As physicists and biologists know, there are physical patterns and mechanics at work in the beauty of nature. Ever examined the veins of a leaf? What about the life cycle of a blade of grass? Even the human heart itself is an intricate, beautiful, living machine.
Just because something is technically detailed doesn’t make it ugly.
Even so, some songsters have a hard time believing that songwriting can be both intellectual and expressive. Many people have the preconceived notion that formal training is stuffy and dry.
But technique and creativity are not opposites. The myriad human emotions, and human ingenuity, are expressed through the use of techniques—techniques are the equipment we use to envision ideas and then express those ideas.
Whether a songwriter is formally trained or not, she learned her technique 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). Studying is just a process of making those instinctive things conscious so you can think more specifically and clearly about them. And practicing is just a way of taking control of your learning process to make it more streamlined and effective.
Theory as cold shower
Sometimes students who decide to attempt some formal training feel a shock when they leap from playful, creative fun into serious study. I’ll admit that practice usually is not as fun or as easy as aimless creative tinkering can be—but rest assured that practice doesn’t lead 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. And as we discussed in an earlier lesson, you can even use creative restrictions to mix some elements of play into your practice.
There will be times when a logical, cerebral approach to songwriting is useful to you—especially during the Crawl and the 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. But if you keep pushing on, eventually good form will become totally second nature. It’ll take less and less energy. 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 just a little more articulate 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 day or even a week focusing on using one specific technique in one specific way over and over.
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 silk dress perfectly smoothed and fitted. Every note is sung with perfect precision, 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 suddenly gives her audience an unexpected taste of her perfect technique, revealing some immaculately sung sequence of notes that leaves everybody in the room shocked and amazed.
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 beautifully, expressively imperfect.
There are a few reasons we practice with a “correct vs. incorrect” mindset inside the practice room. The first reason is because we need the ability to play cleanly, smoothly, and perfectly when the situation calls for that. The second reason is that sometimes the best way to master one application of a technique is to decide—maybe even arbitrarily—on one “right” way to practice something for today. There’s no wrong way whatsoever to structure a song—but if you need practice writing bridges, require yourself to write bridges.
Magic can be a science
So if you fear that training steals the magic out of music, rest assured that music and lyric writing have many layers. You unpeel one, and the next blooms open. 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 can nourish your creative play by feeding it a consistent daily stream of new material.
Your passion finds a new voice, a new muscle to flex, each time you learn something new. That’s your reward.
As you may have discovered already, it’s well worth the trouble.