Sharp Practise
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2/14/2008 10:40:54 AM
Working a song up with a band
One of the great advantages of working with a band is that you’ve got other musicians to bounce your ideas off. Sometimes this will result in them picking up your song and taking it off in directions you never intended.
With a bit of common sense all round, and a willingness on a writer’s part to experiment, this is usually a good thing. For example, if you’re locked into thinking ‘this is a rock song’, and you’ve got three verses all rumbling along doing much the same thing, it might not occur to you to try another genre mid-song.
Then someone in the band plays a verse funk style, or reggae style, and whoosh, off you go with that verse in the unexpected direction. Great if it’s done for variety and the end result is still recognisably related to the rest of a song. Disconcerting if the stylistically different verse feels like it’s been parachuted in.
How do you tell whether that’s the case? I guess it either is or it isn’t, and your instinct tells you if the change of style works or not.
Of course, other ideas may come up from jamming the song, such as an overall speeding up or slowing down of the song, or a mid-song tempo change. Again, I guess experience tells you when these ideas work and when not.
As long as you don’t overdo the variety and as long as the band don’t want co-writer credits (!), I’d say give any idea a run for its money and see what positive impact it has on your song.
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