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Post by Jeff on Apr 20, 2006 8:29:06 GMT -5
Recently Justin and Ryan have given me some really good advice about recording. I thought that I might try to make some rules for myself based on their observations. These rules will sound more severe than I am really taking them, but I do want them to stand in contrast to my previous practices. I am tacking this list above my computer today. These are in no particular order.
Jeff’s house rules:
1. You can’t start with any loops. Recall the click track, my friend. 2. All guitar parts must be miked. No more digital manipulation to achieve the room sound you could get with a few extra minutes of setup time. 3. Drums must all be programmed by hand. Battery is your kit. Get used to it. 4. No more one take vocals. If you care about your songs and you insist on singing, then you have to care about making the singing sound a little better than a simple rough draft. 5. Try to put at least one live instrument in every song. Try to make it a guitar, even if it is only a bass. 6. Any sound that can be made naturally should be, except where costs are absolutely prohibitive. Avoid samples when you can. 7. Any part that you are physically capable of playing must be played. Avoid sequencing when you can. 8. Tracktion is your main audio recording program. 9. You may not make most of your mixes in Reason and import them as a submix. You may import only one part at a time from Reason. 10. You cannot write ANYTHING at 120 bpm for at least a year! 11. Try not to repeat any melody in exactly the same way twice. Even on a chorus there should be variation in any repetition. 12. Write more vocal harmonies. In fact, consider beginning each project by writing a lead vocal and harmonies. 13. Seek more collaboration from folks like Ryan, Justin, and Chris. 14. No more fruity abstract, philosophical lyrics. Your songs must be about something real even when you want to talk about ideas. Remember: The particular is the universal when you do it right. 15. I know I can’t stop you from writing about your own psychology, but will you try just one goddamn time? 16. If your current project sounds more like club music from the 1980s than like contemporary pop, don’t bother. 17. Consider live percussion. You don’t always have to have a whole kit. Sometimes a brush on a cardboard box can sound compelling. 18. Engage your humor. You are always so stupidly serious about everything. Music is supposed to be fun, but you seem to want to torture your audience. You think they like that? 19. Start recording with an eye to eventual live performances of your songs. It’s time to try that again. 20. Remember if you record a vocal, then it is the featured element in a mix. You can’t pretend the vocal is just any other melody. 21. Consider writing in some new genres: Jazz, prog rock, maybe even some classical forms. 22. Consider adding some other new rule to keep you on your toes and in the game. After all, this is what rules are for. Not silly dogmatism…
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Post by Tyler on Apr 20, 2006 11:07:34 GMT -5
I'm sorry, but I've just got to say this: 14. No more fruity abstract, philosophical lyrics. Your songs must be about something real even when you want to talk about ideas. Fruity abstract philosophical lyric: Remember: The particular is the universal when you do it right.
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Post by ryan on Apr 23, 2006 20:20:49 GMT -5
A retort to Tyler's retort:
You're right. "The particular is the universal when you do it right" is an abstract phrase. But I see where Jeff is coming from, and I agree. Writing about specific concrete details is always more effective than describing abstract thoughts and notions, even if those abstract thoughts and notions are what you're really getting at in your song.
I think a lot about lyrics, and I've sort of decided that there's a particular vocabulary that works best in music. It consists of short, hard, concrete words: Words that contain a strange but undeniable power: Words that can be invested with an almost Biblical kind of symbolism: Words like Truck, Radio, Blood, River, Stone, Hand, Sweat, etc. This observation wasn't based on any kind of serious introspection, but has arisen out of my simple desire to write lyrics that sound good and feel powerful.
But it's something that I do actually think about, on occasion. I call it the Rock Vernacular, or the Vocabulary of Rock. Guys like Jack White and Frank Black astound me with their ability to use this language to maximum effect. Even when their songs don't make sense on a literal level, the words themselves hold meaning that creates a powerful effect. It's an effect that I see as directly inspired by fire-and-brimstone preaching, and the Biblical proverbs.
Anyway, I don't want to go on about it. I just thought it was interesting that Jeff seems to have made this same observation.
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Post by jtmx1 on Apr 23, 2006 22:38:29 GMT -5
I agree with you entirely, Ryan, though I am not altogether happy with the situation. When I was about 15 or 16 I thought the way around the problem was to tell a generalizable story. But this ends up sounding too C&W. Anyway, it’s a formula that felt like a trap to me. Later on, I thought that if you could just hit one emotion and sound it true, then that was probably the best you could hope for in a song. So, I experimented with repeated words, words recorded from TV and radio broadcasts, or no words at all. But this seemed too little like a “song”-writing to me, though clearly electronica has had some successful experiments in this direction.
You are absolutely correct about the religious angle, and for a while now I've tried to use religious texts to communicate complex ideas. But other texts work like religion, too. I think this is what I loved about The Arcade Fire. They used the text of family in just this way. So, for the last few years I've been exploring these kinds of texts. In 2000 I tried to explore the imagery of the hand. In 2003 I wrote a round of songs based on the Arthur legends, of all things. Then I worked on some images from Blake's poems in that Tyger's of Wrath CD. Now I am using the text of a divorce. Always, I am looking for something entirely specific to blow up.
Justin has accomplished this several times in his songs. He doesn't think of himself as a lyricist, but he is so successful at this technique. Of course, "Iris" is the prime example. Here is a totally unique situation: The narrator finds a specific picture in a definite drawer that has a totally unambiguous, idiosyncratic and undisclosed meaning for him/her. It stops him in his tracks. And who hasn’t felt just that way? Of course the particulars are not the same, but this doesn’t seem to matter. I’ve never been tied to a chair like that dude in Reservoir Dogs, yet I squirmed for him. And it was the details of the situation that made it real. Jeff Bridges’ character in the film “A Door in the Floor” makes exactly this point with a detail about a tennis shoe at the end of that film.
If Justin had simply said, "I was stopped in my tracks by her picture," the impact would have been almost entirely lost. (BTW: To hear Justin’s best uses of this technique (IMHO) I would urge the interested to audit "Someplace Else," "Crosslands," and "Nothing Here:” All the alterations make the cheap suit fit/Ask for something larger and the smaller you’ll get.)
Jeff
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Post by Guest Justin on Apr 24, 2006 7:21:38 GMT -5
Ah, bro, you're too kind. By the way, there are two sets of lyrics to Iris. The one you're talking about is my favorite lyrical version, but it's just too short to get into (it clocks in at about 0:35). The other version has a whole big C section and some really excellent mandolin playing from Chris. But the lyrics on that version are just stupid.
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Post by jtmx1 on Apr 24, 2006 8:43:50 GMT -5
The mandolin version of Iris is the one that I have on mp3, so it's the one I listen to the most. While I wouldn't say the lyrics are stupid, they definitely aren't as good. After I wrote about your songs last night I had to listen to them all again. I am fortunate enough to have all of these on mp3.
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Post by Betterout on Apr 24, 2006 9:49:52 GMT -5
I am attracted to biblical imagery and even direct quotations in rock lyrics. One of my favorites here is the aforementioned (Frank) Black (Francis), who in his Pixies days sang about Nimrod, Samson, Delilah, David, Bathsheba, Uriah, and probably some others who seem to elude me now. Nick Cave and Elvis Costello are also in this category, and both have dedicated songs and even albums to Cain and Abel. The "talker/singers" Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Johnny Cash really get into this practice, too, and at times appropriate entire hymns and sermons into their own lyrical visions! I think Alex Chilton also writes from a particularly Christian upbringing, as Bono (but in an over-the-top way... "She moves in mysterious ways" Oh, gimme a break!).
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Post by ryan on Apr 28, 2006 2:11:50 GMT -5
Wow, this has turned into an excellent discussion. I don't want to kill it with one of my massive ka-chunk postings, but I thought I'd mention a few of my thoughts.
All I've really heard of Justin's music is a cassette tape he gave me once entitled "A Bit Too Much." It contained versions of Someplace Else, Iris, Crosslands, and a few other inspired tunes such as, uh, Inspired, Heavensent and Shine On (Martian Mamma). I agree that Justin shows a fine lyrical prowess when he applies it, especially in these songs. I've always been particularly struck by the song Someplace Else, which is a great example of a song taking the particulars of a situation, and making a universal kind of statement out of them. I am moved anytime I listen to that song.
I agree with all the other good lyricists you guys mentioned. Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Elvis Costello have long been at the top of my list, and the Arcade Fire writes some really moving lyrics. And I really dig Johnny Cash, although I have to appreciate him from the standpoint of the era when his music was created. Same goes for Hank Williams Sr. I used to really dig Bono, but as I've gotten older I've started to realize how he never really did write fantastic lyrics; he wrote mediocre metaphors and sang 'em in a voice so spirited and full they sounded like they meant the world.
There are other lyricists I like for various reasons, such as Thom Yorke from Radiohead, who occasionally stumbles over a rich turn of phrase (although his lyrics are seldom as good as the way in which he delivers them). I dig Stephen Malkmus from Pavement, whose loose meandering wordplay creates a kind of urban collage. I dig Beck, for the same reason. David Byrne of The Talking Heads, for his ability to condense modern anxiety into tight little catchy verses.
I've thought a lot about what separates good lyrics from the bad, and I haven't arrived at any answers, but I've made a couple of observations which seem to be true a great majority of the time:
1) The most effective lyrics in music are usually formed from common, everyday language which "the average person" can understand. Great lyricists seldom, if ever, break out a thesaurus.
2) The best lyricists seek to distill emotional truths down into the fewest possible words, using a lyrical symbology that's appropriate for what they're trying to say.
With this in mind, consider The Arcade Fire. They wrote an astoundingly moving album about community. And, as Jeff pointed out, the text from which they drew their language was that of the neighborhood.
Or consider this, one of my favorite lyrical tidbits, penned by the great Leonard Cohen:
"Maybe there is a god above / but all I've ever learned from love / was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya. / I've seen your flag on the marble arch / and love is not a victory march / it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah."
There is so much real emotion contained in those few short phrases, you could easily write an essay dissecting it. But that's the point. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, then, a picture in words is worth a thousand more.
Or, as my creative writing teacher Conrad Vollertsen once said, "Don't tell me! Show me!"
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