As previously mentioned, in the old days, I used to write for a band. At rehearsals, they would edit, pitch in with ideas, criticise or approve, participate in the writing and arranging process and work on the songs until, regardless of who claimed the original idea, songs became communal property so it was nigh impossible to say who did what. That's the way with folk musics of all sorts. A song may have been good but the band made it better and very often the band's performance became the song. There have been courtroom battles by disgruntled ex-band members claiming their contribution had made songs as memorable as they were and they had received no credit, either in shouts or cash for their contributions. Fair point.
When you suddenly start doing it all on your own, unless you have a knowledgeable and critical partner or friend, all those decisions have to be made by you. Bottom line - if it's good, thanks very much, it was nothing really. If it sucks - where's that hole in the ground?
So that's the first part of the problem - is the song ok? What does it need? Does it need editing? Are there too many verses? How should it be arranged? What instrumentation does it need? Harmonies? Etc. I freely admit to needing an editor but, in my defense, songs and their verses are like babies. You want to nurture, take care of and keep them away from all those nasty critics who would hurt them. I don't like cutting out verses once they are written. I write 5 or 6 verses because I need that many to say what I want but it is received wisdom that audiences have the collective attention span of a gnat so 5 verses (plus solo) is way too long. Think of all the great landmark songs, of which the first thing that is ever remarked on is their length - Boh Rap, Like A R Stone, Defecting Grey, Hey Jude etc. (Having said this, maybe I do the audience a disservice since Big Prize and Blues For Billy Strayhorn, both weighing in at around the 6 minute mark, seem to be popular wherever they are heard.) I have, however, started pruning, in the interests of getting a leaner, meaner, punchier song.
Then, regardless of how long a song is, is it any good? Am I just repeating myself? They all sound the same to me but I can remember them and don't start singing one verse to another's music so I guess they must be different.
As far as arrangements are concerned, without other people to muck in and help create something, the problem is hearing the song without actually singing it. Recording demos helps here even if they are rather primitive. Questions about structure - shall I have a couple of bars between chorus and verse two to catch my breath or would that slow it all down? - can be resolved this way. Important here to recognise that recordings and live performance are very different beasts. If you are singing it live, then, yes, you could leave a space but on cd, it may cause drag. If there are irregularities of meter and verse length, why, and where? And don't forget when you finally record them, you will have to remember where they are if you haven't been playing them live often enough to have become habit.
A lot of these problems are soluble by trial and error. If you are in a band of more than 2 people it is difficult to create arrangements on the spot in performance but for anyone who plays in a small enough unit to be able to change a song on a headshake, you can alter them on a nightly basis until they are right.
Of course, as I said in the last blog in this series, the concept of 'right' is moot here. I have been playing jazz-based music for the last 18 years and, in an improvised arena like that, I don't think of songs as ever finished. There was how I wrote it and how it is tonight. Sometimes they are close and sometimes not.
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