Songwriting Analysis: Tools and Materials

You may not know this, but as a New Englander, I do; a wooden covered bridge will outlast an open steel-and-concrete one.  This one, near my brother's house in Bath, has been there since 1832.  The reason that this bridge was made out of wood in the first place is, of course, there was a lot more wood available in Bath, NH 1832 than there was concrete and steel.  The idea of covering it is probably part of that whole reputation that New Englanders have for being pragmatic.  If you're going to build a damned bridge, you only want to do it once, so you might as well protect it as best you can.

In a nutshell, you use the materials you have to do the best job you can.

Writing a song is a lot like building a bridge, in certain ways.  Songwriters, especially modern ones who tend not to know so much about music theory, tend to write for the tools they have handy.  Guitar players write songs that they can play with relative ease in relation to their skills.  So do piano players, trumpet players, flautists, etc.

For guitar players who like to play close to the nut with lots of open strings, the chords most likely to appear in their songs are G, C, D, Am, and Em.  We've pretty much summed up the history of Country and Piedmont Blues right there.  If they're electric guitarists who are rockers and like to use a lot of barre chords, the most prominent keys to write in are E and A.  It's notable that both Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn, who had big hands with long fingers, liked to play Fender Stratocasters (which have a longer, 25.5 inch scale) and played close to the nut (where the frets are further apart) and consequently wrote a lot of songs in the key of E.  This meant they didn't have to squish those big fingers together up on the fifth fret where the key of A was more accessable.  Their limitations and preferences dictated their writing style, or at least affected it.

It's the same for players of other instruments.  It's the reason that you don't hear many trumpets in bluegrass, or banjoes in be-bop.  Banjoes, mandolins, and guitars are tuned to play in keys like E, A, G, C, and D.  Trumpets and other horns are more comfortable in Bb, F, Eb and stuff like that.  I guess that explains why Miles Davis and John Coltrane never jammed with Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs.  Shame, that.

I have been listening a lot in recent months to how piano players write their songs.  Billy Joel, Elton John, Leon Russell, Jerry Lee Lewis, Barry Manilow, Bruce Hornsby, and all of it being brought back home again with my recent acquisition of Harry Nilsson's All-Time Greatest Hits.  As a songwriting guitar player, I have found it very educational to play a lot of other people's songs, and some of the stuff I have the most fun with is songs by piano players.  I just love trying to figure out how to do an interesting version of a Billy Joel or Elton John song on the guitar.  (I guess I'd better learn a Manilow tune, because now somebody's bound to ask.)

The histories of the keyboard and the Western system of writing music are closely intertwined, to the point that both are rooted in the key of C.  On a piano, organ, or synthesizer keyboard the white keys are a C major scale.  To play in any other key, you have to use black keys.  The same with the musical staff; all the lines and spaces are notes in the C major scale, and to write any other notes requires the use of sharps and/or flats.

So the most common keys, especially for any modern pianist who doesn't have a lot of training in music theory, are C and Am, both of which can all be done on just the white keys.  After that, the key of F (or Dm) is widely used, because this only requires replacing the B with a Bb.  And, the key of G (or Em), in which the F is replaced by F#.  Then, it's the keys of Bb (or Gm) which has two flats, and D (or Bm) which has two sharps.  The physical limitations of the instrument dictate its use. 

Furthermore, any piece that involves horns will use the keys with flats instead of sharps, because most horns are tuned to Bb or Eb.  Throwing in a flute limits the choices further, because the flute it tuned to C.  So if you've got a piece written for piano, trumpet, alto sax, and flute, you have to be very careful because the four instruments are tuned to be most comfortable in C, Bb, Eb, and C again respectively.  Driving you crazy yet?  Then don't throw in a guitar!  (And if you do, make sure he brings a capo.)

What, for me, makes piano songs most interesting is how easy it is to use secondary and tertiary chords.  For those of you to whom that is confusing, it means simply this; think of chords as colors.  In the visual world, the primary colors are red, yellow, and blue.  All the other colors are mixtures of those.  Purple is made from red and blue.  Orange, red and yellow.  Green is yellow and blue.  That means that purple, orange and green are secondary colors.  Colors made of a mix of a primary and a secondary would be tertiary; quite literally, the third level.  (Go ahead and Google "Teriary colors" for some cool stuff.)

Musical chords are the same way.  The primary chords in any key are the root, the fourth, and the fifth.  So, in the key of C, your main chords are C, F, and G.  Each chord is made up of three notes; the root, third, and fifth notes.  So the F chord is made up of an F, an A, and a C.  These are actually the 4, 6, and 1 notes in the C major scale.  A secondary chord off the F would use any two of those three notes.  So instead of the F chord, you could substitute Dm (D, F, A) or Am (A, C, E).  Bdim and C would be tertiary chords of F, using one note from the F chord, and could be used to replace an F chord in a chord progression.  Got it?

What makes piano writing so cool is how easily these secondary (and tertiary) chords are accessed.  If you're holding your fingers to make a chord, all you have to do (at least in the key of C) is to hold your hand in that same position and move it to a different place on the keyboard.  Move up one key from a C chord and you're making a Dm.  One more, an Em.  Cool, eh?  Where it gets difficult is when you play in keys that require sharps or flats, because then you have to adjust at least one of the three fingers to move from a white key to a black key, or vice versa.

Simply put, the physical limitations dictate its use.

If you liked this, and want me to ramble on some more about basic music theory and songwriting, it would be my pleasure.  Thinking about writing this piece kept me up half the night anyway, so it's good to have a place to stick it.  So, if you like this and want more, just say; "Rick . . . stick it!"