I highly recommend her.
She is a prolific songwriter who understands the craft of story and writing much greater than I do.
The following is some of what I've read recently on her blog. To see more of what she is doing and what she has done please type your way to the following
www.brookefraser.com
all love friends. Enjoy.
CLIMATE
In this blog I’ll discuss the foundation on which your songs are built. Whether you like it or not, there is one, and it’s you. Your worldview, your motives, your ‘issues’ are indelibly marked on everything you create in your life – whether it’s a song or a conversation or a Tweet. Being aware of your headspace and internal-environment goes a long way to understanding why you are or aren’t writing the type of songs you’d like to.
Over the past few years, many of you have written to me and said you would appreciate it if at some point I could share a little about songwriting. It isn’t something I’ve written about before, and as much as I enjoy blogging about everything non-music related, for some reason now feels like the right time to bring this wee series to the table. This certainly isn’t an objective study on the theme – what I write here will be subjective, personal, completely taken from my own journey as a writer. I’m in no way attempting to table a thesis here or pretend I’m some sort of expert, which I absolutely am not. So with that cleared up, on we go.
You Are What You Eat
In songwriting workshops I’ve been involved in in the past, I have often said (partly to get a laugh but partly because I believe in the metaphor) that songs are like poo. Songs are like poo because:
1) You get out what you put in. Many people are naturally gifted-songwriters, but many successful songwriters are people who aren’t naturally musically gifted but have worked really hard at their craft. Read Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”… it brilliantly dissects the “myths” behind success – culture and opportunity have a lot to do with it… but the truth is, people who excel at anything usually work really, really hard. The 10,000 hour rule.
2) It is a product of what you feed yourself. If you feed yourself rubbish, what you output will be rubbish. I you feed yourself nutritiously, what comes out will be healthy. It’s the same with what we feed ourselves emotionally and spiritually. (I’m not going to get all weird on you, don’t worry – this is pretty logical.) If you’re listening to music with lots of minor chords and cynical lyrics about how the world is an awful, desolate hell and where no one can be trusted, reading depressing books, watching depressing films… it isn’t unlikely that your worldview* will reflect the negativity and cynicism you’re dwelling on/putting into yourself through your eyes and ears.
*“1. the overall perspective from which one sees and interprets the world. 2. A collection of beliefs about life and the universe held by an individual or group”
I’ll expand on this a little now. If you’re an artist or creative person of some kind, your artistic “digestive system” is your heart, mind and senses, your soul. So if something affects your soul, it affects your art.
Example.
Last year we introduced my music to the Americans for the first time. We toured extensively, did press/promo and achieved some exciting results. We substantially increased our touring base in the U.S. and by the end of 2008 were playing to audiences up to eight times the size of those I played to when we first did some showcases at the end of 2007. Thanks to U.S. iTunes selecting Albertine as Editor’s Choice for a week in June and putting a banner on their homepage, the Albertine record reached #5. You amazing people that came to shows sponsored swathes of precious children through World Vision and raised a ton of money for development work in Rwanda through the light-bulb t-shirt we introduced on the September tour. This was huge for us.
But behind the scenes a whole bunch of other stuff was going on and by the end of the year I was emotionally exhausted and the long period of sustained high stress had wrecked my body. I was forced to pull out of my last scheduled tour of the year and spent the month of October in bed on aggressive antibiotics. In November I took off to Africa, a place that is always challenging and healing for me. I didn’t want a bar of being Brooke Fraser. It took me a while to be able to pick up a guitar again.
Now it’s July 2009. I’ve picked up my guitar again, opened up Garageband and poised my pencil and I’m ready to be a conduit of the songs I’m trusting will come. But I’m more aware than ever of how my internal environment will affect the songs that come out of me. So to be honest, the way I’ve been writing so far is by dealing with all the “stuff” on the inside that I do not want to colour what I write and more importantly, how I live and hope and trust. Before I pick up the guitar or sit at the keyboard, I’ve been “writing” by feeding on the stuff I do want to mark my life and my art… hope, grace, forgiveness. Don’t get me wrong – I will write this next record very honestly and it won’t be all rainbows and butterflies – but I’m aware of the ‘aroma’ I want my songs to have, and it’s not one of bitterness, but one of grace. Grace doesn’t deny a wrong suffered or pretend it wasn’t that big a deal, but forgives it and loves in spite of it. I’ve received it so now I’ve gotta learn to give it, even though I’m not always the best at this and I’m still angry about some things. I am human.
Humanity and Art
“[Picasso] said this one thing I really did like, he said “good taste is the enemy of great art” which I think is very true. Good taste has all to do with being cultured and being refined and if art has to do with anything, it has to do with being human.” – Rich Mullins
Therein lies the guts of what I’ve attempted to unpack a little today. The humanity behind our art. Our struggle to navigate the world and society with all the infinite uniqueness of our personality, family background, emotional and genetic heritage, temperament, talents, mistakes, triumphs, preferences, IQ, sexuality, spirituality, language, birth order, addictions, allergies et cetera. Finding our place in the beautiful brokenness that is humanity and observing and recording what we discover along the way. I think the greatest art will always come from honest descriptions/depictions of our experience in the great in-between of being human.
Here’s to your humanity and mine, and the art it shall make
PROCESS
This blog will be about the actual writing process, with all its peaks and valleys, frustration and elation. I’ll cover inspiration, beginning a song and crafting a song .
I originally had elements such as melody and lyric as part of the ‘craft’ section of this blog, but in getting to it discovered there was so much I wanted to cover that I realised they were asking for their own blog (I plan to post that one within a day of this, so you won’t have to wait another six weeks!).
The creative process differs hugely from person to person, and even varies from work to work, piece to piece. I am not theorising about everyone else’s process, I’m simply trying to unpack my own for the amusement of any who may be interested. Happy reading (hope you’re in a comfy chair!)…
1. INSPIRATION– “Spark / Seeing”
Bloody inspiration. I think it’s every lazy journalist’s default fallback question. “Where does your inspiration come from?”. Stepping back a bit though, I think the question used to irritate me so much because I really didn’t understand what they were asking, let alone how to answer it. For most of my songwriting life, I’d always just “feel” when a song was churning around in my belly and I’d go to an instrument and it would come. Or I’d be at an instrument mucking around, then a song would turtlehead and I would get to work chipping and carving and coercing and bribing it out. But which aspect of that was “inspiration” and how it had come to me – I find that impossible to pin down and I certainly don’t think it’s necessarily anything I did in that moment to have it come. If we speak of inspiration as the spark that lights the fire, I suppose much of what we do as songwriters or artists is like banging stones together – preparing, being aware of our internal ‘climate’ (see previous blog), reading, writing, scribbling, sitting at an instrument and playing and fiddling and noodling – and hoping furiously that if we bang our stones together for long enough, a spark will eventually come.
I’ve always identified with the Michelangelo quote: “I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free.”
As it relates to songwriting, the “seeing” is the inspiration (the churning in the belly, the spark, the thing that fires you up so much that you cannot keep it in) and the “carving” is the craft, the tools with which we set our “song” free.
2. BEGINNING
Finishing a song can sometimes feel like an insurmountable task, but beginning can often be just as daunting, sitting around waiting for a spark. Here are some ideas that might help you get off the blocks:
Beginning with Harmony (Chords)
The most common way for a song to begin for me is actually by finding some kind of harmonic bed (chord progression) which feels good to me… I will play around with capo positions if I’m on the guitar (for some reason I have a penchant for frets 3 and 5), different voicings, emphases and sometimes tuning (but I’m no guitar maestro so much of the time I don’t really know what I’m doing, which can often be helpful believe it or not). Often a melody will come to me when I find a chord grouping that resonates with me. “The Thief”, “Hymn”, “C.S. Lewis Song” are examples of this. I find the chords often can indicate to you where the melody should/could go, too… but I’ll expand on this in the next blog specifically dealing with elements of song.
Beginning with Melody
Sometimes a melody will come to you and lead off an idea. Some little line pops into your head in the car or in the grocery store or the shower, and with a little encouragement and context (chords) you can find a flow and follow it. Deciphering Me and Love is Waiting were like this. Lots of writers I know have that little mic attachment for iPod that they record ideas with. I’m not so advanced – my recording tools are my phone and Garageband (comes pre-installed on Macs). When a melody line pops into your head – RECORD it a.s.a.p.! I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve had great melodies come to me at an inconvenient time and I’ve thought to myself “I’ll remember that later”. And I don’t. Also with garageband, make sure you press ‘save’, not ‘don’t save’ when you exit the programme. Last week I got a chorus melody to a song I’ve been working on for ages, just as I was running out the door to a meeting. I quickly put it down in Garageband, quit Garageband, shut down my laptop and ran out the door. I came back to the file later and the chorus WASN’T THERE. Devastation.
Beginning with Lyric
Carry a notebook with you. Sometimes I’ll use the ‘memo’ function on my phone to jot down a lyric idea, but I find that a bit soul-less. I’m a pen to paper, lo-fi, kinda gal. I would be mortified if anyone ever saw the contents of the various notebooks I’ve carried with me over the years. They are filled with all kinds of notions, thoughts, phrases, quotes and crazy stream-of-consciousness weird stuff… but some of that stuff will spark a song later on, so I write it all anyway.
Beginning with Rhythm
One of the reasons I started playing the guitar at 15 (late starter) was because I was sick of writing slow piano songs (piano is my first instrument). It’s a rare night you’ll see me play without a guitar in front of me… part of it is a muscle memory thing, part of it is just that I love rhythm – it’s how I feel part of a song. Because melody lines/sung parts often flow over staccato rhythms (and I’d get quite bored with just participating in a song like that I think) I love being able to smash my guitar and be right there in the action of the song. Rhythm has been the founding factor of songs like “Hosea’s Wife”, “Lifeline” (off WTDWD) and “Albertine”. Have a play around with different rhythms and strum patterns and see if it helps a new idea emerge. Listen to music with rhythms that are different to those you might normally start with when you’re in autopilot.
Beginning with Story
I can’t say I do this a lot, but I have friends who write the majority of their songs by using a story (true or imagined) as a frame and then musically/lyrically filling it in, using narrative or first-person. My friend Ben says that he does this because then he doesn’t have to come up with a lot of clever one liners, he can just lyrically illustrate a character (really he is a genius and he’s just being modest). A lot of artists I admire use this method and it’s not something I am naturally very good at so I will probably experiment with it some more in the future. It’s good to work on your weaknesses. If you just work from your strengths all the time, you might start to think you’re awesome, which none of us are, and your songs will sound ‘samey’ and eventually you may hit a dead end. Plus you’ll be arrogant, which is never attractive. I think part of being a good anything, whether it be a writer, a musician or a good mum, is to develop and sow into the areas we struggle with.
(NB: People who are good at this: Joni Mitchell (my hero), Bob Dylan, Brighteyes, about a million other people who aren’t me)
3. CRAFT – “Carving”
Once you’ve begun… what do you do? Here’s where the chasing, sitting and distinctly unglamorous hard work kick in.
For me personally, once I’ve begun, I set about the task of getting to know the song. It probably sounds quite odd, but nowadays I see my songs as people. Once I meet them via ‘beginning’, I must set about asking questions – trying to “see” the song in order to “carve” it out (that Michelangelo quote again).
Does the song feel like a lullaby, a dirge, an anthem, a waltz, a power-punch, a ballad? It may be sweet at the beginning, but does it have a dark twist at the end? Or does it want to stay sweet all the way? I try not to impose my preferences on the song – I don’t want to make it someone it isn’t. This part is pretty much all instinct. Listen to your gut.
Part of the reason I am averse to co-writing is because often you find yourselves in situations where you are pressured to “finish an idea” or “find the killer hook” in a day or even a few hours. This may be good for commerce but I think it does art a disservice. Songwriting for me is only satisfying when it is personal, intimate and costly. There is the mystery and then there is the labour. They go hand in hand. We’ve dealt a little with the mystery/inspiration, now here’s some thoughts on the labour aspect of things:
3.1 Getting Stuck
Frustration is virtually inevitable, but so is elation once you’ve found the path around your obstacle.
Here are a few things I do when I get stuck:
Move to another instrument
I find a change of how I see the chords, i.e. moving from guitar to piano or vice versa can help me get past an impasse. If you only play one instrument, or don’t play at all, take your idea to someone who does play another instrument and see if that helps. However, I recommend to anyone who wants to write to take the time to learn some basic chords on a piano or guitar and use them! I have a friend who can’t play to save herself, but went and learned some basic chords and plays around with different voicings and variations of them. She has gone on to become an incredible writer, and I’m so grateful that she took the time to equip herself, because I as a listener am benefitting from the fruits!
Do something else for a while
Whilst writing with my friend William Fitzsimmons recently, I twittered this: “Warning: If you ever ‘co-write’ with me, it will involve long bouts of doing nothing, lots of cups of tea and pauses to enjoy youtube. It may seem at first like we are doing nothing… but we are simply tricking the song into thinking we are not paying attention so that it will quit its shyness and come the heck out.” Maybe that’s a little bit of insight into how I work, but I find getting stressed and throttling a song by the neck has never helped me. As with passing a bowel movement (refer to first blog ‘Climate’), you just have to relax, read a magazine, pick at your cuticles, ‘ped-egg’ the dry skin on your feet, whatevs. Go fishing or something, then come back and have another crack.
Work on a different idea
I am always working on a bunch of ideas at once. If I get stuck on one, I’ll move to the next, and the next, then come back to it, then onto the next, etc.
3.2 Perseverance
Oh how underrated is this virtue in our generation! iPods, iPhones, myspace etc… it’s all about me and what I want right this minute. But nothing of value comes for free. What’s true in life is true in art… PERSEVERE.
I started writing songs at 12 years of age. I can say with confidence that all the songs I wrote between then and ‘Better’ when I was 17 were utter crap. And there were hundreds of them. If you want to feel better about yourself, go look up some of my early B-sides. Absolute shockers. BUT those absolute shockers were the stepping stones to the better, acceptable-for-public-listening songs I would go on to write. Even now I’m still utterly embarrassed by a bunch of songs from my first record, but you know what? I’m grateful for them. Every song you write helps you become a better writer and find your own voice as an artist. The evidence of my journey so far is now immortalised on CD and hard drive, and as much as my pride would like to destroy the embarrassing stuff, hopefully it’s a testimony to perseverance and time.
3.3 Hard Work
I wrote “Albertine” in a morning after my return from my first trip to Rwanda in 2005 (it’s arguable that I’d already done the groundwork for the song with my eight straight hours of journalling on the flights home). Yet “Love, Where Is Your Fire?” was written in various hotel rooms in Tokyo, L.A., London & Australasia and took me more than two years to complete. “Love is Waiting” took about the same and was completed about 30 seconds before I had to go in and sing the final vocal on the record (and we left it until last). I am still not totally happy with the lyrics even today and wish I could have given it more time. It’s not my best.
Leonard Cohen’s famous 1984 song “Hallelujah” has been covered by over 200 artists – the Jeff Buckley version being perhaps the most widely known (Rufus Wainwright’s is impeccable too). It is still being covered in studios, bars and cafes the world over today. It sounds effortless, but the story goes that Cohen penned a massive EIGHTY (yes, 80) verses before he came to the verses that became the song.
Charles Wesley, the famous hymnist, wrote 6000 hymns. Six freakin’ thousand.
No shortcuts. Give your songs the chance to be excellent. Shove that in your cultural ADD and smoke it. (No offence to people with actual ADD intended.)
CONCLUSION:
Write and write and write and write! Spend the time, listen to lots of music, read about how other people create, talk to other people about how create, work hard, have fun, enjoy the journey!
