s a track on the Ben Folds Five demos and outtakes album Naked Baby Photos called For Those Of Ya’ll Who Wear Fannie Packs that’s just a recording of them jamming Rage Against the Machine in soundcheck. It’s a great recording, and I used to listen to it all the time, but it’s not a good song. At all.

Maybe that’s the answer. Good songs require thinking, and good recordings are about feeling. Does that ring true to any of you feelers? Or am I overthinking the whole issue? ;)

There’s a lively discussion happening in the comments to Steve Lawson’s article After CDs. What’s Next?. Steve reckons we should be excited about the artistic freedom we’re afforded by abandoning the format of The Album:

It’s amazing how containers can make us lazy about content. The assumptions we make about the nature of music, collections of music, what constitutes a ‘complete work’ etc.

I absolutely agree, and I’ve come across a wonderful example of a post-Album project that not only breaks the boundaries by being 185 songs long, but is delivered as a podcast, features 185 different artists and provides better sleeve notes than I ever saw on a CD.

I’m not going to miss the album that much.

Seriously. I never thought the day would come when I would be happy to leave my record collection (and my 1983 direct drive turntable) languishing in a barn. But that’s where they are. If I feel sentimental about my dog-eared 12″ of Deep Purple’s Burn (like I did last week), I grab the torrent and ten minutes later it’s on my iPod as I stroll down the street grinning and brandishing the air guitar.

Musicians get quite precious about The Album as an artistic form, and there are loads of albums that are so much more than a simple playlist of songs. Sleeve notes and artwork also help to create a listening experience around the music. That’s great, and there’s nothing to stop musicians creating 45-minute collections of songs for download if that’s what they want to do. They can even separate them into Side A and Side B if they like. Two ZIP files instead of one. And sleeve notes work really well online – check out David Jennings’ wonderful 69 Love Songs companion piece.

When you think about it, the album was good for a few things:

• It gave musicians a form within which to create music.
• It gave the audience an easy and understandable way of supporting an artist.
• It gave the record company a product.
• It was a carrier for sleeve notes and artwork (aka. context).

Now the record industry is concerning itself with collapse, profits and Britain’s Got Talent. The audience has a new easy, understandable way of supporting an artist (iTunes etc.). The musicians are starting to realise that it’s not very difficult to replace the creative limitations of the album format with limitations of their own devising. Being creative is, after all, what they are supposed to be good at.

So now we can create whatever musical projects we like to catch people’s attention, it’s the really creative artists who are making waves. Roger and Dave are a pair of musicians, artists and producers who work in New York. They have come up with the best idea I have heard in, well, ever.

The Beatles Complete On Ukulele

It sounds like the kind of project I would find scrawled in my Moleskine the morning after a party. On finding this message from my enlightened self, I would chuckle and cross it neatly out. Because I’m not as brilliant and visionary as Roger and Dave.

The concept is simple (and it’s all about the concept):

Roger and Dave will….

1. Record & perform on ukulele all 185 original compositions by The Beatles with 185 guest artists.
2. Write essays to coincide with each release.
3. Make available for download one new recording and essay every Tuesday for 185 weeks, beginning January 20, 2009 (Inauguration Day) and climaxing July 24, 2012 (The eve of the London Olympics).

Each song is posted on a simple Blogger website, and there’s an RSS feed so you can subscribe to the project as a podcast in iTunes. And that’s where it becomes really interesting, and where Roger and Dave have created something new and beautiful.

It’s all about the experience

When you listen to the latest Beatles cover on your iPod, the accompanying essay (aka. sleeve notes) is displayed on your iPod screen. So you read it as you’re listening. They give you an amusing but incredibly well researched insight into the writing and recording of the original, including anecdotes and rambles about what John and Paul were up to at that point in their songwriting career. They critique the song and the recording as songwriters, producers, curators and archivists. Then they introduce you to whoever is covering the song (a different musician sings each week, and they provide the ukulele and produce the rest of the track).

By the time you’re half way through reading the sleeve notes the song has finished, so you put it on again to get the rest of the essay. And maybe again. You listen to the song two or three times through while reading about it and immersing yourself in the details and the stories. Does this sound familiar? Isn’t this the mythical value of The Album? Didn’t you used to sit on your bed listening to the album all the way through two or three times while scouring the sleeve notes and the artwork for context, reassurance and trivia?

That’s how I felt when I sat on the train listening to Emily Zuzik singing Hold Me Tight (one of the most exhiliratingly cool tracks I’ve heard for years) and reading the essay. Try it. Right now. Press play and read the quote:

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The tune features an incredibly precocious vocal melody over a swinging American Rhythm and Blues form. Fabulous harmony. But critically, Hold Me Tight is marred by insipid innocuous non-threatening male expressions of affection, designed to elicit the slightest of squeals from a twittering Tween. Lyrically typical of the songs Lennon and McCartney were writing at the time, our Hero is not even getting to first base. Hold Me Tight. I Wanna Hold Your Hand. I’m Happy Just To Dance With You. Young girls like to be liked. But not too much. Don’t go too far. Musically this song is a success. Lyrically, embarrassing. What’s going on here? The contrast between the Beatles STD-riddled, licentious and voluptuous pill popping real lives, and the lyrics of their early teenage puppy love songs, was vast. I believe this cognitive dissonance was a central facet of their initial appeal.

I don’t know about you, but that’s what I’m looking for in a listening experience. An experience. I want my music to arrive with this much context built in. We’ve been doing it with video, with live shows and with websites of vaguely interesting writing. And now Roger and Dave are doing it with a podcast. And a ukulele.

It Won’t Be Long

When you come across a project like this, you would be insane not to get involved. So when Roger and Dave asked me to record a song for TBCOU, I dug out my old Beatles records and searched for a song to cover. I didn’t have to look far. It Won’t Be Long is the first track on With The Beatles, which is the first Beatles album I ever heard while digging through my dad’s collection back in the late eighties. The song is fun, cheesy, and energetic. Ideal.

I recorded a quirky but authentic version with a simple guitar track, the main riff on piano and sixteen tracks of harmonies, and emailed it to New York. Having heard the spotless production and impeccable wit of the first 21 tracks of the project, I have a feeling this is going to be incredible.

If you want my musical recommendation for 2009 (and a podcast that will keep delivering amazing versions of songs you already love until 2012!) I suggest you subscribe to TBCOU right now. And in case you need any more persuasion, here’s the latest episode. A dub reggae version of Blackbird. Un. Fucking. Believeable. ;)

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UPDATE: My cover of It Won’t Be Long is up on the TBCOU site, and it’s better than I could have imagined!

I love AudioBoo. It’s a wonderfully simple app, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to use it as a songwriter.

In case you haven’t come across it, AudioBoo is an iPhone app that lets you record a short podcast (5 minutes max), title it, tag it, attach a photo and upload it straight to the AudioBoo website, which is set up like Twitter (you follow people, they follow you, everyone has a party, etc.).

Idea 1: An insight into the songwriting process

My first inclination was to record song fragments or ideas as I write them. It’s a romantic idea, that listeners could have a direct line into the songwriter’s head as he toys with fully-orchestrated sections of potential song. But that doesn’t really fit my way of writing. I tend to have an almost complete lyric before I start strumming, and a podcast of me reciting half-written lyrics doesn’t sound great. It’s not that I’m precious about my unfinished works (I tend to publish first, rewrite later), but a photo of a notebook or a Tumblr post would be more useful than AudioBoo.

Idea 2: Bootlegging and reviews

Secondly I tried AudioBooing gigs. I recorded one on the way to see Little Feat, with the intention of using AudioBoo to capture the atmosphere of the gig later. But I was having too much fun to bother fiddling with technology, and there was zero signal in the Academy anyway. And if I can’t upload straight away, I lose the motivation pretty quickly.

I had more luck at an acoustic Stornoway gig at the Rusty Bicycle, where I embarrassed my brother by sliding my iPod Touch across the floor (Ghostbusters style) to record a song before videoing it with the N95 in one hand and taking stills with the ES400D in the other. Because the gig was completely acoustic and I was two feet from the band I could get decent recordings of Fuel Up and We Are The Battery Human. But I don’t think AudioBoo is going to be the next killer bootlegging app.

Idea 3: Covers and quick demos

I was working on a cover of The Beatles’ It Won’t Be Long for Roger and Dave‘s Complete Beatles On Ukulele project, and my third AudioBoo strategy was to record a quick version of that mid-rehearsal. That worked pretty well, helped by Colt Seavers‘ AudioBooTH project, which gives context to musical and art-related boos (and happened to be in the middle of a “covers” week). A few days later I recorded a Sunday morning cover of a Little Feat song. I think using AudioBoo to record quick and dirty versions of songs (covers or not) is something that I’ll be playing with more.

Idea 4: New life for unsung classics

I had an idea a while ago that I could use AudioBoo as a dumping ground for the best of the old, unfinished songs that don’t make it onto albums and websites. I occasionally listen back my archives of demos and experiments, and I always come across something brilliant. It might not be a polished recording. It might not even be much of a song. But it’s a snapshot of a particular interesting moment.

I guess it’s like the “outtakes and B-sides” you get on albums and DVDs. There’s something very immediate and personal about them. Thinking about it now, some of my favourite albums are made up of tracks that didn’t make the cut. Hoy Hoy is a wonderful Little Feat double gatefold album of live tracks, demos, alternate takes and b-sides. Naked Baby Photos is the same for Ben Folds Five. In the post-album digital chaos of ihatemornings.com, maybe AudioBoo can be my outlet for outtakes and B-sides.

On the train home from work my iPod shuffled me up a song I wrote for the 50/90 challenge last year, and which never made it onto my website. It’s called Putting Your Hand In The Blender Again, named after a phrase my girlfriend uses to describe somebody revisiting a bad relationship. In a fit of excitement I recorded a quick intro, then rummaged around for some jack-to-phono leads, plugged my laptop into my stereo, plugged my stereo into my iPod and recorded the song into AudioBoo in glorious hi-fi stereo:

Getting a line input into AudioBoo

If you’re an AudioBoo user, you might be wondering how I managed to get a line in to AudioBoo. It just records from the mic, doesn’t it? Not if you have a 1st Generation iPod Touch and a MicroMemo mic. This random combination gives you a stereo mic or line level input into which you can plug just about anything. I’ve bookmarked a couple of useful links to get you going.

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch you can get AudioBoo from the App Store (for free!), and if you don’t you can still check out my boos on the website.

Sunshine Beauty – a geek summer anthem from Ben Walker on Vimeo.

I’ve had this song kicking around in various states since before Christmas, but since today felt like the first day of summer I decided to finish it off. I let my email subscribers see it yesterday as a special treat (I’ve been sending them a weekly email about social media and music).

I’ll be playing it for the first time at Ben’s Big Gig next Friday! ;)

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I don’t know if it’s an extension of my character, or a subconscious desire to write like Ben Folds or Little Feat, but I like my lyrics to be funny but deadpan. To the point that my songs might easily seem very earnest and humourles if you weren’t really listening.

But sometimes that backfires. Sometimes people just don’t want to listen so hard. I play them my witty lyrical insights into modern society and all they hear is “La la la la. Dum dum de dum dum.” Because in their minds they are running through shopping lists, trying to remember the name of that great Steven Seagal film they saw last night, or maybe just concentrating on the way I’m fretting a G13 chord (usually 3X345X – a great shape).

So it’s good to have some songs that boldly state their purpose in the first bar or two. The Twitter Song was one of those – I knew I had about five seconds to make people laugh, hence the “Twittaaaaahhh” backing vocals – and Make A Difference is another: it opens with a mouth trumpet solo. I learned this beautiful skill from watching endless episodes of A Bit of Fry & Laurie as a teenager. You can see some fine examples of Hugh Laurie’s mouth trumpet virtuosity in this compilation of Soupy Twist endings (the MT kicks in at about 0:58).

So is Make A Difference a dig at eco-freaks?

I sit firmly in the eco camp, and this is not a climate change denial song or a lame attempt to poke fun at those who are actually trying to effect change. It’s a satire of the North Oxford greenies. I’m sure this type exists everywhere. They are well-meaning and very organised, but rather inward-looking as a community. They carry a Bag For Life around the Organic Farmers Market once a week, eat an expensive Organic Fried Breakfast and that’s their contribution.

Of course, I only mock because I am one of them. I used to cycle down to the Organic Farmers Market in Wolvercote every Sunday, but now I’ve settled down with my own Organic Box Delivery from Abel & Cole (whom I heartily recommend). So it’s a subject close to my heart. And it’s great that people can find it amusing and entertaining on different levels: “Isn’t it funny how these greenies behave?”, “Isn’t it funny how these middle class eco-wannabes behave?”, “Isn’t Ben a posh twit?”, etc.

Where do we go from here?

Last weekend I got the band back together to start rehearsing all these new songs I’ve been writing. When we came to Make A Difference, we had to make some tough decisions. It needed to have the comedy Latin intro, but could the verses really be that quiet and folky? And what about harmonies? Hmm…

I’m quite happy with what we came up with after half an hour or so. It has much more of a Kinks feel than before, and I like its strumminess. What do you think?: