Riding along with the lead singer, from the blues band with which I currently play live shows, he puts on a track from his iPod that, via a magical cable, comes out of the car speakers. It’s a track I’ve never heard before and, yet, it’s so familiar.
“What do you think of this song?” he asked after twenty or so seconds, while it’s still going through the intro.
“It’s good… I just… wait a second, I know this drum beat and chord progression! It’s Bananarama, right? Or it’s from an Ace of Base song?”
This reaction brought him, err, some displeasure. “F**k! Are you serious? This is from my new album. It’s a song I wrote and tracked a few days ago.”
“Err… I’m sorry?”
“‘I hate you, Chris.” he said, and I almost believed him because, now that I’d shared with him this observation, he would be unable to think of anything else while working on the rest of this song and it would eventually drive him mad and he’d throw out the song and show up at my house in the middle of the night while drunk to beat me up, as blues singers are known to do.
With so much music out there, it’s rather easy to make this mistake. There is hardly a chord progression out there that hasn’t been played through, rarely a beat that hasn’t been beaten, and a never a sentiment that hasn’t already been shared a thousand times over. So what becomes important is the song as a whole and how each instrument contributes over the course of the song.
A good songwriter realizes that the band is truly the instrument, put together in much the same way as a drum kit. The pieces of the set (the snare drum, the bass drum, the cymbals, the tom-toms), each playing their own part, and make a cohesive sound when put together. The astute songwriter writes not only the lyrics and his/her own instrumental part (guitar, usually) but instead has in mind an overall set of tones and dynamics and nebulous ‘feels’ that will help guide the band members to creating something great. And when it’s done quite well it is greater than the sum of it’s parts.
Or perhaps my Asperger’s is just surfacing a bit.
On a completely unrelated note, (i.e. too long for a tweet) my father’s Gmail address is ‘Santa Rosa [redacted]‘ but shows up in my Gmail inbox marked with only his first name. It’s a little surreal and yet makes my heart jump in my chest, just a little bit, to be getting emails from ‘Santa’.
Tags: asperger's, band, bandmates, mispoke, music, songwriting
I actually subscribe to the opposite view. Good songs retain their character even when stripped of the arrangement. It’s the “battered guitar test”: a song should sound good and original even when played on a crummy old guitar next to a campfire.
One could, though, claim that a song can be “arranged” on a single instrument (e.g. aforementioned crummy guitar) in such a way that almost forces a particular arrangement when translated into the settings of a band. For example, playing just the bass line on the lower E string on a guitar in “Hit the Road Jack” constitutes an arrangement and gives the song a unique character.
Interestingly, classical music has fused the composer and arranger into a single entity, and is closer to your point of view than mine.
I can see the validity in your point of view. Many times I’ve been moved by a rather simple arrangement that allows the core of a song to shine through.
Aw, this was a really quality post. In theory I’d like to write like this too – taking time and real effort to make a good article… but what can I say… I procrastinate alot and never seem to get something done.