It’s all about inspiration. For Hemingway it was Paris, women, hunting, booze, Idaho, women, Africa, booze, hunting--not necessarily in that order. But how do you write a song? Gaining access to the muse is the main thing. Sometimes a song falls into your lap. This is a gift. Other times a song is the result of craft and work and sweat. Still other times, during a dry spell, you can’t believe you ever wrote a song, and you would do anything to write again. The desire becomes a dull ache in the back of your psyche, from which you seek relief in any form: a new guitar, a loud amplifier, late nights, early mornings, lots of coffee, travel, meditation, wine, Oprah, sensory deprivation.

You are not alone. I have found no guaranteed access to the muse, but I have learned how to open the door a crack for a peek inside, a glimpse that sometimes leads to insight, that sometimes leads to inspiration, that sometimes leads to a new song. What follows is a foray into that search for the muse.

WRITING FROM BOTH SIDES OF THE BRAIN

The important thing is to write. It took me years to realize that songs don’t happen unless I write them. Sounds simple. I think of it like fishing—you can’t catch anything unless you go to the water’s edge and put the line in. So I set myself up to catch whatever falls into my lap. When I am starting a writing cycle--because it goes in cycles for me--I begin with my journal. For 15 minutes before I play my guitar, I write down whatever comes into my head. It’s drivel for the most part, but it’s my drivel. I get used to putting words to my feelings. After a while themes show themselves. After another while I attempt a poem of free verse, a stream of consciousness that forces me to be more specific. I begin to use images and metaphors--you know, the stuff you learned in English class.

I don’t judge my journal. I don’t think I have ever pulled a line from it. It helps me begin to focus on something other than the mundane. I start to read books that appeal to me. Sometimes I read aloud. I want to know that words have worked for somebody else. Sometimes I read books on writing. They give me hope. If at any time I think of a phrase or a line I like, I write it in the back of my songwriting notebook. I start to listen harder. Lines like "He was much too good-looking for his height" ("Johnny Was a Pyro") and "The Book I’m Not Reading" came out of real-life conversations. What you hear around you becomes fuel for the fire. I listen to music. I listen to music I would never play--Beck and Counting Crows. I listen to Dylan and Leonard Cohen and Mary Margaret O’Hara, to angry young women and famous old men. I want to create a hunger to write. I want to witness beauty in order to create it. I want to feel passionate about what I do.

WHILE YOUR GUITAR GENTLY SPEAKS

I am a guitar-focused songwriter, which means that my melodies and harmonic sense are derived from the resonant instrument perched on my lap. The guitar intrigues me and makes me want to vocalize. The guitar creates an atmosphere--the sounds and textures that become songs. Sometimes I hear what I want to write before I sit down with the guitar. I visualize it on the guitar, not in any special way, just simply. Before I wrote "You and Me," I was overcome with the desire to play a big fat open A chord. With "Booth of Glass" I knew I wanted to capo up the neck and fingerpick something pretty. I’ll experiment with guitar sounds and techniques, and the licks I like can spawn new songs. On the other hand, I find that when I write story songs I want simple chords--open G, D, or C. I just need to get the voice of the narrator out.

Very subtle changes in the chords can help guide the melody for me. In "I Told Him That My Dog Wouldn’t Run" (aka "Dog"), I was writing in my journal and I picked up the guitar and played an open C, then an F with a G in it (Fadd9). I played it in this form:

Fadd9

The added tension of the open G on the third string drew me in. The melody goes to the root of the chord, the F on the fourth string, and sits there at the end of each phrase. The result is a dissonance that creates a feeling of uneasiness, a lack of resolution. It’s unsettling, and it fit perfectly with the lyric. In "Johnny Was a Pyro" the chorus goes, "What am I doing with this ring on my hand?" I am playing an Asus4 chord and singing the resolution before I go to the A chord. More tension. I search out these curious spots in other writers’ work--and I look for it in my own writing. I want to go outside the lines. By holding the melody note too long or by adding tension to the chord, I can draw the listener in, emphasize the lyric, and create atmosphere.

THE ALTERNATIVES

Another way to add color to a harmonic progression is through the use of alternate tunings. If you play piano, you know that you can get plenty of dissonance by playing the middle C and the D next to it at the same time (as in "Chopsticks"). As guitarists we are a bit more challenged to play those two notes at the same time on the fretboard. With open or alternate tunings these sounds become easily available. In my song "Carolina" (in C G C G C D tuning), one of my favorite chords is an Am11. The top three strings ring out--B, C, D--going right up the minor scale, so you get this beautiful little run on the treble strings:

Am11

If you take your index finger off the fifth string, the chord progression descends while the top three strings are suspended above it. Somewhere in the back of my mind I know I am going from the IV minor to the V chord, but I don’t care. I just like it.

When I go to alternate tunings it’s because I am looking for inspiration. I can get drone strings, ringing notes, and languid tensions that are not available to me in standard. I want to be surprised by what I play. I don’t want to think too much. To that end, I seldom analyze what I play in alternate tunings. There are some tunings I am very familiar with—D A D G A D, dropped D, open C with a D on top (C G C G C D)--and they still fascinate me. If I’m feeling the pressure of a great void, I turn to technique books and publications in order to bend my mind with new tunings. I’ll tailor a tuning to fit my needs. When I rearranged Laura Nyro’s "Poverty Train," I remembered reading an interview with Emmylou Harris in Acoustic Guitar where she described a low tuning: A A C# E A C#. I thought that it would work well on a low, gnarly guitar part. It gave me the courage to try something different. I ended up with A A A E A B and used a variation of that tuning for "Anyway the Main Thing Is" (A A A E A A) on my new album Regrooving the Dream (Vanguard). Ignorance is bliss. When I wrote "Tango," I thought the guitar was in standard tuning, and I picked it up and played an open D. It was in D A D G A D, so I let go of the high E string and voilà, a song fell out. The world of alternate tunings is a land of no rules. You are likely to enter the maze dazed and confused and exit it in a creative state of grace.

I am looking for connections all the time. What note can I hang out to dry? What notes connect the next chord to this one? You can get these kinds of runs (B, C, D, open strings, etc.) in standard tuning (see Fingerstyle Cross-Picking Solos, Mel Bay), but there is something delicious about an open or alternate tuning. I checked out Richard Thompson’s instructional cassettes on Homespun, and I have since written four songs in his F G D G C D tuning: "Monte Vista," "The Road," "Closest Thing," and "Rear View Mirror." The tonal center is on the fifth string, the open G. So when you go to the open F on the sixth string, the world turns and becomes very modal sounding. If you play all the strings starting at the fifth string, it sounds very ancient with a wealth of melody notes. Descending the whole step to the sixth string while muting the fifth string sends you back half a millennium. It is this brave new world of discovery that leads me on. I find that a friend or an instructor can be helpful in revealing the sweet spots of a new tuning, and then I set out on my own from there.

THE JOY OF TECH

When I come up with anything of interest, I immediately put it on tape. I record it on a cheap little handheld tape recorder that sits nonjudgmentally and unobtrusively on my desk. I note any tuning information or personality quirks right on the tape, so that I don’t return two months later and wonder what was going on.

I think it’s important to keep the critic off your shoulder during the writing process. I just want to get it out, then analyze it and critique it later. Most of my songs initially appear as first verse and chorus. I may know what’s worth keeping right from the start, but I want to keep that channel to the muse open—the beta state, the subconscious, the white light.

It’s about thinking differently, connecting with something beyond yourself. If I get really stuck on a lyric, I ask myself, "What am I trying to say? Does it ring true?" Even if it’s fiction, I want it to be honest. I want to tell the truth. I want the songs to capture the essence of my experience or the flavor of my observations. It’s like centering a piece of clay on a potter’s wheel. If it’s not centered, the whole thing crumbles.

TRIAL BY FIRE: PLAYING OUT

I’ve just recently (in the last decade) gotten to the point where I can play partially written songs for other people, works in progress. The real test is to play the finished product out. It’s why I am a performing songwriter. Performing the song reveals its foibles; the glue and the cracks show up in the light. It becomes painfully apparent that the song is only as strong as its weakest line.

You must be happy with the results of your work, because you will be singing this thing for the next several years. Does the song capture the feeling you originally intended? Is it done? It’s up to you to decide. I’ve begun to relate to Leonard Cohen, who has said that some songs have taken him ten years to finish. Get it as airtight as you can, open the door, let it out, and have fun. That is, after all, why we do this in the first place.

From the book Songwriting and the Guitar, available August 2000 from String Letter Publishing. The article also appeared in Acoustic Guitar magazine, August 2000, No. 92.

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