Songwriting Reflections

Melancholy feelings and minor keys are both more appealing to me than their respective alternatives, at least when put into the employ of art and music. For some reason, a "happy" song with "happy" lyrics seems vapid and dull to me. I want to get at the deep stuff underneath. Major keys seems to scream of a kind of phatic expression, a platitude of nothingness. "Fine, thank you". "Good afternoon, sir" they exclaim.

Maybe that's why I like power chords so much in my music, because they're ambiguous as to their tonality. Are they major chords? Minor chords? Without a third, they are neither. They're open to interpretation. Now I'll admit, some songs by say The Descendents are a bit too fast and loose with their tonality (they're certainly fast!). Descendents songs seem to give me a kind of whiplash with all the modulation and lack of a tonal center.

I've heard tonality in Western music described as a journey. You start at the tonic, you go on a journey to the four chord, reach a bit further to the fifth, and then, when you can't stand it anymore, you gratefully return back to the tonic. Even chords like the minor two or the minor six share the tonality of the tonic, the one chord, so that going I - VI isn't so much a journey as a re-imagining of what's already there. "Here I am" says the one chord, "But it's a bit different now," finishes the six chord.

When I was first learning to play guitar, I was a big fan of Dave Matthews Band. I tried to learn as many of their songs as a could, and of course I was often frustrated by the quick and intricate guitar melodies and unique chord shapes. I simply wasn't good enough to play that music. Then I took a hard left the other way, and found the basic harmonic chords that made up songs and would just strum the chords while I sang the songs. But this kind of acoustic guitar treatment often robs songs of the rhythmic and melodic textures that make them so interesting, not to mention the complexities of the arrangements themselves.

Nonetheless, I still hold on to this picture of songs as a lead sheet, as a series of chords on a page with some lyrics scribbled underneath. And I've never been a believer of the importance of lyrics in songs. It's just not me. Most people will tell you that the lyrics are the single most important thing, they're what people hear and process and remember. But for me, I always though the "music" was more important. Unfortunately, the music for me has always just meant the basic acoustic guitar chords, where clearly that's not how most rock, pop and especially not EDM music works.

If you listen to many pop songs on the radio today, they are quite minimalist. Often the vocalist is singing over a simple drum loop or bass line or both and that's it. Yet these songs work.

I guess I'm just reflecting on some aspects of my own song writing here, but maybe someone else will find it enjoyable to read or informative in some way. Cheers!