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,...