As biologists know, there are amazing little mechanisms at work in the nature. Ever looked closely at the veins of a leaf? What about the life cycle of a blade of grass? Even the human heart itself is an intricate, living machine.
Just because something is technically complex doesn’t make it ugly.
Even so, some songsters have a hard time believing that songwriting can be both intellectual and beautiful. Many people have the notion that formal training is stuffy and dry, and that it somehow inhibits creativity.
But technique and creativity don’t have to be opposites. The myriad human emotions, and human ingenuity, are expressed through the use of techniques—techniques are the equipment we use to express our ideas.
Whether a songwriter is formally trained or not, she learned her techniques somehow, somewhere. And even if a songwriter pays no conscious attention to technique while she’s writing, she’s using certain strategies intuitively and instinctively (sometimes even accidentally). In fact, that’s why we study and practice — to become fluent enough in technique that it comes quickly and easily when we need it.
When you sit down to study technique, you invest certain aspects of the craft with focused attention. By repeatedly spending attention on a technique or a concept over time, you plant it deep in your long-term, subconscious memory. That stored technique will then resurface in flashes of inspiration that surprise and delight you later on.
Practice is just a way of taking control of your learning to make it more streamlined, fast, and effective.
Theory as cold shower
Sometimes students who decide to attempt some formal training feel a shock when they transition from playful, creative fun into serious study. I’ll admit that practice usually is not as easy or fun as creative tinkering can be—but rest assured that practice doesn’t have to lead you down a path of boredom and emotionless mechanics. You don’t have to give up fun to be able to practice. You can set aside time for serious study and also balance that with time reserved for creative play.
There will be times when a logical, cerebral approach to songwriting is useful to you—especially during the Crawl and Walk stages of learning a new skill.
In these early stages of learning anything new, you’ll be focusing so hard on learning how to apply a technique correctly that you won’t yet be able to use the technique to express yourself.
Keep pushing on, though, and you’ll break through eventually — the skill will become totally second nature. It’ll take less and less energy to perform correctly. With your mind freed from those concerns of technical correctness, you’ll once again be able to focus on playing passionately and expressively—only this time, your passion will be a little more articulate and refined thanks to the time you invested in furthering your skills.
Technique is not a set of rules
Inside the practice room, there may be a strict “right” or “wrong” way to learn a technique. It’s like strength training: you may spend a week’s worth of practice sessions focused on using one technique in one specific way.
But once practice is done and you’re using the technique to write music or lyrics of your own, or if you’re just playing around… anything goes. If supposedly “wrong” form expresses what you need to express, use the wrong form!
For example, I know a classically trained songstress who spends months of her life rehearsing German art songs to perfection. She stands on stage at recitals and sings these pieces flawlessly. Her eyebrows are perfectly arched, her hair straightened, her black dress perfectly smoothed. Every note is sung with careful precision, with just the right amount of power, and deep feeling.
But outside the recital hall, she writes work of her own where she pounds the piano and snarls like an animal. She wears her hair down in tangles. She deliberately hits notes off-pitch. And then, once in a while, like the sun breaking through the clouds, she’ll reveal a sudden glimpse of her training. Her throat shapes some difficult, immaculately sung sequence of notes that leaves everybody in the room shocked.
I love this kind of creative fluidity in people: the discipline and mastery to learn perfect technique, but also the wisdom to know when to be expressively imperfect.
We practice with a “correct vs. incorrect” mindset inside the practice room, in order to gain artistic control. We need the ability to play cleanly, smoothly, and perfectly when the situation calls for that.
Magic can be a science
If you fear that formal training steals the sense of magic and mystique from music, rest assured that music and lyric writing have many layers. Shine a light into the mystery, and there are always more shadows just outside of the lamp’s reach.
Just because you get intellectual and cerebral during practice doesn’t mean you have to be cerebral every time you pick up your instrument or pick up a pen. Instead, disciplined training nourishes your creative play by supplying it with fresh new material. Most songwriters find that the more they practice, the more flashes of inspiration seem to come to them.
Your passion finds a new voice, a new muscle to flex, each time you learn something new.
As you may have discovered already, the rewards are well worth the trouble of learning.