Interpreting Interpretation

In critique sessions, we find one aspect of songs where there is usually room for improvement is that of overly vague, ambiguous, or diffuse lyrics.

I hear it all the time at critique sessions, interviews, panels, or online: songwriters saying "I want to leave my songs open to interpretation" or "I want each person to get their own meaning from my songs", and in the same breath saying "I want to connect with people". I discuss this in several chapters of "Songcrafters' Coloring Book". In order to have any useful discussion, we have to understand what this really means. Consider three things from the writer's perspective:

(a) Typically, a song represents something that comes from an important part of you that you want to share

(b) If you say something in general conversation and someone completely misinterprets you, you’d rarely just let it go without trying at least once to clarify what you meant.

(c) "I want to leave my meaning open to interpretation" is the equivalent of saying "It’s perfectly okay with me if someone imposes their own meaning on my words."

If we accept these things as generally accurate (of course there are always exceptions), then a songwriter being "okay" with leaving the song 'open to interpretation' can only mean one of the following (and there is nothing "wrong" with any of these – it’s just important that you have your Eyes-Wide-Open when you make your choices)

(a) the song isn’t saying anything truly important to you

(b) you don’t really know what the song is saying

(c) you’re not trying to communicate or connect, just express yourself -- (See the article on "Expression vs. Communication)

(d) you’re finding it difficult to be clear about what you mean, so you settle for a "5" instead of continuing to work toward a "10"

(e) you’ve written a deliberately unclear intellectual/psychological exercise to see what people will think it means or to generate speculation and 'buzz'

(f) you are understanding the word "interpretation" in a different way

To make an Eyes-Wide-Open choice, understand that if you choose either a, b, c, or d above, you’re not giving a listener much reason to care about the song or you as a writer. If you choose e, you’re targeting a relatively small demographic (i.e. those who would like "I Am the Walrus" if it just came out today for the first time from some unknown writer/artist).

If f above applies, it is not a matter of intentional choice, but of miscommunication. There are three relevant meanings to "interpretation ", and if two people are not using the same meaning, it’s the classic example of falsely believing communication has occurred when in fact it has not. Here are the three possibilities for understanding how one is using the word "interpretation" when discussing songs:

Definition #1: Artistic Interpretation

A well-written song is usually performed by many different artists, and each one gives it a stylistically and personally different treatment in the performance. Different conductors leading the same classical symphonic work from the same printed music can produce very different sounding versions

What's at work here is the artists' personalization of the performance i.e. how they believe it "should" be presented. Even if different artists all agree on what a particular song means, they may have different visions for how it is best presented, based on their skills and the song's relevance to their life. If the writer and the artist have communicated, then the presentation of the song will sound authentic, regardless of style.

Sometimes we hear a version of a song which is seems terribly out of place and incongruous with the message (just think of all the versions you've heard of the Star-Spangled Banner before sporting events). Ideally, all elements in the performance of a song should be in service to the song, not to the performer. If a performer has great vocal agility and can add lots of flourishes and melismata, there can be a tendency to embellish at every opportunity, whether or not it's appropriate to what the song is saying. In that case, the artist is making the song serve his or her own skills, rather than the reverse.

Definition #2 – Imposing an Unintended Meaning

This is the case where a listener filters what you are saying through all their own personal experiences (as we all do…) comes to a conclusion, and then ASSUMES that it is what YOU meant to say. They have imposed their own meaning on you, something you probably would not allow in normal conversational interaction. You may be speaking figuratively, but are being taken literally, or vice-verse. General words like "good", "bad" , "pretty", loyal", rarely mean the same thing to different people.

Alternatively, a listener might give you some respect by saying "This song means ’x’ to me, but I realize that might not be what the writer was saying". In that case, the listener has not usurped your meaning, but you have not communicated or connected with them, as you are on different wavelengths. It’s your choice whether that’s okay with you or not, but how would it make you feel if that happened in an important conversation? How important to you is the message of your song?

Definition #3: Personalization Rather than Interpretation

This is probably what most writers really mean when they say "open to interpretation". The more accurate word is "personalization". The key to balancing listener interpretation while maintaining control of your meaning is leaving space for the listener to personalize certain aspects of the song i.e. those NOT essential to your message or story, while being specific about those elements which ARE critical to your message or story. This usually lies in the realm of the 6 W’s – who-what-where-when-why-how (See Chapter 16). Which of these do you need to set in stone so that listeners cannot alter them, and which can you allow listeners to fill in for themselves?

Doorways and Windows into Your Song

Consider some well known songs: "Galveston" fixes the place, as opposed to "My Little Town" which leaves space to personalize that aspect. "Oh, what a night….late December 1963…" fixes the time vs. "It Was a Very Good Year" which leaves the dates to be personalized, but instead fixes the singer’s exact ages in each verse (e.g. "When I was seventeen…"). When the Temptations began "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" with "It was the third of September; that day I'll always remember, 'Cause that was the day that my daddy died." they fixed a date and a situation, but not a place. "Wichita Lineman" fixes the place and the occupation vs. "Nine to Five", which leaves space for personalizing those same elements. "Michelle, ma belle…" fixes the person’s name vs. "Ma Belle Amie" (my beautiful love…), which can refer to any name. "Jack and Diane" fixes the names and a geographic region ("two American kids growing up in the Heartland"), but does not specify Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa., etc. However, you know it’s not the "south side of Chicago", which is inhabited by Jim Croce’s "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown".

In the great Paul Simon song "Poem on the Underground Wall" all the details of time, place, situation, and the character's emotional state are given to you in vivid detail. But the key verse:

Now from his pocket quick he flashes,
The crayon on the wall he slashes,

Deep upon the advertising,

A single-worded poem comprising
 four letters...

leaves you to decide for yourself what that four-letter word is. No matter what you decide, (and your choices are strongly steered in the direction of the "f" word or the "s" word) you still can’t change the meaning, message, and cinema of the song, even if you concluded that the four-letter word was "love".

In many songs where there are specific characters, even if their names or occupations are specified, the nature of the character can still invite a listener into the song. As long as a character is not portrayed in a negative way, a listener may choose to identify with the character and their situation or motivation, and enter the song through that character’s experience. This requires that those parts of the character be made clear, and presented early in the song. A wishy-washy character or someone who is cruel and thoughtless will not be an appealing portal for a person to enter your song, so if you have that kind of character, you need another entry point for the listener. If you have a character with no background to give them depth, that would not be an inviting entry point for a listener, as they would not want to inhabit a hollow shell. Think of whether a person would want to trade places with your character(s). If not, what is the alternate entry way for them into the world you have created?

Go through a bunch of songs you know and look at which parts are fixed and which are left for you to personalize. Look at how the balance is handled. Some songs do it well, some do not. You can precisely control how much space you give a listener to personalize the song, what parts you want keep immutable, and what kind of entry points you offer to your listeners. If you choose to intentionally leave an important element unspecified, you need a solid reason for doing so. Even today, there is still discussion about exactly what it was that Billy Joe MacAllister threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge ("Ode to Billy Joe" by Bobbie Gentry) . However, every other aspect of that song, considered by Billboard as one of the Top 500 of all time, is absolutely clear and specific.

In Suzanne Vega's 1987 hit "Luka", the listener clearly knows that it is about a victim of abuse, but they do not know (nor need to know) that it is a specific 9-year old boy that Vega is writing about, as she described in several online blogs and interviews.

Remember the goal: have the listener come away with a personalized version of your truth.

Consistent with the inevitable existence of exceptions, there is one area where the more vague and non-specific a song is, the better is "chance" it has – this is the area of film and TV placement. Listen to any of the background songs you here on popular TV shows. They create mood and have non-specific lyrics (unless the song is written specifically for a script). This allows a music director to apply it to a variety of situations which are defined by the visuals and situations of the script. What's happening here is that the visuals and the script are providing all the specifics that the song is not. A soundtrack placement does not necessarily mean a song is a well crafted – just that it is an appropriate song for a mood. The meaning given to it by a music director or a viewer may not necessarily be what your meaning is – in fact it's usually just background music - But you're trading that for the fact that your song can be placed in a potentially royalty-paying soundtrack. Your choice.

When you "leave a little bit of mystery" in your song, or want to "leave the listener guessing", are you helping or hurting your appeal ? The answer to this lies in a study done by Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert, described in his book "Stumbling on Happiness" (Vintage Books 2007, ISBN 1400077427). Quite simply, it showed that once a question is raised in a person's mind, they can’t stand not knowing the answer.

Do not underestimate the power of curiosity. There are many ways to use it to your advantage in marketing and promotion, but in the crafting of a song, if your lyrics raise a question, you need to provide the answer or least a fair set of clues to the answer. Don’t leave the listener hanging unless you want them to feel discomfort and incompleteness.

Can you choose to write a song that doesn’t really mean much? Of course – there are many such songs which have become popular for one reason or another. But keep your Eyes Wide Open that you are making that choice, and don’t fool yourself into believing the song has great depth and meaning when in fact it really doesn't. For a parting metaphor, we'll say that a song with meaning but little craft is like fine wine in a paper cup, and a song with great technical crafting but little meaning is a fine crystal wine glass, empty.

For more, visit http://www.songcrafterscoloringbook.com

============

©2009 Bill Pere. All Rights Reserved. Content may not be re-posted without permission. Quotes from this content with attribution are permitted. Use of this content in for educational purposes is permitted with proper attribution. Links to this content are encouraged.

Song Structure in Action - The David Johnson Incident

Like any art form, songwriting does not have hard rules, but it does have guidelines which present you with choices as to whether to follow them or not. There are songwriters who feel comfortable following a set of guidelines, and there are those who absolutely bristle at the thought of any type of structure or restriction being imposed on their creativity.

The choice is always yours, but you can only make an informed decision when you know what results are likely to occur, and whether you'll be happy with those results.

I saw the most perfect real-time, real-life example of songwriting guidelines in action on America's Got Talent last week. On stage, guitar in hand, comes an unassuming thirty-something named David Johnson, who is going to sing a song. Now, anyone who watches American Idol, America's Got Talent, or any show like that, knows the importance of the song choice. Doing a familiar song that people know and like is important, as the familiarity allows folks to focus on the performance, without having to process new and unfamiliar music and words.

So David Johnson does something that is almost never done on these shows – he's going to sing an ORIGINAL song! This immediately puts David at a huge disadvantage. He now has to deal with people's short attention span and their desire to not have to listen to unfamiliar stuff, unless of course it's amazingly good, or unless the singer is amazingly good to look at. He's made a bold and risky choice. This then leads him to another set of choices:

Conventional songwriting guidelines tell you that in order to capture people's attention, you have about 30-40 seconds at most. Any music intros should be kept under 15 seconds, and you should get to the chorus/hook in about 40 seconds, which leaves about 20-25 seconds for a verse. And that verse needs to present all the info needed to set up the situation and have the hook make sense. Those are the guidelines. Your choice as an artist is to follow them or not. No one says you have to.

Why are these the guidelines? Is it because some record company executives say so?

Not at all – it is a matter of human nature and the way people give, receive, attend to, and process new information. Music and performance is a people-to-people activity. Human nature is always a significant shaping force.

So David Johnson begins his song. No music intro – he gets right to the lyric.

His voice is decent, and he's in tune, but audience and judges on Idol and AGT are a tough crowd. At 10 seconds into the song, the audience is booing. They are bored and not into what they are hearing. At 13 seconds into the song, Piers Morgan (the Simon Cowell of AGT) buzzes the singer. It's only a matter of seconds more until he is buzzed by the other judges, thus ending his dream. Finally, eight seconds later, at 21 seconds into the song, he hits the hook – the payoff -- revealing that he is singing a love song to one of the AGT judges, David Hasselhoff!

At that moment, David Johnson's life turned. Now he has hooked the audience and the judges – the booing stops, everyone is smiling and listening. By 30 seconds, the crowd is behind him, appreciating the well-crafted humor of his song. They are singing along. The song lasted 1 minute and 30 seconds. At the end, he gets big applause, and even the generally negative Piers Morgan admitted "I buzzed you too early". He is passed on through to the next round, and his song is up on YouTube the next day to worldwide chatter. (Google it – you'll find many links). And here I am writing about it.

Why the good outcome? He took into account human nature, and wrote for his audience, not for himself. He made the right choices to achieve the outcome he sought. The choice to do something different by playing an original song triggers the Von Restorff effect i.e., that which is different stands out; The choice to conform to guidelines in the structure of the song is the Asch Effect, the desire to fit in. By balancing these two elements, he memorably communicated to others, rather than wrap himself in self-expression.

This not to say that there is no place for pure self-expression – of course there is. Just not when you seek to establish a rapport with others. You can be sure that if David Johnson had added a musical intro and took any more time to get to the hook, he would have been buzzed and booed into obscurity right then and there. He made the choice to follow the conventional guidelines with precision.

The lesson is clear and simple – if you're writing for a broad, general audience, they are the ones who set the guidelines, not you. You can’t ignore human nature. However, you are always free to follow your own guidelines, but then EITHER:

(a) you'll have to be satisfied with a much smaller following, OR,

(b) it will take much longer (perhaps even after you've departed this earth) for your art to be appreciated, assuming there is artistic merit to your body of work.

There are no rights or wrongs here – only choices.

Jazz great Ornette Coleman, artist Jackson Pollock, and poet Edgar Allen Poe were not appreciated at first for their way-out-of-the-box approaches to their respective art forms, but their genius is now recognized.

Do you want to touch people 'now' on their terms, or would you rather do what your unique muse leads you to do, and hope that people come to appreciate it over time (which may or may not ever come to pass)?

There are no rights or wrongs here – only choices. (see previous blog post on the Asch Effect and the Von Restorff Effect)

Know your choices and their consequences, and make informed decisions about your creative output. This is what Songcrafters' Coloring Book is all about.

For more, visit http://www.songcrafterscoloringbook.com

============

©2009 Bill Pere. All Rights Reserved. Content may not be re-posted without permission. Quotes from this content with attribution are permitted. Use of this content in for educational purposes is permitted with proper attribution. Links to this content are encouraged.

A Deeper Look at Fader #4

In Songcrafters' Coloring Book, I present the Four-Faders of Songwriting Success. I also discuss the psychological principle known as the Von Restorff effect, which simply shows that when something among a group is different, it is more easily noticed and remembered (for better or for worse). The opposite effect is called the Asch Effect, which is a tendency to want to blend with the crowd and fit in.

These are two basic elements of human nature, and they are often in play when we look at creating songs, and how listeners receive them. Understanding these tendencies in yourself and in others can help a songwriter better align his/her creative output with the desired target audience, and to help set realistic expectations when balancing artistic and commercial goals. These effects are also directly relevant to how artists 'brand' themselves and their music, and how that brand is perceived and received by an audience. The above diagram helps illustrate the interrelation of these effects on songwriter/artist and audience.

In Malcolm Gladwell's book "The Tipping Point", he speaks of early adopters and mavens who are drawn to new and different things, and how they can be the impetus to make or break something new, whether it's a product or a song or an idea. Once a new product/song/idea is presented to the masses, it is Asch Effect which plays a major role in establishing mass appeal.

More info on the Asch and Von Restorff Effects can be found with a simple Google search of each.

For more, visit http://www.songcrafterscoloringbook.com

============

©2009 Bill Pere. All Rights Reserved. Content may not be re-posted without permission. Quotes from this content with attribution are permitted. Use of this content in for educational purposes is permitted with proper attribution. Links to this content are encouraged.

What's It All About? (Even if Your Name Isn't Alfie)

What’s It All About?

(Even if Your Name Isn’t Alfie)

""The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have gone ourselves." –

E. M. Forster, English novelist

"Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety – (out of fear and need for defense), and risk – (for the sake of progress and growth). Make the growth choice a dozen times a day." -- Abraham Maslow

Songcrafters' Coloring Book – both the book and this blog -- is about choices -- your choices. The choices you make as a songwriter which cause your songs to get the reaction you hope for, or the one you don't expect; The choices which determine whether your song sells a thousand copies, a million copies, or never goes beyond your studio shelf.

By looking at the individual components of songs, those choices become clear to you and let you know what to expect when you decide on one option or another. This not about songwriting "rules", as there really are none. Looking at songwriting as an interrelated series of informed choices is the primary paradigm of "Songcrafters' Coloring Book".

Everything in songwriting is a choice with artistic, commercial, emotional, spiritual, or monetary consequences. When creating, performing or marketing songs, we often don't know what all those choices are, let alone the results that flow from each one. Common sense tells us that when we don’t know what our options are and the consequences of choosing a particular one, it is impossible to make an informed decision, or the best decision to meet your objectives. When we understand what our choices are and their associated outcomes, we gain control over that incredible process we know as songwriting.

I developed the concepts presented here over many years, beginning in the 1980’s, initially presenting them in published articles and songwriter forums. The response was overwhelmingly positive, even though using many of these techniques requires significant effort and commitment. It became clear during that time that it was also necessary to include an overarching model of "Why and When" along with the "How", so that a person seeking to use these techniques to further their craft would have all the information needed to make fully informed choices and understand why it is worth the effort. Thus, there are two primary types of topics discussed here: the Why’s and the How’s.

It is important to know Why the techniques given here are important and When they can be used to best advantage. Along with that, there are some core ideas and paradigms (overarching concepts) which underpin all the later "How-to" discussion. The How-to topics look at how you apply a particular technique to achieve a particular result.

The information presented in "Songcrafters' Coloring Book" comes from many sources. There are of course many printed and quoted references. In addition, as Director of Special Projects for the Connecticut Songwriters Association since 1980, and President since 2004, I’ve had the great fortune to work with many top songwriters and industry icons, learning from them first hand, interviewing them, and developing personal and professional relationships over the years. These folks are listed at my website, www.billpere.com. The knowledge and insights they’ve given me have been invaluable, and I am greatly indebted to them for their willingness to have shared their time and expertise.

I have also had the privilege through conferences, presentations and classes, to directly interact with more than 10,000 aspiring songwriters across the U.S., and to critique thousands of songs. Through my own performances, my 15 released recordings, and my several websites, I’ve been able to interact with thousands of audiences of loyal fans, new listeners, and hecklers across several countries. As a result, this book looks at songwriting from an array of different perspectives, and brings them together in a brand new way.

Why is Any of This Relevant?

Over the last decades, the music business has changed dramatically. Musical styles, technology, distribution methods, recording equipment, and consumer tastes all continuously evolve. However, the essential things that make a great song have remained constant. Yet, they have never been clearly defined. A song which becomes a standard endures across different styles, artistic interpretations, and the passage of time. Here, we seek to define the key ingredients which make that happen.

There are several excellent books and websites out there which present a potent arsenal of songwriting tools and techniques. "Songcrafters' Coloring Book" does that as well. But there are few places you can turn where you can find a presentation of exactly when and why to apply those tools, and the pros and cons of doing so. Here, we seek to provide that in depth.

Some of this material may influence the way you write songs, but it does not change the elements of what makes a song great. The songwriting approach presented here can give you more control over those elements and improve your ability to make them work together to produce that magic we call a standard, a hit, or just a great song.

Why undertake a new way to approach songwriting? Because there is one other significant change that has occurred. Today, anyone can wake up in the morning, pour their feelings out on paper, sit down in their high-quality easily-affordable home studio, and make a recording, which for less than the cost of a haircut, can then appear on i-Tunes and every other major worldwide music distribution outlet in a few weeks.

Consequently, there is now more music flowing direct-to-consumers than at any time in history. Your competition has increased dramatically, in sheer volume and in production quality, but not particularly in the quality of the songwriting. Thus, more than ever, the quality of the songs is what’s going to lift you and keep you above that ever-growing baseline of clutter. Not the production, or the performance – the songs. Great music and great lyrics.

Most songwriters are going to continue writing songs the same way – a mixture of feelings, instinct and maybe a few general guidelines. Occasionally, great songs will emerge. However, the writers who take the time to work on new ways of making their creative output consistently stand above the rest will become the ones who are recognized as the next generation of great songwriters.

If you are read the book or subscribe to this blog, I thank you for allowing me to be your guide on this journey to give you more control of your own creative output.

For more, visit http://www.songcrafterscoloringbook.com

============

©2009 Bill Pere. All Rights Reserved. Content may not be re-posted without permission. Quotes from this content with attribution are permitted. Use of this content in for educational purposes is permitted with proper attribution. Links to this content are encouraged.