The Randomness of Structural Songwriting

How a natural and creative spark flows to a practical finish

I was never an early Beatles fan, but I watched the Get Back documentary with eyes and ears wide open. It was a songwriter’s dream workshop and a unique insight into creativity. I saw myself in the Apple Studios with the Fab Four. It connected with my nascent songwriting skills on so many levels.

The beauty of creativity is its omnipresence. Whatever muse is hanging around tends to throw out a flurry of ideas like maple seeds helicoptering off onto the forest floor, landing on a sweet spot for nourishment and growth.

For humans and nature it’s an act of randomness that lands a song idea or a suitable patch of forest for germination.

For me, randomness is essential. I open my mind to the universe and it drops a song title, lyric or riff in my lap. I never discount the power of a snippet, a single word, an image or even two chords. It all plays a role to tap into your psyche, your experience and your desire to find the right note, whether musical or lyrical.

Inspiration Flows From Surreal Sources

As an older practitioner I’m more interested in protest songs and highlighting certain issues over chasing lost or forbidden love scenarios. That’s a younger songwriter’s wheelhouse. I want to expose the things that piss me off.

Song ideas pop out of the ether in strange ways. I am a writer more than a musician, so words hit me with a punch and stir up my creative juices.

Words that connect are concrete. For example, I follow the woes of Amazon workers who work under horrendous conditions in massive warehouses. My brother, in North Texas, spent three months in a robotic stupor wandering the aisles and getting clocked for every pick-up task.

In 2021, a tornado mangled a facility in an Illinois town and killed six workers, who weren’t allowed to take proper shelter. I grew up in Tornado Alley; I know the fear and danger. So I wondered about two things: funerals and Jeff Bezos. If Bezos perished, would anyone cry at his funeral? Maybe the programable robots could shed a tear.

I sat in bed watching the local newsreel showing the scattered remains of bent metal and devastated lives. Thus was born the song “When Jeff Bezos Dies” and a line inspired by an Amazon delivery driver:

I piss in a bottle, to save time, all for the profits of Amazon Prime.

Though sometimes a guitar riff keeps bugging me until the lyrics occupy the musical space. For example, I played a simple six-note intro every day for two weeks. It lingered in my mind and stuck in my craw like a pesky pebble.

I don’t often come up with good licks to start a song, so this one was not going to go to waste. My gut told me it was worth the effort to create a line around it.

This is what happened to the riff a few days later:

This led to one of my fastest song turnarounds, as the lyrics evolved quick and the intro set the tone and key for the chords. It’s called “Hold On” and you can check here to give it a listen to when recorded.

From Song Idea to Squeezing the Juice

Are random ideas really random? Or do they come forth from inner folds of your cranial hard drive? Gary Ewer, in SecretsofSongwriting.com, suggests that a song idea

seems to come from deep inside your musical mind … (where) previous musical experiences accumulated over the years since the day you were born.

It’s a valid point. I made a similar assertion when explaining my perspective as a senior citizen songwriter:

Six Decades of Songs - My head is full of rhythms, lyrics, riffs and melodies from a lifetime of listening. Growing up in America from the Sixties is a music education in sound. Traveling abroad for thirty years opens your ears to a multitude of musical alternatives. It’s all inside ready to come out.

A creative idea or moment is just a drop. It makes a ripple in your mind that reverberates and moves it forward. The next step is too squeeze out every ounce of creative juice and fill up the song idea into a finished song.

However, creativity is inspiring; finishing is work. A creative spark only ignites the fire. It is passion and persistence that fuels the flames to burn through the process to complete the task.

I’ve always carried song ideas in my head for decades. But I never knew how to finish them. My breakthrough was due to Covid-19. In the lockdown year of 2020, I took the time to finally learn music theory because a few generous YouTubers offered free courses.

I was blown away. It made so much sense. And it was not that hard.

Music theory is just another language that allows you to speak in proper keys and tones. It combines the musical notes and chords of song ideas and fills in the gaps to form a concrete structure. It creates a musical path to follow. It allows you to build a song based within a flexible framework with alternative routes.

For me, the magic appeared with the Circle of Fifths. It became a treasure map full of wonderful sounds and guided direction. For the first time, I realized that all my song ideas could find a musical home. It spawned a songwriter.

According to Ewer, Paul McCartney once offered the following advice:

I can’t tell you how to write a song; I can only tell you how you might finish a song.

Creative inspiration is random, not fixed. But a song idea needs to find a structural path to completion. It’s a combination of cultivating both a muse and a musical education.

It’s given me a gift as a creative soul long into the remaining years of my life.

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