Wonder Songs Key
As artists, we walk a thin line between the familiar and the unique. Write a song that's too familiar and you're old hat. Write one that is too unique and you're weird. Balance the two and you're a hit.
A great deal has been done with just three chords. How often have we searched for the lyrics and chords to a favorite song online just to find that the song consists of C, F and G7. Of course, you would want to throw in what Bobby Darin called "The Drop Dead Chord." The audience hears it and 'drops dead.' Sometime it's a "2-chord" in the middle of the bridge or chorus (in the key of C, a 2-chord is a D).
A standard rock ballad progression, found in "Blue Moon," is C, Am, F, G7. You find that in many songs today. The older variation was C, Am7, Dm7, G7 - found in "Ain't Misbehavin", "Makin' Whoopie" and "Back in Your Own Back Yard." Using this progression could date your piece. Using it too much can put your audience to sleep.
Try something different - again in the key of C - go to an Eb at the end of the line, throw in a relative minor, even the relative minor 7th. Steve Earl does that quite a bit. In the key of C, you have C, F and G7. Then add the second - D - and relative minors - Am, Em and Dm - sometimes using the 7th on the minors. Now you have seven chords for your song and it might take the melody in places you hadn't considered.
On the other hand, if you were to use chords that had never worked for that key, a different chord each time you changed chords with none repeated, you would be innovative and original but no one would understand you. The song could not be followed. I'd like to site a famous example, but there are none. The closest I could come would be to point out that a classical composer named Bela Bartok was famous for his discordant and avant guard work, you rarely hear it played, used in elevators or in the movies. He was too avant guard for the broad public.
Now consider the melody: suppose you used the tune to "Blue Moon" for every song you wrote. Each time you started a song, it would be the same melody. Naturally, your audience would soon be groaning and asking for their hats. There have been songs with one or two notes in the melody, but they weren't overly popular - even the "One Note Samba" had an intricate and exciting chord pattern to play against.
On the other hand, taking the melody for a Country song from Grand Opera would be 'unreal' to the audience. They would wonder where you came from and would ask you to go back. The same thing if you took a Country piece and sang it on the operatic stage. It is just too foreign for that audience.
This would interpret to style as well. I recall an audition in New York City in which a young man stood up with a beat up guitar, a harmonica on a clip-holder and a flat, mis-western twang. He began singing a song that appeared to go on verse after verse after verse, rambling without direction, in a lackluster manner. The producer stopped the man with one phrase: "We've already got a Bob Dylan."
If he had swung from the chandelier while playing the lute he would have been a bit too far out, but as it was he was too familiar. I have several songs that I feel are brilliant in their language and concept, fulfilling the promise in grand style and well-thought-out poetry that should live for centuries. However, nobody gets those songs, so I don't sing them, I just quietly chuckle to myself from time to time.
And that is what you will have to do: Write your terribly esoteric song that no one will get and sing it to yourself from time to time, marveling at your genius - but don't sing it to the public at large, they won't get it. Or write your three-chord clone of "Your Cheatin' Heart" and imagine that you are giving Hank Williams a run for his money in the song charts. But singing a song thus dated will not get you a popular following.
When you're done with your song, sing it over. Is it too familiar? If so, change the melody or the chords or throw another line into the chorus - make it unique somehow. Is your song perfect, but no one gets it? You might be a bit too far out there - trying reeling it back in a notch or two, make your song more familiar.
When you achieve that perfect balance, familiar enough so people smile and are comfortable with the song, yet unique enough to catch someone's ear and make them start tapping and singing along, then you will have a song that will make them sit up and take notice at the open mics. Who knows, you might even have a hit.
Jon Batson is the author of the Songwriter's Hook Book, available at http://www.jonbatson.com/
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