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STRATEGY FOR THE DAY: say nothing at all unless you have to

I have a small private songwriting group that meets once a month. Just 8 members in the group which is nice. People feel comfortable about sharing their songs and lyrics in progress.

We held the first couple of meetings at Culver City Music Center but the rooms there are made for one-on-one music instruction or a guitar teacher with only 2 or 3 (usually child-sized) students. I have 8 adults plus me and it was a little tight to say the least. Also, a little cold and impersonal. So I began looking around for a new venue for the meeting and suddenly remembered my old friend Bob Wayne, owner of Sunburst Recording. I worked with Bob on many albums at Sunburst when I was an A&R exec at Rhino Records. One of our more memorable achievements was "Dr. Demento Gooses Mother," a compilation of wacked-out children's music from the good doctor's collection interspersed with cameo appearances by Mother Goose characters played by Russi Taylor and Wayne Allwyne (the voices of Mickey and Minnie). Walmart refused to carry the album because of the title.

Bob is a big believer in analogue. Sunburst Recording is one of the few studios where you can still record 24-track analogue. He has very nice little Trident board with a warm sound (Trident's are known for it) and a recording room that looks like a hippie livingroom circa 1968. (Somebody get me a lava lamp!) As befitting a man who appreciates analogue sound, the whole place reeks of cool vibe and an authentic recording experience. (He does a lot of direct-to-tape jazz and blues.) I highly recommend it for anyone recording on the west side of Los Angeles. Bob has just recently put up a web site. It's not complete but you can see a couple of studio photos if you're interested. Sunburst Recording Studios in Culver City, CA.

So the songwriting group had its first meeting at Sunburst yesterday. There were plenty of good new songs in the works and everyone's making progress. I had come up with a creative exercise for the last 45 minutes of the meeting and was a little worried that it wouldn't work. I had done one of these the previous month around lyric writing which was fairly easy - there's plenty you can do with word games to stimulate creativity. But I wanted to do something with melody this month and that's more of a problem. Many lyricists don't know anything at all about melody and feel a little intimidated when I start talking about it; other people in the group are very savvy about melody.

I finally came up with the idea of setting up a rhythm pattern and varying the note pitches as we went around the circle. Most songwriters look only at pitch when they are thinking about melody and neglect the rhythmic element. By breaking out the rhythm element and repeating it while varying the notes, you become more aware of these underlying patterns and how you can use them to strengthen your melody. By the time we finished the exercise, I had given them a choice of three different rhythm phrases. As we went around the circle, each person sang whatever note pitches they wanted to one of the rhythm patterns. Of course, this requires remembering all three patterns and creating new notes to sing to one - all in time to a beat! They were ALL able to do it which was a big surprise - to them as much as me! Listening to what we were doing, it became clear that when you mix two or three rhythmic phrases, varying the notes while you repeat a phrase or move to a new one, you get melodies that are focused and memorable. It was very exciting for everyone, including me!

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Read A Brief History Of Love Songs by Robin Frederick at the Sound Experience Music web site.

Copyright 2005 Robin Frederick. All rights reserved.