I was reading one of my old columns on songwriting (this was pre-blog) explaining why I had decided to write only instrumental music.
This was, as I said at the time, liberating to me: no one could have a problem with my voice or vocal style, and naturally enough no grief about the lyrics either.
I was also quite concerned about not falling into the structure trap: verse chorus verse bridge verse, you know the routine.
I worked like this for probably a couple of years, and it was good in that it really pushed me to work and make the music as interesting as possible – not that that is not always the goal anyway, but without the safety net of a sung line, it makes it much harder. I think it was good for me to do this.
What I found though is that I had ended up with lots of nice ambient pieces, that didn’t require vocals, and at the same time, a greater number of songs that were good but were just missing - something, I didn’t know what. I just knew that they felt incomplete.
As a result a number of these pieces just sat on my hard drive, not going anywhere. I mean, I was happy with the way the music sounded but unhappy since they did not seem to be complete thoughts.
As I was playing one of these incomplete songs, I had an idea for a melody and some lyrics. Well, I thought, why not? Do I have to be the great champion of electronic music, going bravely where no man…..etc etc.
Of course I was always fully aware that while I might have my moments of discovery, and my individual inspirations, I cannot pretend that I am expanding the theoretical boundaries of music. To do that, I would have to have much more music education (and smarts too) that I actually possess. And while I certainly enjoy a very wide range of music, including what some label as experimental, I am at heart a person who still values melody and hooks. I can listen to someone drag marbles on the floor while manipulating effects and their mixer (which I have done) but its only interesting maybe once. It is not something I will want to listen to over and over again.
What I want to create, I realize, is just that: music that people will enjoy listening to many many times, that will mean something to them other than just background noise.
This brings me again to the problem of non-vocal electronic music: its just damned hard to get a hook on who the performer is, unless you are someone so amazing and unmistakable like Kraftwerk, its harder to make yourself stand out and be memorable.
Once you have a voice in the mix, that all changes, since its my feeling that the voice is the primary instrument that all others developed from, people relate to the voice in a different way than any other instrument. You might make the case for the human voice transcending all other instruments, certainly in its flexibility and its capacity to convey not only notes but emotion. Of course the other musical instruments do this also, with astounding results, but I don’t think they could have come into existence unless humans could sing.
Certainly I know drummers that would disagree with this, but of course this column is how I feel, what feels right for me. But how long can anyone listen to just a drum solo without at some point needing to have more than just straight rhythm? There has to be something else there, something melodic, vocal or no, most of us get tired/bored of just the drum.
As a result of this process of thinking about how to make my music more recognizable and just plain better, I have again started writing songs with lyrics and of course singing. This has been gradual over the course of the last year but I believe it is bearing fruit: I believe that the new material I am composing is more memorable when it has vocal content.
One other discovery that I made, and am still making, is just how my singing style is progressing. You may recall that I spent many years singing in rock and roll bands in front of shitty PA systems. As a result, I can sing loud as hell, and that was pretty much how I did it, until one day in the studio I was trying out some lyrics and I sang quietly and close to the mic. Now that gave me an entirely different feeling – it made the whole vocal process seem so much more intimate and opened up possibilities that were closed to me when volume was such a concern. It allows me to do things with the melodies, and with the tone of my voice, that I could not do when I was singing like I did in all those bars. The result is that I put much, much more into the melodic lines that I sing than I ever used to do, and I like it!
I have been for years a huge fan of Chet Baker, not just his spare and beautiful trumpet playing, but also his voice and his style, and I am sure this has been influencing quite a bit of late.
You know, a whisper can really be better than a scream.