Why are the best songs written so quickly?
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- Опубліковано 31 лип 2022
- How is it possible for great songwriters like Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson to write some of the greatest songs of all time in only 30 minutes or less?
It's much more common than you think, and many great songwriters have experienced this process of writing some of their best work in almost no time at all.
In this video, we explore how it is possible to write music so quickly, why this method is so successful and what happens when a songwriter gets stuck.
Leonard Cohen supposedly spent many years perfecting the lyrics to "Hallelujah". I don't imagine that meant years of constantly thinking about it. It probably meant putting it away, then returning to it after he'd had time to forget it, and seeing if he liked what he had...
I wouldn't describe myself as a great songwriter, but tend to find my best music comes quickly, while my best lyrics are laboured.
I usually hear either a fragment of melody or a chord pattern that catches my ear, and flesh that out fairly quickly into a musically complete song. I can even have the idea of the lyrics, or a couple of lines, or even a whole draft of a verse and chorus from this process in about half an hour.
Writing good lyrics is much slower though - because at that point I have to engage my brain, and start evaluating what to to with each word to most effectively say what I want to say and evoke what I want the listener to feel. Simultaneously, I need to fit it to a now fairly strict meter, rhymescheme, etc. and also think about the literal sound of the words, any metaphor that I want to flesh out, the list goes on. Lyrics for me take forever, basically. I guess more naturally gifted poets probably have less trouble witht them, but musicians aren't necessarily that.
I’ve written lots of songs. I’m not claiming that they are great but I completely agree that songs come to you without working hard.
There is an initial song that comes out then you begin to think about it.
You’ve got to dig a little closer into music of the past before you can say that today’s music is more formulaic.
Look at the late 50s and 60s music of The Drifters and you’ll find great songs that were very formulaic.
“Save The Last Dance For Me”
“Up On The Roof”
“Under The Boardwalk”
“I’ve Got Sand In My Shoes”
“Saturday Night At The Movies”
And many more followed the same formula and were not all written by the same songwriters.
Great tunes to hear!
That's actually a great point, something I could have explored more - thanks for pointing it out!
@@davidhartley94 You are a gentleman for accepting my suggestion without rancor.
I think the reason songs are written so fast is that songwriting or melody writing is a right brain function - The right brain has the ability to "see" or "feel" a concept all at once which makes the experience happen as a whole - The left brain is linear and logical and will parse the information the right brain is experiencing - Brian Wilson said that melody happens unconsciously which makes sense because the left brain is dominant and is dealing with words and deciding which chord to play etc - technical things - while the right brain has the melody - as far as where does that melody come from is the existential stuff
My favorite song by my favorite band “I Will Follow you into the Dark” by Death Cab For Cutie was written in 15 minutes. The lead singer had an office to write songs in because he wanted to make writing a job. After writing “I Will Follow You in to the Dark” he went home because he knew there wasn’t a point working any longer.
Great songs just seem to burst out. They are just good.
Hm... when I made music I was usually not trying to communicate a feeling or an idea to the listener.
I just created what sounded good to me. In essence I did that for myself.
Of course, when I presented the result to someone I wanted them to like it, but as subjective as our brain interpretations are of the stuff we percieve, I knew nobody would experience the songs as I did, so I really didn't really expect a certain result from them. We only ever create an interpretation and connect to that eventually. And it might be vastly different from how the musician felt when they wroe the song.
If it me creating my music was more about the lyrics and a message through the lyrics, which it was a few times, then of course you are right. But if the lyrics were more the second fiddle to the music, which they mostly were, I just liked how it turned out. And when I presented it, it was about the music itself then, not the lyrics.
You could argue the music made me feel a certain way and I wanted to send that feeling for others to recieve, but I would not disconnect the feeling from the music.
Literally every music gives me a different feeling, and what can I say so again, I wouldn't disconnect the music from the feeling that I get, so it is more about the music itself for me.
And me hoping the recieving party would like it.
If I wrote a song part after part, I also didn't focus on the idea, I focussed on what sounded good or fitting to me. If you call this an idea, then I would also say I do not distinguish between the thought concept "idea" and the music. It also doesn't come out of a library I think, usually I tried something, it fitted and sounded good to me, so I kept it and moved on.
I would NEVER distinguish the idea of how the next part sounds from the music itself, they are inseperable just like salt and sea to me.
If I would write a film score, yes, then it would be more about sending a certain feeling of a scene that would try to capture with music I guess.
But with my own music, mostly the music itself was what I enjoyed and I did it for myself. And if I presented it, it was what I wanted to send, not an idea or a message.
For pretty much all of the few songs where I put the emphasis on the lyrics originally, I do not care about them as much anymore and just enjoy the tunes and notes themselves.
So for me, the music itself was and is mostly the ultimate destination.
And when I crafted them, I crafted them. Just sitting down and putting time in them may work for a work where you get money for, write songs for eg a TV show and have a deadline.
But if you truly want to like your song completely as much as possible, you don't always come up with the right new chords or so. It all comes up pretty much out of nothing and spontaneously, but if it doesn't come it doesn't. So you wait, your unconsciousness processes it, you try again and you way come up with what really feels right to you. And again, maybe because it simply now sounds right to you, NOT because you convey an idea.
Why would I care more about the feeling itself, or an idea, a message more than the music itself all the time? You only get stuck in thoughts while doing that.
I prefer listening to music and percieving it in a way where you become one with it, where the idea or message doesn't even count anymore, where the distinction between perciever and the percieved fades and they become one - that is only possible when you are not analyzing it and thinking about it, it is more direct experiencing it.
How could music itself not be that what music is about?
To me, that's like saying sex is more about its analysis afterwards than its immediate experience. It's not, and so isn't music.
That's why Whoopi Goldberg's character said "Its better than sex" about music in Sister Act.
And last but not least all our change of positions etc during sex may come out of a "library" of some kind after some experience, but is sex not still about the immediate experience - not about conveying these "ideas" to your partner? Aren't the ideas rather tools to create a joyful immediate experience?
Life, to me, is about the experience/ the happening of life itself. That is as deep as it gets. Focussing on ideas makes you focus on the past and the future, while life itself is always the Happening Here/now.
Anything but a profession musician here, but that is my experience. And of course, it's subjective. If what music is about is to send an idea or a feeling to someone for you, that's fine.
For me personally, that just will never truly work as a general statement.
It's interesting, I loved your video about Pet sounds, but some things you said didn't work for me at all, but I couldn't put my finger on why. Now I can.
Beautiful video. thank you for making it! 😍😍😍😍
Very nice topic and thoughts in video
you make such great videos, I've loved every single one you've posted.
Great video, and very well produced! Man, I dunno how you are not more popular
Thanks!
What an awesome way to look at music, Keep up the good work. Thanks for the learning.
Another banger
The book Thinking, Fast and Slow models two strategies to write songs you mentioned. It uses the metaphor of two thinking agents, System 1, intuitive, automatic, fast, and System 2, more conscious, slow, step by step. "Overthinking" in this context means to use System 2 too much.
I'd add that a songwriter has to be _structured_ in terms of music knowledge and skills, a path to take what he produces to people and maybe some empowering beliefs. Good quality criteria and detachment help as well; Kara DioGuardi said that she uses only a fraction of the songs she writes.
The muse does visit us and birth brilliance quickly sometimes - Recognising what is going on at these times might help us create those situations where the muse wants to visit more?
I think of songwriting like fishing:
Sometimes you get a nibble and haul it in with some work.
Sometimes it jumps right in the boat.
Sometimes it gets away.
Sometimes the one that got away keeps coming back for little nibbles.
Sometimes you eventually land it.
Sometimes you don't.
Paintings can't come quickly because of the painting process. It takes time to apply paint. Even so, someone caught up in the creative process can produce a painting relatively quickly. its about the flow. What's inside flows out. The great artists and musicians know when you're in the flow, you just let go and go with it.
They practice all their lives and show up almost every day for that "it happened in 10 minutes" moment🙃
This is nice, but it's not true. There are plenty of incredible songs that are agonized over for years. SOME great songs are written quickly.
Also, even though the initial writing might come quickly, the arrangement process may taken much longer. Radiohead is famous for doing countless versions of the same song before releasing it. "Strawberry Fields Forever" was worked on for over 50 hours in the studio. Fiona Apple scrapped an entire version of an album. While the chords and the melody are the building blocks of a song, they're only part of what you hear on a finished album. The other part is just as important. If you take the wrong approach to fleshing out and capturing the song, even a great song will fail.
Yeah if your song really takes 15 minutes to write, it because its crap
I like your videos
Why is it once a songwriter gets past a certain age, they can only write basically crap?
😂
Channeling the collective unconscious.
Did Bohemian Rhapsody take 10 to 20 minutes?
Sometimes when you overthink songs, it loses its feelings. That’s why I don’t subscribe to music theory about chord progressions.
😄 This is 100% a fallacy and poorly worded. "Writing" a song isn't coming up with a chord progression or melody or some lyrics. Far from it. What you (and these artists) are talking about is simply the concept, feel or idea. I live next door to a famous musician who also claimed songs would fall out of the sky and that he wrote a worldwide hit that we all know in 20 mins. When I asked him what exactly he came up with in 20 mins, he said "the whole thing". Skeptical, I questioned him further and he admitted he was referring to (some of) the chord progression and (some of) the vocal melody (but not lyrics) as these came much later in the process. In fact, it took him weeks to flesh the song out and nail down the lyrics - the middle 8 itself took days apparently - not to mention infinitely longer producing the mix... 5, 10, 20 mins sounds magical, but it's not close to reality.
This is such an ego thing. People want to be able to say, yeah I'm such a good musician/writer, I wrote this amazing song in 10 minutes. So we will all say wow what a genius! Yeah um, no. Highly exaggerated to make you look good
Do you mind telling who and what song? Curious now
@@iloveamerica64 Better I don't say, but it was a famous band from the 70s & 80s.
@@mrmattyd glad you were skeptical and questioned him!
"writing a song isnt coming up with melody and lyrics".
It literally is. That is the definition of a song. The bells and whistles added in production was clearly not the job of the songwriter, historically.
Publishers would pitch the lyrics and melody. The concept of production came after.
Composing the underlying composition is not legally the definition of a song. If I cover a song I take the lyrics and melody.
Beethoven agonized so often over his wonderful music. Mozart seemed to take dictation. A good book by artists, The Creative Process expands on this.
the monkey chat theme song was created in less than 20 minutes
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I’m sure you’re going to get this comment a lot, but I would like to add my two cents.
I’m a guitarist, and song writer of over 26 years. The songs that I have written, and written quickly, were all concepts that required little effort because the concept, or idea that I wanted to convey bubbled to the surface for me.
It wasn’t something I had to find, or search too deeply for. It was an idea I knew quite well, and all I had to do was write down where the song was taking me.
Sometimes I like to write a piece of music, and just “listen” to where the song wants me to go.
Music is a train, and I’m just its passenger.
Oh boy, great video. Not what I expected from such a "click baity" make-up.
Billie Eilish, some nobody, and Ed Sheeran in the thumbnail
Haha good one
I wouldn't say the best.
Ed Sheeran? Hahahahahahaha
Ed Sheeran? Best songs?
They're not, look up Billy Joel or like...Brahms. Nice lukewarm take though.
As if the title of this video is universally true. It's not.
Ed Sheeran has never been part of a great song. Popular or catchy tunes don't equate to "best" or "great."
Thinking out loud and A team are objectively great songs, hence why they've been covered thousands of times.
If not judging the sucsess of a pop 'song' (not performance or production) through the amount of covers and sales then then how do you judge it?
Anyone other judgment would be subjective and more opinion lead than evidential.
1:56 noel gallagher's songs are shite, they fall out of the sky because heaven doesn't want them