Can Songwriting Be Taught?

August 8, 2008

Welcome, new visitor! My name is Ari, the man behind Aries9. Here I share my thoughts on music and life, so you can get to know me and my music. Thanks for visiting!

I’d like to say, the answer is yes.

But I’m not sure.

I’m not sure how I would go about teaching someone to write a killer melody.

I just did a quick search on the topic of songwriting on Amazon’s book section.  For a craft that’s been done so unversally, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of how-to books.  There are some, of course.  I’ve never read them myself.  I studied theory, but that’s not songwriting.

Arranging can be taught.  Production and engineering can be taught.  Performance can be taught — you can never teach me to sing like Freddie Mercury, but I can learn to use what voice I do have.

I guess songwriting is similar to that last point.  We can’t determine how ‘good’ our talent is.  But we can learn to use what we have, better.

Hmmm.

It’s like we’re each born with some kind of drawing utensil.  Some of us got brushes, others pencils, or ball-end pens. Pastels or chalks.  Some draw like butter.  Others are crooked, ink spills, don’t work reliably.  But we can learn to use what we have.  And sometimes, the unreliable one just move in a way and create lines that you just can’t make except by happy accident, caused by the unique quarkiness of your tool.  Then you learn to use that particular trait of your tool.  You may not be able to draw many different kinds of drawings, but you begin to develop a craft for one thing you do really well.

Ah, I’m liking that metaphor.  It really seems to work, in describing songwriting.

Now, what the mass considers “good,” we don’t have control over.  We can make observations on what the mass considers “good” and make our God-given tool try to work in a similar way.  But ultimately, how close or similar you get to the “good” kind, depends greatly on the capabilities of your tool.  Plus, the mass’ taste is very volatile, unpredictable, and changes often.  Even when you’re drawing something that is definitely NOT “good” according to the mass at one time, can all the sudden be the next best thing since Elvis left the building.

But that is extremely unlikely to happen if you don’t learn how to use what you’re given well.  If you’re not using it well, it means your craft is underdeveloped.  That really can’t be good, in anybody’s eyes, including the person who wrote it.  If you develop your craft to a point where you’re doing what you can do fairly well , then you have a chance of getting the mass to accept your craft, too.

So that’s our task, as a craftman/woman.  To develop what we have fully.  To be able to use it.

And one of the key ways to measure it, is to see how you feel about your own craft.

If you have some serious self-esteem issues, it’s possible that you become too self-critical and not see the value of what you have.  But otherwise, you are good if you think you are.  Even if the 99.99% of the population disagrees, the 0.01% still can add up to be tends of thousands of people.  Your job simply gets narrowed down to finding them.

To get back to the original question, I think developing your own craft can be taught — well, maybe “taught” isn’t the right word.  The process can be mentored, guided, coached — though it’s hard to teach someone “how” as what each person is trying to accomplish and how their tool works are different.  But I think there is something universal about developing your craft.

To be as good as you can be at whatever you are.

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