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| Michael Anderson |
It is getting toward the end of a quarter where I teach songwriting as I write this and I am once again amused at a pattern I see in students (and people in general) who want to write songs. As the name implies — actually writing a song involves an active process — but you would be surprised how many people want to write, but never get to it.
I suppose it is human nature to procrastinate and just talk about doing something — but the distance between intent and action in the case of songwriting is the difference between doing something and doing nothing or starting ideas that never get finished — a verse and chorus that just sit there or a riff that gets repeated and then forgotten.
I am often guilty of the same process. There are many reasons (excuses) we can offer — lack of time, lack of inspiration, lack of excitement over the idea (which often means it's not that good in the first place), distraction with other aspects of life, or even lack of knowledge of the process. For my students who start a new course at the beginning of a quarter, it is always a challenge to stay focused as other classes start demanding more and more concentration and work.
But I have talked about the need to focus time and energy in these articles before — right now I want to report on a process that happened.
The other day I finished building a guitar I had been working on. Many times in the past I have written songs when changing strings on a guitar — there is something fresh about just playing around with a guitar after the process of taking off the old strings and tuning up new ones. Your mind is on the "doing" of something — and in that state the unconscious creative flow can be open.
Many times I have found myself playing a new guitar in a different way than I have ever played before — something about the newness brings out something different — it talks to you in a new way.
But this new guitar was singing — it turned out different and better than what I was even hoping. And as I started playing it for the first time a very cool riff developed.
I started singing a melody to the riff — and then tried singing a counter melody rather than what the riff was implying. The riff itself was just a descending walk down — so I started singing the melody as a rising build.
Lyrically I wasn't thinking too specific at first — but some general ideas started developing. I had recently gone through some emotional extremes with a relationship (always good for the songwriting if a bit tough on emotions) — and some lyrics started coming.
I could hear that the form of the song was going a certain direction — there were two distinct parts that felt like an A and a B section of the main body. Then another part started appearing — sort of a variation on the riff starting on the IV chord (I was playing in "G" so the IV was a "C").
I wasn't real excited about the IV chord riff, but left it as a change of pace.
At this point I realized the form could work as a basic AABA structure — and thought of "Yesterday" as a template. If I were going that way I knew I needed a strong hook / title line in the opening line and for repeating through the song.
I also realized the IV chord riff I wasn't excited about actually worked very well as a middle 8 — not strong enough on it's own, but as a relief and counter section very effective.
So in thinking about it in context of the lyric I was writing I came up with "When The Lights Go Down" as a title hook — strong image, romantic, and a bit suggestive. The bonus was the song wasn't about the obvious implications of that title — there was a twist.
I went through the rough lyrics I had been writing and realized they fell in a story line — they were a bit more simple and basic structurally and developmentally than I normally like, but for the subject matter the development was fine.
Then I slapped a capo on and sang it in a stronger push area of my voice and put down a quick demo in Logic.
The entire process of writing the song was about an hour or less. I haven't written one like that in a long time. But it reminded me that just doing it is more than a Nike slogan — I could have given myself any number of reasons to walk away from the process once I started — but I didn't. I normally take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to sometimes many years to write a song — this one just happened this way. But the lesson was the same — if I hadn't taken the time to do it I wouldn't have the song.
As a bonus, she liked it. 
If you would like a free mp3 of the rough demo of "When The Lights Go Down" e-mail Michael Anderson, author of The Little Black Book of Songwriting, at Michaela@mi.edu.
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