Songwriting: Pearls vs. Diamonds

Have you ever held a pearl and really, really looked at it?  It's easy to see why they're so expensive.  They're beautiful, and they're also fairly difficult to collect.  Hold one up to the light; it's transluscent.  It looks like you can see deep inside it.  You know how they're made, of course.  Yeah, an oyster gets a piece of sand stuck, squirts some kind of juice all over it.  They cultivate pearls, too.  I guess that means they stick pieces of sand inside oysters.  Sounds . . . irritating.

Over the last couple of years I have gotten back to writing songs.  I've been inspired to do so by a couple friends of mine who are excellent songwriters; namely, Sky King and Jim Tyrrell.  Because of their inspiration I have gotten back to basics and been writing what could best be described as folksong-type songs.  A couple of verses, a chorus, maybe a bridge, not worrying as much about arrangement or style as expressing an idea.  Keeping it simple.

I consider songs like this to be like pearls.  One thing.  Simple, and beautiful, and often born out of things as small as a grain of sand, or any sort of emotional or intellectual irritant.  Something that deserves to be sung about.  Musically, it starts at the beginning, goes until the end, runs over whatever bumps are in the middle.  Hard to beat simple.

Now, if you follow this mess of bloggery and read the last couple of pieces, you know that I'm deep in the throes of a Kansas binge.  Got every album of theirs that I could lay my hands on and listened to them all, then went back to the beginning and started over.  As a break from that, I've veered away and dug out my collection of Steve Hillage, a very interesting Brit whose heyday (hayday? heydey?) was the late '70's.  Lots of similarities, once you break it down into the writing scheme.

Kansas, and Kerry Livgren in particular, had a distinctive style.  His songs tend to be made up of lots of little pieces stuck together.  One leads into another, and then another, which gives these songs a cohesiveness.  It's not just velcroing random parts together.  More like building a Ferrari.  You could actually take an early Kansas tune, break it down into its various chunks, and then flesh each of those chunks out into a whole album's worth of simple pearl-like tunes.  There are actually pros who do that sort of thing; grab a jazz album or a classical piece, pull out a riff or scale, and use it as the basis for a country or pop tune.  Randy Bachman of BTO actually admitted to doing so in a Guitar Player interview back in the '70's.

Have you ever seen a raw diamond?  It looks like just a rock, albiet kind of a transluscent one.  A jeweler takes a raw diamond and shaves it at various angles until the surface is covered with flat planes, or facets.  This allows light to travel through it and be twisted into various angles, giving it the visual beauty for which they are so famous.  Kansas songs, most of them, are like diamonds.

There was a point at which my songwriting had gone diamond-style.  They usually started with me experimenting with various sounds on the guitar or keyboard.  Then a lick, a chunk of a scale or something, would connect with that sound, and the process would begin.  At this point, it's decision time.  Do you just let it go around back to the beginning?  Do that a couple of times and you've got verses.  If that's not enough you come up with a chorus, maybe even a bridge.

Or, do you throw standard song-form out the window?  The verse you started with comes to a terminus.  Instead of another verse, you can take it on a sharp left turn.  Maybe you don't even let it become a whole verse.  See if you can find another lick to compliment the first one, and follow that thread a ways.  Especially good if it brings out a different lyrical thing, kind of like turning the stone and letting the light strike the facets from a different angle.  It becomes like building a Song out of little song-lets.

I'm currently working on a tune that's kind of an homage to the Marines in my life.  For whatever reason, the good Lord has seen fit to surround me with Marines.  My father-in-law, my pastor, the previous pastor, the drummer for the Red Hat band, his biker buddies that come to our shows, and they're all awesome people.  A poor ol' squid like me ain't got a chance.

The song was inspired by something my pastor, David Moore, said in a sermon recently.  As an illustration he was describing a situation he faced back in Vietnam.  He and his men came back off one mission but were immediately ordered out on another with some newbies.  They were tired, but it needed to be done, so they went.  And in doing so, they showed the green ones how to get the job done.  The way he put it was; "We were hard."

It wasn't said in a prideful way, like they had their chests puffed out and were going to show these greenies who da man.  It was just a statement of fact, like a weather forcast.  They were hardened, tempered, ready.  Wimping out and crying foul was not an option.  You get back up, grab your pack and your piece, and get it done.

The way the song fell together was almost automatic.  For once, the words came first.  Usually, I find the musical germ and let that settle the pattern the words will have to fit, but this was different.  In two short sittings the lyrics were right there, BAM!  Like writing a news story.  Three verses, seeing a moment through the eyes of a Marine, first in Vietnam, then Iraq, and finally at Valley Forge.  Each verse ending with the words, "We were hard."

So now I have to build some music around that.  I took an afternoon and went out to my office, plugged in my amp and effects unit, and grabbed my beloved Godin LG-90.  Tuned it to an open D, because I've been trying to do more with open tunings and slide, two things I dearly love and am not very good at.  Played around with some different effects and tonal colors, and found a lick.  Knew immediately that this lick was for those words, and got 'em out.

The first verse is a hard 2/2 beat, front pickup, compressor on, and a little of the amp's tremolo to make the light dance through it.  Just the guitar at first, with maybe the kick drum hitting the 2's for the first half, then the drums and bass coming in but beating hard on that 2.  Second verse kicks the heat up a notch, giving that bluesiness a bit of country twang but with more punch than boogie.  Third verse would take it back to the beginning, but finishing up more like the second.

So I got that far, but it needs more.  Left at that, it's about 2, 2 1/2 minutes long and frankly wouldn't leave much of an impression.  There needs to be a bridge between 2 and 3.  Instrumental, because more words aren't necessary.  Something that expresses the feelings; of coming in off the hard march, tired and hungry, and there's trouble, so you go back out.  Something a little angular, a little painful, maybe a quick shout to get the blood pumping, a roar at the sun, and go.

By this point, it was supper time, but as I'm packing up to go back in the house I heard a faint lick on the edge of my mind to think about until next time.  And it's seven notes long, so there's another decision; do I add the eighth-note rest, or build around the seven pattern?  The lick feels solid, so there's the angle and the twinge of pain.  I guess I'm going to let the Marines march through Kansas.

Now, this is a band song, so don't ask for it at the Green House.  And Red Hat don't do originals, so I'll have to call Tod again, or maybe Rocco, and push some more on the side project.  Stay tuned, and toss up a little prayer for me if you don't mind, and I'll keep you posted.  I'm dying to hear how this comes out.