Lecture notes for Certificate Songwriting on texture and arranging songs

1. Sound, arrangement
and development
How can sound be of use to the song writer?

2. Using Software
• Recording ideas can be helpful.
• Using loops and samples as the basis for tracks.
• Recording improvisation as the basis for a song

3. Other approaches
• “Jamming”
• sketching
• using timbre or sound design to shape the song

4. It might be difficult, and you may think it is never
good enough… but sometimes you have to let go.
Finish something and move on to the next thing.
If you just constantly work on the same thing, no
matter how good it gets you will probably end up
hating it.

5. FRESH EARS
• Take breaks.
• Give it time between listens.
• If you spend too long on something you lose touch with
what was appealing about the idea in the first place.
• Take breaks because creativity requires energy.
• Try different listening environments and different
thought processes. Don't listen to the same thing over
and over again.

6. USE THIS TIME TO FIND
YOUR VOICE
• Embrace failure.
• Find a sense of comfort in the uncomfortable.
• No one knows who you are, so this is your time to
experiment and try to find your voice.
• Work in genres and against them. Take things that
interest you and transform them into something
new.

7. Collaborate
• Work with a producer to get fresh perspective on
the songs.
• Work with another songwriter to approach things
from a different angle.
• Find someone who complements your style of
working.
• Have people who have opinions you trust, and who
are honest with you.

8. Thinking About Sound
• What sounds are typical in your genre?
• This collection of sounds can be called the “sound-world” of a song.
• How is the sound-world generated? Is the sound-world constant
throughout a song or does it change/vary?
• Is your song one that relies entirely on the technology and recording,
or does it work just as effectively on the piano with a singer?
• What are the associations of the particular sounds? This might
include an emotion (e.g. strings and love), a style (12-string guitar
and folk music), or a historical era (“gated” snare drum and 1980s
pop)

9. How can arrangement help?
• What is the structure?
• What is the narrative shape?
• Where are the builds and releases?
• What is the journey the listener is going on?

10. Using Texture/Sound in a
Song
• Foreground, middleground and background (where should
instruments/sounds be placed relative to each other?)
• Silence and noise (could you have a cut/break for
emphasis? Or a lot of dissonant noise to build up tension?)
• Layering as form and shape (e.g. use more instruments to
mark the chorus compared with the verse)
• How to start/end? Do you want a fade in/out to let the
energy change gradually? Or hit the listener with a bang?

11. Ways to think about
composition
• Listening to music you hate
• Give yourself short windows of time for specific
tasks… then edit afterwards.
• Think about things in a subtractive way rather than
an additive way.