Update: Listen to the finished track on the songs page.

Where does it start?

It starts with a need. It might be an artistic need to express, or (as in my case) a record company brief. They want an Avril Lavigne style single for a girl recording her second album. I think I can manage that. If there’s one teen popster whose songs I know intimately, it’s Miss Lavigne.

So I begin to look at the world through Avril eyes, looking out for something that fits. After a few days of not really thinking about it, I hear some North Sydney friends chatting, and the sentences all start with “Seriously…”. There it is. It ticks all the boxes of a good hook – it’s part of everyday speech (and therefore familiar), it has a strong rhythm and it’s memorable.

Without any instruments to hand, I just sing it as I’m walking, driving, snoozing. “Seriously, ba daa ba daa ba da da dum…” And when the rhythm is stuck in my head, I sit down and scribble out a chorus. I want it to be quite wordy, so I write about 16 lines, and leave it until later to craft it down to 4 or 6 or 8.

Building the framework

The chorus asks “Are you ever going to take me seriously?”, so I build a song structure around that:

• Verse: I want to tell you how much I love you, but you’re not listening.
• Chorus: Are you ever going to take me seriously?
• Verse: I have so much to offer you, but you’re not open to it.
• Chorus: Are you ever going to take me seriously?
• Bridge: One day you’re going to realize I’m an adult.
• Chorus: Are you ever going to take me seriously?

Once that framework is in place, it’s smooth sailing. I get out my guitar and record a rhythm track, just reading the structure and playing what feels right, keeping the Avril style in mind. The first take works fine.

Lyrics

I spend a couple of hours free-writing, rhyme-hunting and playing around with words and phrases until I have two good verses and a pre-chorus. I leave a placeholder bridge in for now, because I can’t get my head around how it needs to sound until I’ve heard the whole structure. So much of this is about filling in the gaps.

When I hear a song that I think is well-written, it tends to be because the lyricist has captured something in a clever phrase, or just a simple, familiar combination of words that resonates with my feelings or thoughts. When I’m writing lyrics I try to create as many potential resonating moments as possible, because different lines will affect different listeners.

While writing ideas for Seriously, I come up with some phrases that I know have to be part of the song: “You’re my prince” (pure sentimental appeal), “I’m not a part of you” (familiar angst), “You watch me like a referee” (interesting image), “How am I supposed to look up to you when you’re looking down on me?” (clever play on words). These become the fixed points around which I can build lyrical sections. The rhyming dictionary gets a good workout here.

Demo

I record drums, bass, piano, vocals, harmonies and put the demo on my iPod for a few days. Then I go back and fill in the bridge. It needs some more harmonic interest and more of a build, so I re-record the rhythm tracks for the bridge and splice them in.

Now it’s time for the all-important vocal. I’m getting Emmanuella to sing on this one, trying to match the style of the target artist. I email the track to her a few days before the session, and by the time I turn up she’s got the tune properly stuck in her head. I take this as a good sign. Catchiness is king.

We run through the song a couple of times before deciding we need to drop the key. Everything apart from the acoustic guitar track is running off MIDI, so it only takes a couple of minutes to transpose the whole thing down from G to E. It sounds much better. The session goes well, we get the whole thing done in an hour or so (plus tea-drinking and catching up time), and celebrate with a quick shandy in the pub.

I get home and record a new guitar track in E. It’s weird trying to recreate the G-ness of the original track, but I eventually get it by using a capo on the 4th fret and playing the whole thing in C. Then it’s only a quick mix away from being burned onto 3 CDs with all my contact details printed clearly all over the disc and the case (with a business card thrown in for good luck).

Putting it out there

One CD goes to the record company, with a covering letter. The second goes on my shelf. The third gets sent recorded delivery to myself, along with a lyric sheet, so I can prove I wrote it before anybody else. It’s an archaic system, but still the recommended way of protecting yourself from copyright theft.

I’m going to explore some of the stages of this writing process in more detail in my next few articles. Make sure you subscribe to the feed so you don’t miss them! Meanwhile I have three other songs in the pipeline, at various stages of completedness, so I had better go and get those finished too.

Improvising a piano score

The film itself consisted broadly of three sections – the first quite static with improvised voice and a spinning cage, the second featuring three dancers moving across the stage/screen and the last with two dancers and a hectic animation. There were a couple of pieces of guide music over the second and third sections.

With only half a day to create the first draft of the score to a rough edit of the film I launched straight in, and improvised half a dozen piano tracks over the whole thing. Two or three ideas jumped out. I created a tempo map that matched both the energy and the structure of the three sections, and from there it was a simple process to re-record the good ideas to the new tempi, and experiment with some instrumental textures.

We had agreed that the score would be piano-based, with maybe some cello, other strings and percussion, and this combination worked well to create a dreamy, old-fashioned sound. I created a ‘rehearsal piano’ sound with some EQ and compression, and used plenty of reverb on the strings to minimise their digital edges.

A successful premiere

Fiona and Jo were thrilled with the result and after a rethink of the ending and some tweaks to match the final edit, the film was ready to premiere at the Oxford Playhouse on March 8th, 2008.

The balance between the freedom to creatively interpret the visuals, and the boundaries and limitations imposed by the structure and character of the film was spot on, and I’m now looking for more film work.

Check out the finished product.