Composition – Building Your Band

It’s very rare to find a complete package in a song, where the balance of words and music is more or less equal. Usually, when I listen to music, the words sung, that’s not what I’m listening to. That’s not what usually grabs me out of a song. ~Chris Thile

Our Engagement Day

There is a wonderful story early in my relationship with my wife (when we were still dating). We were just getting to know each other, and I sent her a Nickel Creek album. Her first reaction to it (it’s bluegrass, in case you’re unfamiliar) was “Oh. He really doesn’t know what kind of music I like.” And then she kept listening, and the more she listened, she found herself overwhelmed and drawn in by the beauty of the lyrics and the music. She very much saw the lyrics as if I had sent a message to her through them.

Turns out, I’m not really much of a lyrics guy. Actually, I was quite unfamiliar with the lyrics on the album. Of course, I loved the vocals and the harmonies and the playing and the song writing and the music, and I may have picked up some small snippets of the lyrics, but I don’t really listen to lyrics when I listen to music. Of course my wife was shocked to find this out.

This begs the question: did I intend to send the message my wife received?

Framed another way: do the music and the lyrics carry the same meaning?

My answer is: in a good song they do. Recently, we discovered an interview in which Chris Thile talks about this very issue – about how hard he works to create a song that is the whole package. So I fully believe that I was telling my future wife all of those things, just using a different language.

I often hear song selections discussed in terms of lyrics. I guess that is OK. I don’t think songwriters think or speak this way (exclusively in terms of their lyrics). I think songwriters speak in terms of both what the lyrics and the music are saying.

But we owe it to the integrity of what we do to think in terms of both the lyrics and the music. To choose songs that are coherent, and songs that are balanced. Part of the wonder of music is that it can speak to truths beyond facts or rational thinking. It can appeal to things we know in our hearts to be true – that God is big, that we are small, that He loves us regardless, and that we can’t contain him within our minds.

Teo

In most worship songs, it is pretty obvious when the song is a “piano song” or a “guitar song.” When a song is a piano song, it may have more chord changes (think hymns), and the groove generally derives from the chord structure. Conversely, when a song is a guitar song it may have less chord changes, and the groove derives from the rhythm of the instrument or some lick or hook. This is something you are probably intuitively aware of and consider when arranging the song, but let’s focus on it directly for a moment and consider some implications.

A few years back (maybe before the internet even!) I remember reading a huge interview in Keyboard magazine with Michael Tilson Thomas* in which he talked about composition separate from that of any given instrument. In other words, he didn’t want the physicality of writing at the piano to suggest certain things in the composition. Rather, he wanted to compose independent of any instrument and then later on figure out how to voice it.

Being aware of this dynamic, there is one obvious idea and one less obvious idea we can learn:

The obvious idea is a neat arranging trick. If you have a piano song and you want a fresh arrangement, you can really change it up by arranging it around the guitar. Conversely, if you have a guitar song and you want a fresh arrangement, you can really change it up by arranging it around the piano. This is most famously done by taking hymns generally written at the piano, and making guitar arrangements. An example in the other direction – I was asked to arrange a piano version of one of Chris Joyner’s tunes for a song he wrote on the guitar called “I Believe“.

A less obvious idea is that there is a very real sense that the physicality of our instrument dictates a lot of how we play it. So while we should to play to our instrument’s strengths, we should avoid being limited by that (due to lack of technical skills), or held in a box by that (due to a lack of imagination).

So the former is probably easy enough to understand; we should try to minimize limitations by our technical skills. But the latter is a blind spot. For example, how often do we play monophonic (let alone with just one hand) on the piano? If a simple melody or counter-melody best serves the song, we should play just that (rather than chords) as suggested by our many fingers and all those keys.

Instruments are means to an end. The end is the song. How best can we voice the song?

*famed conductor of San Francisco Orchestra and notable re-interpreter of classic American composers such as Aaron Copland.

Lyrics vs music

Piano songs and guitar songs