Can You Follow Instructions?

This might sound like an odd title for a piece on songwriting but hear me out. It’s more relevant than you think.

I’m going to kick this one off with a story. Please bare with me for a while.

A long time ago, back in the early 80s, a friend and mine went into business together. We were both into music and we thought this was a good idea. No, it ended up not lasting very long and I’d say it was a failure even though we did make some money (don’t remember how much) but that’s not the point of this story.

This wonderful business idea of ours was similar to those “We will put your lyrics to music” type deals. Except what we did with this business was we put your wedding, or anniversary or whatever you were celebrating, to music. If you wanted your life story set to music, we did that too.

Clients would submit their “story” to us. We’d then take all this info, write some lyrics, compose some music, and record it for them. We’d then give it to them on cassette. Yes, it was a long time ago. There was no burning to CD at the time. I didn’t even own a computer.

Now, because these were custom made to order, we had to follow the client’s instructions to the letter. Whatever they wanted in these songs, we had to give them. There was really little room for creativity. I mean if they wanted all the songs to be in a minor key because they were miserably depressed human beings, that’s what we had to do. Lyrics had to be built around their story.

If you think this is easy, try it sometime and try to come up with something that also pleases the client.

Needless to say, we saw that this was a difficult business and very time consuming, especially if you were putting together a half hour tape on somebody’s life story or how they met and married their childhood sweetheart.

Okay, let’s put this in the context of writing music to make a living in the world today. I know composers think that they are independent contractors, that they can write anything that they want. Guess what? They can’t. Well, okay, if they don’t care about making money they can. But if they want to make it in the music business, they better know how to follow instructions.

You’re probably wondering what these “instructions” are. Well, let me give you examples of some of them.

One “instruction” is the trend that music has taken. Every decade has its own little sound depending on the genre of music. Going against that sound is risky. There is a greater chance of succeeding if you “sell out” as a lot of people want to call it. Hey, I’m just delivering the news. Don’t shoot the mailman.

All kidding aside, in a sense, you are being told what to do if you want to succeed in the music business. The tastes of the general public will dictate what you’re going to write if you want a chance of being successful. That is a form of following instructions, albeit a very general form.

Want something more specific? No problem. Trust me, this business can get very specific to the point of minutia. If you haven’t been in it, you just don’t know.

Let’s say you happen to land a staff writing job in Nashville. Staff writers essentially write all this music that ends up going on albums along with all the “hits” if there even are any. Not every recording artist writes their own music. Some are just great singers who need music written for them.

So here you are, a staff writer in Nashville. That’s not a bad gig to get. It pays pretty well though you’ll never get rich off of doing it.

But hold on. It’s not like you can just sit down and write anything you want. While each staff writing position is going to be slightly different, there are some fairly basic set of instructions that you’re most likely going to have to follow. The best way to explain this is with an example.

You’re a staff writer in Nashville and you’re writing music for an up and coming female country singer. She’s 18 years old. So she hasn’t really lived much yet. So her songs aren’t going to be about all the pain and suffering and growing up she’s done in her long, hard life. Most likely she’s going to sing about partying and having fun and falling in love. Got it?

So, your boss comes to you with all this information about this up and coming artist and he tells you that he wants three songs. One is going to be about partying, one about falling in love and the last one about that first broken heart. He says he wants each song to be between three and four minutes long. One uptempo and two ballads. The lyrics have to sound like they’re coming from the point of view of an 18 year old. Got it?

That’s a typical assignment in the real world if you’re a staff writer. No, you can’t just sit down and write anything you want. If only it were that easy.

And that’s just one example of what it’s like to be a songwriter and have to follow instructions.

Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a film scorer? Imagine having to view a scene and come up with just the right music for that scene. You are being controlled by what you’re seeing on screen. You can’t just write any old thing. You have to write music that actually fits what you’re watching.

We so want to think that we have independent thought when we’re in the music business, but we really don’t. We’re always at the mercy of the people we work for, whether it be a staff manager, the producer of a movie or our adoring fans.