Rough to Release

Links to all the posts in sequence. Part 1 - the pitch: from ideas to completion Part 2 - Space and Permission Part 3 - Spark and Spice Part 4 - More Spark and Spice Part 5 - Beyond Verse and Chorus Part 6 - Story Arcs Intermission - Tackling Writer's Block Part 7 - More Tension and Release Part 8 - It's not all about you! (Co-writing) Part 9 - Define 'finished' - a summary so far Part 10 - Recording Basics - The Hierarchy Part 11 - Recording Basics - Making the most of what you've got Part 12 - Production Part 13 - Demo, Dub, Delete Part 14 - Arts and Crafts Part 15 - Beyond Self-Recording Part 16 - 'Finishing' or 'mastering for cheapskates' Part 17 - Distribution Strategies Part 18 - Problem Solving Part 19 - The End - and a worked example Part 20 - Appendix 1 - Experimenting with SubmitHub. Part 21 - Appendix 2 - Experimenting with paid promotion

Welcome back to Trollholm and Rough to Release, our series on taking your half-finished ideas and turning them into finished songs.  So far we've assumed that your creative process is you, alone, slaving away by the midnight oil in your artists garret. Or in the train on the morning commute, whatever works for you (according to part 2). But obviously this is not always the case; you might be working as part of a writing group, you might be working with a partner, you might be taking your song ideas to a band to develop into a live show. All of these scenarios bring both advantages and dis-advantages, but there are some consistent points as well. Let's have a look... As part of a band In my (limited) experience, bands tend to be run either as dictatorships or communes. Under the dictator, the band leader tends to bring the songs and sets the rules about how they'll be played. If it's a benevolent dictatorship they will allow the other players control of their parts and a...

Spock: why is that music playing? Kirk: Tension Spock! Atmosphere. Spock: It's space; there is no atmosphere. Kirk: Hence the tension! There's an old saying about writing a novel that the sequential passage of events is the story, but how you chop up and present that sequence of events is your plot. And one of the key ways in which you can dice up your novel is to simply chop things out. This idea applies double to lyrics, it also applies to the music and the production as well. We'll come back to production later, but before we delve into lyrics, let's talk briefly about the music. Subverting structures To keep people interested you obviously need an attractive melody but, unless you're writing for the Baby Shark audience, you also need some variety and contrast.  In terms of song structures an easy way to add a bit of variety is to extend or contract a segment. If you've established a verse-chorus structure, then adding an extra bar or two to the second v...

Let's talk about story arcs and having something to say. A story arc is basically just a fancy way of saying the 'beginning, middle and end' that you're familiar with from creative writing at school. You'll often encounter it as the 'three-act-play' structure that forms the core of most plays and movies.  The first act sets up the story: our hero, their life and, at the end of act, the change that upsets the normal. The second act then introduces all the fall out from the change, the difficulties that our hero* has to battle with and frequently ends with all seeming lost and the low point of the story. The third act then deals with the our hero overcoming the challenges, frequently both internal and external, some form of learning and redemption and then happily ever after. That's an approach that has kept story tellers of all kinds in business for literally thousands of years. Now I'm not remotely suggesting that you need to build this in...

  Right, let's crack on. The first thing we're going to look at today is moving beyond the bounds and structures of verse and chorus. We'll start here for a couple of reasons, partly because these are often the bits we come up with first when writing, along with a riff or melody line, and - relatedly - because these are the foundations of modern song.  When songs were mostly memorised and shared in pubs and houses, a simple verse-chorus structure told everyone when to join in, when to shut up, and gave a natural breathing cycle to the song; a bit of tension, then release. We're no longer bound by those limitations, but it's important to understand how we can use those natural story-telling tools when we move beyond that simple structure. And that throws in my first 'gotcha' - which is: do we need to move beyond a simple verse-chorus structure?  Of course not. Sometimes that's all you need. But if you rely on that for every song then you...

  Part 1 Hello and welcome to Rough to Release. My name's Drew Stephenson and I'm a singer-songwriter and home-recordist (that's not a real word) from the UK. In this blog we're going to be looking at how to take your song-writing from a bunch of lyrics and chords to fully worked up demos and releases. We're going to start with the song-writing, including that vital stage of actually finishing, and turning an idea into a song. Then we're going to look at recording or capturing those ideas. We'll talk about what you need to get started and, probably more importantly, how to get the most out of it. We'll also talk about the blurring of lines between writing, recording and producing - which is a theme we'll revisit throughout the series. Next up we'll get into that production concept, how to establish and support a vision, and we'll wrap up with a bit of discussion about mastering and distribution.   So if that sounds like it might be of interes...