Secrets of the Songwriter

Last nights CMA Awards, broadcast live on ABC, is Country Music’s night to shine. It’s by no accident that many of the award winners thanked the songwriters. For the singers know, without the songwriter there is no song to sing.

Over the last couple of months I have been privileged to take a songwriters class at the Blair School of Music in Nashville. Each week a songwriter shares his or her story and helps the class look at the craft of songwriting. Most of the members of the class are songwriters themselves and in many of the sessions they share their music for critique by the speaker and the class.
This last week Laynge Martin, who has written songs like Elvis Presley’s “Way down” and Trisha Yearwood’s, “I Wanna Go Too Far,” was our speaker.

What impressed me about Laynge was his passion for his craft and his desire to be heard. Some of his advice could be applied to us all.

About music itself he noted that in movies, music is always used to bring the message home. At the most dramatic point in the story people sing. For Layne, “songs are really accelerated meaning.” This reminds us that unlike any other form of communication, music goes straight to the heart. Lyrics, melody, and rhythm combine to take the listener to a different place of understanding and insight. The best song becomes your song because it opens a window into what is really important in life.

Another comment by Layne has importance for us in everyday communication, that “everything we say has a melody and a rhythm.” The cadence of our speech is really music without the notes. The tone of our voice, the words we emphasize, and our inflection constantly tells others the state of our emotions, what is important to us, and where our passion lies.

Daniel J. Levitin, author of The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature says the following: “Music, I argue, is not simply a distraction or a pastime, but a core element of our identity as a species, an activity that paved the ways for more complex behaviors such as language, large-scale cooperative undertakings, and the passing down of important information from one generation to the next.” In his book he says there are basically six types of songs that have formed who we are as humans: songs of friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, and love.

I might add to this the following thought: before there was speech, culture, and civilization there was music. Too radical for you. If you are a parent, my guess is the first form of communication you formed with your infant child was a song. Maybe it was a coo or a soft hum. Whatever it was it made a connection that soothed and comforted. In a sense you became the songwriter as you formed a bond with your child.

Songs then are not simply noise to fill up time as we drive to work or crunch numbers on our computer. They are the stuff of life. They help us articulate who we are. They help us discover what is most important to us. The songwriter’s gift is the ability to listen to the sorrows and joys of daily existence to distill meaning into a phrase. “I did it my way.” “Love the one your with.” “Staying alive.” “Ain’t no mountain high enough.” “Amazing Grace.”

Layne made another comment during our time together that really stuck, “what you do everyday becomes your life.” Days turn to weeks which turn into months which becomes years. What you do each day has great implications for what you will become in the future. What you do each moment matters.

So the next time you listen to a song remember the muse that lurks in the shadow, for if you listen closely the secret of the songwriter will be revealed.