CASTING THE SPELL :

PLAYING, WRITING, AND PERFORMING GREAT SONGS

There are songwriters out there who think that because they're great songwriters they don't need to bother learning how to really play their instrument. There are great musicians who think if they play well they don't need to bother learning to write well. And there are people who think they can write and play well so they don't need to learn how to be good performers. Well, it ain't true. To cast a spell as a singer/songwriter you have to be able to do all three; here are some tips on how you can do it.

PLAYING GREAT SONGS

To get anywhere, you have to play well. There's a common misconception among songwriters — particularly among politically-oriented ones — that content is more important than style: that what you say is more important than how you say it. Although members of an audience or people listening to a CD may not be consciously aware of it (unless they're musicians), the quality of your singing and playing bring a song alive, or deliver it stillborn. Although many other factors matter quite a bit in determining how well a song works, foremost among them is how well you play your instrument and how well you deliver your songs — your style, your musicianship. Here are some tips on improving your playing.

PRACTICE

Becoming a good musician — as with becoming a good songwriter, a good plumber, or a good surgeon — requires lots and lots of practice, like any other form of skilled labor. There isn't necessarily a hard and fast order for these things, but usually you're not going to start writing decent songs until you've become a decent musician.

If you're serious about someday playing music professionally, you have to work at it as a profession for years before you actually start doing any paying gigs. You won't progress if you just dabble around with an instrument now and then. You have to play it regularly, in a focused way, with a set agenda, as close as possible to every day. After a year or two with that kind of focus, you could start getting really good.

IMITATION

In US society in particular, and western societies in general, there is a huge cultural obsession with originality. There are pros and cons to this, but for many artists, especially beginning ones, there are mostly cons. Anyone who's any good at anything probably learned it from someone, or many someones. We're using a spoken language we didn't invent, a musical language we didn't invent, chord progressions we didn't invent, scales, concepts, instruments, etc. If you think you're original, you're kidding yourself, to the detriment of your art. You must imitate. You must steep yourself in the musical traditions that interest you.

Listen to artists that you like, whatever the style of music. Listen to artists that they were inspired by. Listen to them a lot. Learn their songs. Memorize them. Don't just strum the songs, learn to play the songs as closely as possible to the way they played them. Don't worry about being original — eventually people will think you're original; they'll think you have a style of your own, even if you know better ...

Generally, the best way to learn songs is to listen and try to play the way you hear it. If, after quite a bit of effort, you can't figure a song out, seek help from live people, other musicians, and/or from books. Especially at the beginning, help from other musicians in the form of formal or informal lessons, along with help from "how to" books such as Mel Bay or whatever, can be invaluable. Songbooks can also help, mainly to have the lyrics so you don't have to transcribe them in order to play, learn and memorize the songs in question. Working out songs or just jamming with other musicians who may be at various levels of ability can also be very instructive. But the key is to listen and imitate.

SCALES AND MELODIES

Every song you do is in a certain key, a certain scale. Learning and practicing scales is not limiting, it's liberating. When you discover that a song is in a certain key, and you internalize this key, you can never play a wrong note. This applies for both "lead" playing or for "rhythm" playing.

One good trick is whenever you learn a song, figure out what key it's in, and figure out how to pick out the melody in that key on your instrument (whatever instrument that is). Then work on playing the song in such a way that you're playing the chords and the melody at the same time. If this concept seems mystifying, an easy way to get a handle on it at first is to learn some basic bluegrass guitar. Learn how to play an alternating bass line. In a song that's in 4/4, typically the bass line is on the 1 and 3, and you strum the chords on the 2 and 4.

Once you master that concept, try playing elements of the melody on the 1 and 3 and strumming the chords on the 2 and 4. Then try expanding that so you're playing more of the melody interspersed with the chords. Once you get good at this, you will impress people (including yourself). This is the basic element of playing an instrument as a solo artist that allows you to really be a solo artist, that takes you beyond just strumming and singing and wishing you had a band. With a solid, steady rhythm, you should learn how to play a song on your instrument while also being able to pick out the melody and play various riffs, especially during instrumental breaks.

Instrumental breaks and riffs are essential to bringing a song to life. Once you're good at this, people listening who aren't particularly musically-inclined will say things like, "it sounds like you're playing two instruments." This is a sign that you're getting the idea, which is not, in fact, a very difficult one — it sounds much fancier than it actually is.

SIMPLICITY, RHYTHM AND TENSION

Especially in light of the above stuff about picking out melodies on your instrument, it's vital to mention that another key to playing well is simplicity. What you don't play is just as important as what you do play. This is especially true if you're playing with other musicians, but also vital for the solo artist.

To play with that steady, rolling rhythm that the good players tend to have, a big factor is not to play on certain beats in a given measure. Which ones you don't play on, as well as which ones you do play on, gives the song it's feeling, whether it's punk rock (all steady downstrokes on the downbeats, with only rare upstrokes), reggae (mostly downstrokes on the 2 and 4), or whatever.

There are good players out there who learned bad technique from the beginning. Often they compensate well enough for it and it doesn't seem to matter, but you might as well avoid that. One thing is to play down on the downbeat and up on the upbeat. Whatever you're trying to do in terms of riffs and melodies and such, you never need to sacrifice this rule. There's always a way to do it without messing up the flow, without playing up on a downbeat or down on an upbeat.

Another vital aspect to playing well is to be relaxed. With music as with many other things, it often seems easier to play a fast or difficult riff if you tense up. In the short term this may be true, or at least seem to be true, but it's never good in the long run. Always stay relaxed, loose. If you're using a pick, it should always be almost falling out of your fingers except at the moment when you're hitting the string(s), when you're gripping it just enough so that it doesn't fall out of your fingers. And when you're fingering the guitar with your left hand, you should just press down hard enough so that the strings don't buzz, never any harder than that.

For singing, to be relaxed is just as important as it is to play an instrument. I could name plenty of great songwriters and instrumentalists who sing with tension in their voice (but I won't). It's quite evident that it adversely affects their singing, tires their voices out much more quickly, leaves them with problems with their vocal chords when they're older, and just doesn't sound as good. People often develop this habit of tension in their throats when they're jumping for a high note that they're not sure they can hit spot on. This is a big mistake. As with playing an instrument, it's always best to be sloppy at first, miss the note, then try again and again until you hit it. Once you hit it that way, you'll always hit it right. Do it with tension and it will sound tense and, generally, you will continue to have problems hitting the note.

OPEN TUNINGS AND VARIETY

Sometimes when I have asked guitarists if they have experimented with open tunings they respond, "No, I haven't mastered standard tuning yet." I have received the same answer when I've inquired about whether they've experimented with other musical instruments. This is as ridiculous as saying, "I haven't tried riding a bicycle yet because I haven't mastered swimming."

Variety is a fundamentally good thing, in music as in life in general. When you experiment with different tunings and different musical instruments and musical styles, it will enrich everything else you're doing musically. Even if you're a relative beginner at an instrument or a tuning, you can always experiment with others. As long as you can manage getting your instrument from one tuning to the other, that means you're ready!

There are books that go into lots more detail about open tunings. (My songbook goes into a bit more detail too, which you can buy or download for free as a PDF file at www.davidrovics.com) Once you've got the basics, though, the best way to learn about them is by trying to play songs by artists that use them, and by experimenting with them. Figure out how to play major, minor, and blues scales in each tuning and you'll learn all kinds of new things. Pick a tuning and figure out how to play a song you already know in that tuning, then try another tuning. Figure out how to pick out the melodies as well as the chords. You'll find that the different tunings lend themselves to different types of moods and songs.

It's the same with different instruments. Without being a master of an open tuning, you can convincingly play a few songs in that tuning if you work them out. By the same token, if you learn a few chords on the mandolin, or spend some time trying to figure out how to use the 5th string of a banjo the way it's supposed to be used, this will inevitably give you new ideas for playing the guitar (or whatever other instruments you play).

INSTRUMENTS AND ACCESSORIES

Far too much fuss is made of what kind of instrument you have. It's also true 99% of the time that the more someone talks about what kind of guitar they have or what kind of electronic toys they use, the more likely it is that they can't play their instrument very well.

Of course you can get a better guitar for $2,000 than you can for $200. But the more you spend, the less the difference in quality. There's a big difference in the under-$1,000 range for sure. After that it becomes much less dramatic. The most important thing is to have an instrument that's easily playable and is made of solid wood, not plywood (if we're talking about acoustic guitars, at least). Plywood guitars are cheap in every sense. They tend to develop problems quickly and otherwise fall apart after a short time.

If you can at least scrounge together a few hundred bucks you can get something that has a solid neck and top, with the rest of the body being plywood, such as a Seagull. Getting closer to the $1,000 range then you're talking about solid wood guitars that improve with age and are made better, though still mass-produced. Well above the $1,000 range you're getting more into hand-made instruments which sound even better, and also tend to be made by smaller companies or individual luthiers.

If you use a pick, the type of pick you use can make a huge difference in how you play and how you sound. A thick pick is great for fast, bluegrass-style picking of individual notes, but is a liability when it comes to rolling, rhythmic strumming (and vice versa). Also, the texture of the pick makes a difference. The smoother-texture picks are easier to use, but lack some of the percussive sound that rougher picks have. I recommend not marrying yourself to one type of pick — always experiment with different picks for different songs and situations. If you're trying to play loudly, say in the street without amplification, you'll want to use a thicker pick. If you're in a more subtle indoor situation, you might want to use a thinner one.

And finally, changing your strings regularly is important. A great guitar with old strings isn't going to sound very good. A cheap guitar with new strings will probably sound better. If you don't like changing your strings every few days, I recommend plastic-coated strings such as Elixirs.

WRITING GREAT SONGS

To succeed as a musician you not only have to be able to play songs well, but also it helps to write songs. The first key to writing good songs is being steeped in the tradition. Know music first. Have it in your blood. Be deeply familiar with at least one musical tradition. Have a couple hundred songs memorized. Be familiar with many more. But there are many other fundamentals to good songwriting, and I will address a few of them here.

MORE PRACTICE

Songwriting, like playing music, is a craft that will tend to improve with practice. Think of yourself as a songwriter. Make time for your songwriting. Live, travel, love, read, do other things that are likely to inspire songs, and then make time for writing the songs and working on them. Test yourself. Come up with things like, "I'm going to write one song per week from something I read in the New York Times," and then do it. They don't have to be your best, most inspired songs. You might throw them out soon after you write them. You might write a good line and not have use of the rest. But doing it often will allow you to get good at it.

TUNING INTO THE MUSE

Part of practicing is finding inspiration and learning how to tune in to the muse. It's out there for everyone, not just "talented" people. You need to be open to it, though, to recognize its importance, and to trust it; trust your subconscious, trust that it knows what's going on. I've always found that if I have an idea for a song it's good to make a note of what that idea is, and then to wait before starting to write the song until I've accomplished two main things. One, I need to have done the research that may be required to write the song well. Two, I need to wait for my subconscious to process the idea of this song. When it's done, which may be hours later or a few days later or sometimes longer, it will tell me. The trick is to be aware of that moment, when there is a certain creative impulse that happens, and to take hold of it without delay.

One of the most important aspects of allowing yourself to tune in to the muse is to prioritize your art above other things. Somehow or other, you need to be able to drop whatever else you're supposed to be doing and write. Sometimes it can be put off, but other times the creative spark will go away and the moment will be lost. It will come back. But there is an element of unpredictability about it that can't just be put off regularly or it becomes stale.

LISTENING AND LEARNING FROM THE WORLD AROUND YOU

You are a participant in the world, of course, but you are also an observer. Like a journalist, you are observing the world around you and writing about your experiences. Or, like a historian, you are reading about or hearing about accounts of events that may have happened long before your time, or, more recently, somewhere you were not; and you're writing about them. Or, more typically in the world of pop music, you're writing about things that require no research, things you've experienced directly, perhaps in a relationship with another individual. In any case, a common theme here is listening — listening to the stories of other people, listening to history, listening to the news or listening to your heart.

You also need to know your subject matter. This may require lots of reading, or lots of experiences with what you're writing. It's easy to read a whole book and only get one short song out of it. But it might be a good one! One trick, though, is to trust someone else who does know their subject material and stick to their details. For example, a well-written newspaper article can be turned into a great song. If I am writing about something basically unfamiliar to me and I allow myself to embellish a line with a detail that I imagine might have been there but don't know for sure, that's often where I go wrong. If you don't know the subject material intimately, you can fake it by sticking to the details that someone else knows intimately. If you're going to make up other details that may make the song have more impact, you need to know your material yourself.