Moving Beyond Chord-Centric Songwriting, Part 2

I’m gonna break my rusty cage and run.

-Chris Cornell

In a previous post, I explained my songwriting rut. I’m harmonically stale; I use the same chords in the same progressions using the same strumming rhythms. I’m boring myself here! Rather than hang myself with my own guitar strap, I’ve taken some time out to sit down and come up with a plan.

1. New instruments. I reread the post “Your Hands Are Like Dogs” to ensure that I was absolutely clear on the problem. I am not going to abandon the guitar, but I am going to spend much more time working on the piano and on the music staff so that I see the music in a new way visually.This should help me break out of some of my old habits and patterns. Ruth Greenwood also suggested that I should try some different guitar tunings—that’s an interesting idea that I hadn’t thought of. Thanks, Ruth!

2. New melodies. Chord changes, after all, are just many little melodies all happening at once. To help expand my aural horizons and break my old habits, I’m working my way through William Russo’s book of musical exercises, Composing Music. I’m also working through a book of arpeggios, scales, and melodies by the mighty Ted Greene. The book’s called Jazz Guitar Single Note Soloing, Volume 1. While working my way through both books, I’m singing all the melodic lines that I read or compose, trying to memorize the sounds of notes on the fretboard.

3. New grooves. New strumming patterns! I’ll also be studying the rhythms of other forms of music, like Latin genres, reggae, jazz, and whatever else I can get my hands on.

4. Focus on lyrics. I’m also reading carefully through Andrea Stolpe’s excellent lyric writing book again. This time I am behaving myself and actually doing every exercise in the book. There’s also a stack of old writing notebooks piled into a few milk crates under my desk; I’ll be stripping those pages for spare parts and developing them into longer pieces.

What about you?

This is an especially important question for guitarists: are you overly dependent on a few chords, scale forms, and licks? And if so, how are you going to break through into new musical frontiers?

Monkey credit: VinothChandar