My Pathway to Songwriting and My Dream of Being Better

[Reid Rosefelt]

I wrote my first song when I was 15 years old. I wrote it on a cheapie used upright I bought for $50. It was my attempt at a 60s protest song. If you can believe it, it was called "Lord I Heard Amazing Sounds." I still have my handwritten copy and could play and sing it if I wanted to--but I really don't.

I wrote that song because I was playing a lot of folk songs. I had heard hundreds of the original stuff and particularly the way Bob Dylan and others copied and adapted the idiom. So I tried to do the exact same kind of thing. Simple chords. A series of verses. No chorus.

As I grew older and wrote dozens of my own songs, I continued to glean what I could from the songwriters I admired: Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Beatles, Stones, all British invasion, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, James Taylor, Brill Building, the Great American Songbook. I have shelves of songbooks. I learn by playing and singing. Now I am 70 and I have notebooks full of songs, most of them unrecorded. Sadly, the styles have not progressed beyond the songs that inspired me in my teens, twenties or early thirties. Looking back I don't think I ever pushed myself. I never once wrote a song with a bridge. Why do that? Dylan didn't write any until "Blonde on Blonde," right? After I wrote a melody and chords for a song I never once changed it. I often fine-tuned the lyrics for months or years, but I never once changed the original melody. With some exceptions, I stopped listening to new music, in the last few decades.

For some reason, as I passed 70, I decided to break out of my hard shell. I gave myself an assignment to search for the best music I could find. And I gave it a chance. What's all this fuss about Taylor Swift? Shouldn't I find out for myself? I decided to give at least five listens to every song she wrote. One day I was on a flight from Florida to New York and I put on a song she wrote with Ed Sheeran called "Run." It was cut out of her original "Red" album but she rescued it for Taylor's version--in other words, it was something she didn't want to release at the time. After I heard this song I was left with this bittersweet feeling. The lyrics were so meaningful to me, the melody so beautiful, it was so well sung and produced, I had to have more, I had to hear the song again. And I listened to that damned song over and over all the way to when my wife and I landed in New York. I played it in the cab too. I've listened to it a hundred times since. I'll never stop listening to it. She's got a ton of songs like that, that just kill me. I can't relate to everything she does, and I'd rather die than go to one of her concerts. I'm not a fan of "Taylor Swift" the entertainer, but the songwriter and singer moves me deeply. The only movie I don't turn off is "Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions," because "Folklore" is my favorite album, the one I always recommend as a first listen for people who say they hate her without listening to any of her work. It was made during the pandemic, with her recording in her closet of her home. Like "Run," it's not as autobiographical as the others--it's fictional. There are three characters in it that appear in various songs. They intersect. And it's a really plain movie, just her in a studio, playing with producers Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff. Never more than three instruments playing at once. I agree with the long list of the world's greatest songwriters, from Dolly Parton to Paul McCartney to Billy Joel. I think Taylor Swift is a magnificent songwriter. So sue me. I say this based on seriously listening to all of her work with an open heart. Have you?

I do this long aside on Swift, because I am doing similar deep dives into singer/songwriters from Lorde to Billie Eilish to Phoebe Bridgers to Lana Del Ray and Mitski. I find all of them inspiring. And these young singers kicked my ass to get back to songwriting again.

And I thought, why do I need to keep writing songs the way I've always done? Couldn't I explore what these other songwriters do in the same way I did all the songwriters of my younger days? Why do I have to be frozen in my old ways? And maybe I could put in a freaking bridge now and then!

And what about my melodies? If I rewrite lyrics, why have I never rewritten the melodies? What is a good melody, anyway? Every time I heard a melody I liked, I played it on my guitar and piano to see what I could learn. Look at the way that melody looks on my guitar. Why is it great?

And I decided, what the hell, why not even try reading books on songwriting? Amazon has this service where you can read a lot of their ebooks for a monthly fee, and it was free for a few months. This was great, because if I didn't feel the author had anything to teach me--I went on to the next one. I looked at over two dozen books. When I found something that meant something to me, I bought my own copy and read it over and over. Ones Amazon didn't have for free, I got from the library or purchased.

I felt a lot of pushback in my previous post about Sheila Davis and how she's helped me. There was the assumption that if you study songwriting in any way, it would be academic, formulaic, lifeless. You don't need any of that crap--follow your bliss! What I found from studying the best songwriters was the opposite: a beautiful garden of ideas. Stephen Sondheim wrote his songs on different yellow pads: one for verses, one for chorus, and one for bridges. It would never have occurred to me to do this, but it was a good idea and has helped me. A lot less scribbling, and very helpful with structure. Herbie Hancock says that many jazz musicians write on the bass. My mind exploded when I read that, because I understood exactly what he meant. If you play the Great American Songbook a lot, you know those ascending and descending bass parts that are hidden in the complex jazz chord progressions. And those up and down parts are at the heart of most pop music too. Writing on the bass also makes you write in a more rhythmic way. You can't get that from a VI, you need to hold the thing in your hands. I missed the bass I sold, so I bought a new one. God it made me happy to have it. I just had an epidural for my chronic pain and am hopeful I will be taking that beautiful red Yamaha off the wall very soon.

I learned so many things that changed the way I heard great songs and pointed the way for me to progress beyond my old habits and move forward. I find that I truly can be better. I think I am writing the best songs of my life. It's really, really hard, but that's where the joy and satisfaction comes when I finally finish writing something that I like.

Recently, my wife and I took a trip to Paris. I put my arrangement of one of my new songs into Cubasis. After I played it, the same thing that happened when I listened to "Run." I needed to hear it again. One of the many lessons I've learned from Taylor Swift--I'm not saying she invented it, but she does it--is she ends her songs before you want her to. Look at the end of "Cruel Summer." Hey! I'm not done yet! Where's the final chorus! But she just stops. I tried to do this with my song. And I listened to it over and over and over and over, all the way to Paris. I wanted to, I had to. I should be sick of it after all the time I've spent on it, but I love it so much that I never grow tired of it. But I came back to Brooklyn to make it better. And I did.

As I realize nobody is ever going to hear it, and I'll get nothing out of it--this is what it's all about for me. In "F1," Brad Pitt's character calls it flying.

 

[Tim Nash]

You mention writing on the bass, the Beatles bass lines come to mind.

The biggest breakthrough for me was learning to switch back and forth from writer/musician to listener as needed, both with my music and others.

 

[Louie]

Stephen Sondheim wrote his songs on different yellow pads: one for verses, one for chorus, and one for bridges. It would never have occurred to me to do this, but it was a good idea and has helped me. A lot less scribbling, and very helpful with structure.

Great post Reid. Soundheim’s process rings a bell, for me at the moment in a different aspect, but I suspect related to how the brain organizes things. I’ve been reading a great book on practicing music more effectively ( in the process of improving my clumsy piano playing). The author Molly Gebrian is a fine violinist and teacher with a background also in brain research/neuroscience and is drawing upon that multidisciplinary background in the book, Learn Faster Perform Better. Come to find out, there is a process for “encoding" music in long term memory, and part of what makes encoding effective (for our brains to store and later recall), is a process she calls “chunking” the information. As part of that process she recommends separating out the different elements in a piece or song and focusing/working on those individually before combining them back into the whole. The author uses an example of marking up multiple but separate sheets or copies of something you are working on, it could be lyrics, could be the song as a whole, an entire score, or different sections of lyrics like your Soundheim example. The idea is having multiple layers of observations/highlights/notes to yourself but intentionally categorizing or “chunking” them : say one for the lyrics, another for the song form, another on the harmony, another only with your own descriptions of emotional peaks/moments, another on the melody itself, and finally, separating out the very detailed technical performance or nit-picky stuff. From reading the book my understanding is this allows our brains to more clearly form a concept or “chunk" these main elements, with each as it’s own thing which makes it easier to remember and later integrate naturally as larger chunks, versus an overload of so many competing elements. Anyway my hunch from what I’ve learned from her book so far is Sondheim’s process is likely supported by neuroscience.

Herbie Hancock says that many jazz musicians write on the bass. My mind exploded when I read that, because I understood exactly what he meant. If you play the Great American Songbook a lot, you know those ascending and descending bass parts that are hidden in the complex jazz chord progressions. And those up and down parts are at the heart of most pop music too.

As mainly a bass player and cellist, I’m happy to hear that! It worked for Bach too, and he was accused a few times throughout musical history of knowing what he was doing. I’ve also found singing/writing a melody over a bass line, or vice-versa, and then filling in the chords later can lead to a strong and sometimes unexpected (in a good way) direction to the harmonic progression, so the progression on it’s own is sort of a harmonic melody in additional to the melody itself. Plus this can leave open more possibilities for choosing intervals above the bass line to discover the chords, versus getting locked into canned chord progressions. Nothing necessarily wrong with the later (using given progressions), but I generally prefer developing the bass line and melody together first (also for making modulations). To me it is also just more fun making it "from scratch" that way.

What's all this fuss about Taylor Swift? Shouldn't I find out for myself?

I went through a similar revelation, found this performance, and was like, whoa, I understand now--dynamite performer…such confidence, without a trace of arrogance. She was gracious enough to share a few comments on her songwriting too.

 

[Reid Rosefelt]

Great post Reid. Soundheim’s process rings a bell, for me at the moment in a different aspect, but I suspect related to how the brain organizes things. I’ve been reading a great book on practicing music more effectively ( in the process of improving my clumsy piano playing). The author Molly Gebrian is a fine violinist and teacher with a background also in brain research/neuroscience and is drawing upon that multidisciplinary background in the book, Learn Faster Perform Better. Come to find out, there is a process for “encoding" music in long term memory, and part of what makes encoding effective (for our brains to store and later recall), is a process she calls “chunking” the information. As part of that process she recommends separating out the different elements in a piece or song and focusing/working on those individually before combining them back into the whole. The author uses an example of marking up multiple but separate sheets or copies of something you are working on, it could be lyrics, could be the song as a whole, an entire score, or different sections of lyrics like your Soundheim example. The idea is having multiple layers of observations/highlights/notes to yourself but intentionally categorizing or “chunking” them : say one for the lyrics, another for the song form, another on the harmony, another only with your own descriptions of emotional peaks/moments, another on the melody itself, and finally, separating out the very detailed technical performance or nit-picky stuff. From reading the book my understanding is this allows our brains to more clearly form a concept or “chunk" these main elements, with each as it’s own thing which makes it easier to remember and later integrate naturally as larger chunks, versus an overload of so many competing elements. Anyway my hunch from what I’ve learned from her book so far is Sondheim’s process is likely supported by neuroscience.


As mainly a bass player and cellist, I’m happy to hear that! It worked for Bach too, and he was accused a few times throughout musical history of knowing what he was doing. I’ve also found singing/writing a melody over a bass line, or vice-versa, and then filling in the chords later can lead to a strong and sometimes unexpected (in a good way) direction to the harmonic progression, so the progression on it’s own is sort of a harmonic melody in additional to the melody itself. Plus this can leave open more possibilities for choosing intervals above the bass line to discover the chords, versus getting locked into canned chord progressions. Nothing necessarily wrong with the later (using given progressions), but I generally prefer developing the bass line and melody together first (also for making modulations). To me it is also just more fun making it "from scratch" that way.

I went through a similar revelation, found this performance, and was like, whoa, I understand now--dynamite performer…such confidence, without a trace of arrogance. She was gracious enough to share a few comments on her songwriting too.

Very interesting post.

This chunking way for practicing or analyzing music, is essentially the same way that I create songs, and probably most electronic musicians make songs. I'm working in stages through chords and melody and lyrics, revising over and over. Those are my first chunks. Then I move over to the computer for the next chunks.I add the instruments to the arrangement, one by one, and revise them. Working on the arrangement over and over, hearing my song so many times, makes me hear things in the lyrics and melody I don't like, so I'm back to the first stage again. Sometimes it's just a stupid thing where I realize I can't sing it, or it's too hard to play on the guitar.

It all works out over time until it's done.

The thing my process lacks is the unexpected things that come out of playing with other musicians. I want to work on ways to get that in.

 

[richiebee]

I think this thread has inspired me to do more studying of songs. My songwriting process is really haphazard - jumps all over the place, and tends not to be very structured, except perhaps at the very start, when I'm working out my initial chord progression. I've never really deep dived any of the songs that I consider great, and that's really something I should be doing. I sometimes look on the surface, but never go into detail.

 

[Reid Rosefelt]

I learned everything I knew about writing songs as a teenager from The Beatles. They had great verses and a chorus and bridges that were as strong as the first two. There were great intros: think of that crazy chord that kicks off “A Hard Day’s Night” or the feedbacked note and riff that leads into “I Feel Fine.” And when I played their songs in my songbooks, I had to learn what “DS al Coda” meant, because they had a lot of what songwriters today call “Outros.”

Of course, I was mainly trying to imitate Dylan, and he often got away with the strophic form—just verses. For example, “Girl of the North Country” (Dylan’s redo of the English ballad “Scarborough Fair”), or many long songs on “Highway 61 Revisited”--“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues.” “Desolation Row,” etc. ("Ballad of a Thin Man" is close, but it has a bridge.)

So even though I knew all the sections Beatles typically put in their songs, if I came up with verses and a chorus, I thought I was done. In fact, many of the songs I wrote over the years were just verses (like Dylan) or the chorus didn’t sound very different from the verses.

As I wrote before, I always skipped the bridge. What could a bridge do for my song? I never considered it, even though I loved the bridges to “I Want You” and “Just Like a Woman.” If I ever went back to any of my old songs, that's the first question I would ask.

And then, as I started to study 21st century pop music, I discovered that people typically used all the sections the Beatles did, but sometimes added even more: Pre-Chorus. Post-Chorus. Very elaborate outros.

The idea of a pre-chorus existed in a lot of my favorite songs, I just never heard anybody call it that. It was just something (usually one line) that led musically and lyrically from the verse into the chorus. Think of “Someone to open each and every door...” in “It Ain’t Me Babe.” But in modern pop, I discovered, it could be much more of its own section, like a bridge is.

The post-chorus was something that was new to me. A good portion of the biggest modern hits have post-choruses. For example, The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights” and Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather.”
I'm always asking myself if something is a bridge or a post-chorus. Bridges are usually four lines and sung once. Swift's “Cruel Summer” has a section that’s twice as long as that (“I’m drunk in the back of the car”) and sung twice, so I would call that a post-chorus. The point is, you can have a third, all-new section in your song that isn’t a bridge and can be used more than once.

Modern outros aren't necessarily like the old codas, which usually were simple, like repeating the last line with a different melody or a held note. The outro could be longer than a verse, and could be something completely new. Something that is nowhere else in the song. Or the intro could be a reprise of the intro, like in "Cruel Summer."

And there was more. There could often ve a ton of melodies packed into these new songs. In the old songs I knew there were often two melodies in a 4-line verse. Think “Homeward Bound.” or “It Ain’t Me Babe.” That was something I picked up on for my own songs. But in modern pop, you didn’t have to sing the second verse the same way you sang the first one. I think one of the reasons I’m so obsessed with Taylor Swift’s “Run,” is I play this game of “count the melodies” when I listen to it.

All these things have become part of the DNA of what somebody like Taylor Swift or Billie Eilish or Olivia Rodrigo or Dua Lipa feels when they write a song. It's fundamental to what they think a song is or what a song could potentially be. But my instincts are more contracted than their's.

These things are fundamental to modern pop, but they are utterly foreign to me. So when I write, I ask myself questions I’ve never asked before. Could this song be better if there were more sections in it? More melodies? How can I push myself?

Of course, much of modern pop is uninspirig. A modern song can be one melody stolen from somebody else and repeated over and over. But there's good stuff out there if you're willing to seek it out.

 

[richiebee]

Of course, much of modern pop is uninspirig. A modern song can be one melody stolen from somebody else and repeated over and over. But there's good stuff out there if you're willing to seek it out.

I'm curious how you feel about getting inspiration from songs that don't inspire you.

I've never thought about this before, but I think that might actually be a benefit - to analyze a song that is popular, but that you don't personally like, might open up something in you. I find that part of my problem is that with songs I like, I get distracted too easily from being able to deeply analyze it. I start out with good intentions, but then end up just getting lost in the wonder of the song, rather than the structure of it. I guess it doesn't help that a lot of music I like is on the jazzier end of the scale, and while I was a jazz musician more than I was any other kind, I like stuff that is typically more complex than I would be able to play myself, and so rhythmically very complex and harmonically very complex analysis, are challenges for me.

With only a couple of exceptions, I hate songs by the Beatles. I'm starting to think that I should use this to my benefit.

 

[Louie]

I was never much into the Beatles either but I used to play in a small jazz group that played And I Love Her as a jazz ballad instrumental. This particular arrangement was slowed way down, almost down to "Shirley Horn ballad tempo”, with breathy nylon string guitar playing chord/melody, accompanied by low sustained upright bass and textural percussion. It had a different mood than the original, quite lush, more romantic, but still recognizable and a favorite of clientele at the fancy seafood restaurant where we played often.

Anyway, just an anecdote of the value of re-arranging solidly written songs, where the original arrangement or recording isn’t necessarily your cup of tea, but the song itself is well written and has potential for transformation into different moods or interpretations. Going a step further I guess would be taking songs by the Beatles that have been done in several different arrangements/moods and analyzing why they still work in each case, and then coming up with your own version.

 

[Reid Rosefelt]

I'm curious how you feel about getting inspiration from songs that don't inspire you.

I've never thought about this before, but I think that might actually be a benefit - to analyze a song that is popular, but that you don't personally like, might open up something in you. I find that part of my problem is that with songs I like, I get distracted too easily from being able to deeply analyze it. I start out with good intentions, but then end up just getting lost in the wonder of the song, rather than the structure of it. I guess it doesn't help that a lot of music I like is on the jazzier end of the scale, and while I was a jazz musician more than I was any other kind, I like stuff that is typically more complex than I would be able to play myself, and so rhythmically very complex and harmonically very complex analysis, are challenges for me.

With only a couple of exceptions, I hate songs by the Beatles. I'm starting to think that I should use this to my benefit.

I think a lot of what is popular, but not good, comes from a cynical place. Dr. Luke used to say that his approach was to steal another song that was popular, all the way up to the level that he couldn't get sued. He was open about this. He is a very good musician (once on the Saturday Night band) and producer (the first American Max Martin protege), so not everybody could use that trick.

But I think most people are not that creative, and they might sincerely like some junk that they are putting out.

The way I study songs is not profound. I try to play them on my guitar. (I was waiting for customer service at Steinberg the other day and I almost learned the hold music before the guy came on. ) When I learn the chords I pick up whether there are chords I can't figure out quickly, and I get verse, chorus, bridge, outro, etc. If I am too stupid to figure out the chords, I look the song up online.So I get this extremely minimal understanding. Then I play the melodies. It's fascinating to me to see the huge leaps in Brian Wilson's melodies. All my favorite tunes have leaps. Largely I'm looking for whether the melody is monotonous or whether it's really big, like Taylor Swift's melodies. I think writing melodies is not a gift--it's something you can learn and get better at it.

The simple stuff above can be done in minutes. Studying the lyrics of a great Paul Simon song is the work of a lifetime. I keep finding new things in songs like "America" and "The Boxer."

Back to your idea about studying "bad songs." I don't really get that. For me, I would rather study people who are a billion times better than I could ever dream of being.

 

[Reid Rosefelt]

I was never much into the Beatles either but I used to play in a small jazz group that played And I Love Her as a jazz ballad instrumental. This particular arrangement was slowed way down, almost down to "Shirley Horn ballad tempo”, with breathy nylon string guitar playing chord/melody, accompanied by low sustained upright bass and textural percussion. It had a different mood than the original, quite lush, more romantic, but still recognizable and a favorite of clientele at the fancy seafood restaurant where we played often.

Anyway, just an anecdote of the value of re-arranging solidly written songs, where the original arrangement or recording isn’t necessarily your cup of tea, but the song itself is well written and has potential for transformation into different moods or interpretations. Going a step further I guess would be taking songs by the Beatles that have been done in several different arrangements/moods and analyzing why they still work in each case, and then coming up with your own version.

A well-written song can be sung countless ways. And quite often, as in Jimi Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower," the interpreted version is much better than the original. If you do think about Dylan's career, he's had very few songs that charted. He's had many more hits with other people performing his work, from Peter, Paul & Mary ("Blowin' in the Wind," "Don't Think Twice") to Joan Baez (too many to mention) to Adele on "To Make You Feel My Love."

The Beatles live on today, because people keep performing their songs.

 

[richiebee]

Back to your idea about studying "bad songs." I don't really get that. For me, I would rather study people who are a billion times better than I could ever dream of being.

I don't mean bad songs... clearly the Beatles have something that people liked and still like. It's just that I don't find anything inspiring in there. Not in their words, melodies or chord structures. The Beatles Songwriting Academy might change that... It looks very interesting.

As a musician, I was always the same - I loved the work of trumpet players like Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard - who to me were technically brilliant and most importantly with beautiful tone. But couldn't find any inspiration from Miles Davis or Chet Baker, who didn't have a big brassy tone, or in my view at the time, technical expertise. I could never listen to jazz before the 1960's, because I found the recording quality to be a real downer on inspiration. I loved Arturo Sandoval but hated Dizzy Gillespie. In spite of stylistic similarities, their tone on the instrument was worlds apart for me, and tone was what inspired me more than anything. None of the names in this paragraph could be considered poor players of their instrument, and yet some were inspiring and some weren't.

Anyway, my point was that if I was to analyze songs that I don't like, but are popular, I wonder if I might be less distracted and able to approach analysis in a more technical and matter of fact way.

 

[Reid Rosefelt]

I don't mean bad songs... clearly the Beatles have something that people liked and still like. It's just that I don't find anything inspiring in there. Not in their words, melodies or chord structures. The Beatles Songwriting Academy might change that... It looks very interesting.

As a musician, I was always the same - I loved the work of trumpet players like Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard - who to me were technically brilliant and most importantly with beautiful tone. But couldn't find any inspiration from Miles Davis or Chet Baker, who didn't have a big brassy tone, or in my view at the time, technical expertise. I could never listen to jazz before the 1960's, because I found the recording quality to be a real downer on inspiration. I loved Arturo Sandoval but hated Dizzy Gillespie. In spite of stylistic similarities, their tone on the instrument was worlds apart for me, and tone was what inspired me more than anything. None of the names in this paragraph could be considered poor players of their instrument, and yet some were inspiring and some weren't.

Anyway, my point was that if I was to analyze songs that I don't like, but are popular, I wonder if I might be less distracted and able to approach analysis in a more technical and matter of fact way.

I think whatever works for you is great.

 

[CrimsonWarlock]

Anyway, my point was that if I was to analyze songs that I don't like, but are popular, I wonder if I might be less distracted and able to approach analysis in a more technical and matter of fact way.

Back when, I bought the maxi single of Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. I actually didn't like that song at all, but I had to buy it for the stellar production (by Trevor Horn, one of my producer idols).