for songwriters without musical training: how did they write songs?

Au contraire. Paul makes it abundantly clear that he absorbed (learned) from anyone he could, his dad being a major early influence.

The Beatles did, of course, know the names of the basic chords. That would be essential but does not constitute much of a knowledge of musical theory.

 

I can speak from a bit of experience. I’ve written plenty of songs over about 30 years or so of playing music with no musical training at all. Believe me, I’ve tried, I just don’t have a head for reading the musical notes, much less the theory behind it. But I’ve managed to write songs on both guitar and synthesizer over the years. I learned guitar chords from trying to copy songs I liked on the radio but I found out later that my guitar was tuned incorrectly so I don’t even really play “normal “ chords. So no, musical training isn’t a prerequisite to writing a song, although I’m sure it can help.

 

If you can sing a song you have all the musical skill you need to write a song. You can get others to arrange instrumental parts around what you sing. It is creating the words and melody that is writing the song.

I play guitar and keyboards and know music theory. But about half the songs I write are started without an instrument in my hand - just singing, and not referencing my musical knowledge at all - I could not tell you the chords or key when I create the song- I work those out later.

Sometimes I just sing it in my head if I am somewhere I cant sing out loud. I once wrote a song while sitting in a class - so I couldnt even sing, but I heard the melody in my head and wrote down the words. This is the song I wrote that way.

 

One hit singer-songwriter which comes to mind is Bobby Charles, who could neither read music nor play an instrument. Even long before he was working with members of The Band, Charles had a talent for visualizing and composing songs in his head. Charles wrote hit songs for major artists such as Fats Domino and Bill Haley in addition to touring with his friend Chuck Berry.

According to Charles, "since I can remember as a child, before I was in school, my brother and sister would come home with song books, they were in the chorus, and I just looked through the song book and I couldn't read anything but if they told me it was a song book, I'd just start singing, making up my own stuff as I went along. I'm still doin' the same thing. I was born loving music."

 

I once the Sidewinders back in the '80s play a new song. They were on campus doing a Friday lawn concert. They hadn't titled it, so, they announced the song was "C to G to A." It was the chords. The lyrics were probably ad lib stuff the singer was playing around with in his head. Did they have music theory training? I doubt much. But they new the chords works.

 

You don't need musical 'training' to learn those things. I learned to play guitar by watching and listening and eventually memorizing the notes and the names of chords. Putting together pleasing chord progressions and rephrasing them to emphasize a melody is a rudimentary way to enter the world of songwriting. I learned to write songs by just listening and analyzing the various architectures.

I've taught songwriting techniques to trained and skilled bandmates who could not comprehend how to construct a verse, pre-chorus, chorus or bridge and could only compose boring rambling melodies with no sense of architecture and lyrics with no sense of prosody or rhyme.

The language of songwriting isn't about keys or scales. Just because one is a trained musician does not make them comprehend the craft of songwriting.

Also: 'Arrangements' are not songs. A song, by copyright definition, is a top melody and lyric. You can arrange a song in many ways and styles, including rephrasing and substituting chords or placing them in different keys. In fact, modulating a chorus or bridge is an arrangement property, not a 'song' property.

If you really want to know more about songwriting, read 'Tunesmith' by Jimmy Webb.

 

This.

 

Isn't a B7 chord in the key of E?

 

I've only made a partial living at music but totally relate to this post.

I've been writing and recording since I was 15. My first bandmates were best friends from high school who eventually got music degrees in college. They were both great musicians and I learned much from them. But I was always the main songwriter and had major part in the arrangements. Much of the stuff I wrote at the time was progressive rock. I didn't deliberately think about writing in 7/4 or 5/4 or using a minor 6th. I was just writing catchy melodies and thoughtful lyrics with complex harmonic and rhythmic underpinnings.

A typical session for learning a new song would be me showing the chords to the keyboard player, who would deconstruct them note by note to clarify what it was. An inside joke was that I invented the "L minor 7th" (In later years to be referred to as 'XTC' chords)

I spent much of the 80's pitching songs to publishers for major artists. Mostly pop, R&B and whatever passed for "country". I'd collaborate with other published writers and the discourse was never about theory. In those days a successful pitch was 80% about lyrics (prosody, rhyme and content) and 20% melody. In other words, you could have a great melody but if the lyrics were not top-shelf, it's a pass. I've never once heard a publisher or producer remark about a chord or key unless it was unsuitable for the singer's range.

One of my guiding lights in those days, Steve Seskin, perfectly nailed what being a songwriter is all about. I'm only paraphrasing, but it's about being a story teller with the ability transport a listener from their current moment into another moment you want to share. The lyrics are the narrative and the music is there to reinforce it. Wow.

A question for the thread starter: Does one need to be an English major to write lyrics?

 

It could also be placed in the key of B.

 

Best part is that the final version (I'm not sure it's the same as what George shows Ringo in the movie, been a long time) in the verses uses the same chord progression as Please Mr. Postman.

This. There was another poster saying similar thing in a different thread, unfortunately I forgot who exactly. That a lot of popular musicians boast or even take pride that they had "no music education", because it apparently "puts you in a box", which is, of course, totally bogus statement.

P.S. All that talk about early Beatles/Quarrymen days and guitar chords reminded me of this:

 

How? There's an A in a B7 chord. That means it's in the key of E.

If there were an A#, it would be a B major 7th chord, and it would then be in the key of B.

 

Written, arranged and produced with no musical training:

(warning it's an 11-minute suite with retro 70's influences)

 

So, if I play a chord progression by alternating from B, to B6 to B7 it's in the key of E?

Guilty as charged for not knowing theory. But if I'm playing bass, I'm going to pedal on B or E if I'm droning against those chords.

 

Slightly more accessible. Todd/Floyd with a homage to the Stylistics at the end:

 

Of course the Beatles knew about chords, on guitar and piano and the like. I don't think they necessarily had a concept of things like the circle of fifths or how to build harmonies theoretically, and that a lot of the freshness in their songs comes from the fact that they didn't have preconceived notions about conventional ways of constructing chord sequences and harmonies.

 

In the key of E-ish, I think:

 

And simple power-pop song:

 

Written in the style of Lucinda Williams while living in Austin:

 

Yes. B triad, B6 and B7 are all in the key of E.

The bass note doesn't determine the name of the key.

For example -

Play B minor 7 to E7. Play it with a B in the bass, then play it with an E in the bass.

It's all in the key of A. If you were soloing over it, you could play the notes of an A major scale and nothing would clash.

Your music is pretty cool by the way.

 

Thank you. Which is kinda the point. I have no idea what I am doing in theory. I don't even think about it when I write. If I tried to play in a jazz band I would be totally out of my league. I get it.

 

Me too.

 

I've been on a musical hiatus for about 5 years. In returning to playing I want to learn Travis and hammer claw picking techniques. The teacher I consulted with and on a waiting list for instructed me with one simple lesson for the interim:

"Every day. Play just one note in as many variations as you can imagine". It sounded kind of woo-woo at the time. But after reacquainting myself with my guitars it's a revelation.

It might not help me wth theory but it sure is making me more aware about expression and tone.

 

reductio ad impossibile:

 

Most music ever made has been made by people without formal training. In fact, most knowledge is acquired by people through folk processes, and apprenticeship processes and by a kind of acclimatization.

For example, how did you learn to speak your native language? You didn't go to school to learn it. You weren't trained in syntax probably until you got to primary school, at which point you already knew how to speak the language, And then you probably only got a cursory explanation of the basics. But you can go out and deliver a speech in that language.

Music can be acquired in all these similar ways -- you hear music and you imitated it, picking out a melody on the family piano, you have an uncle who plays the ukulele and he shows you a few songs and a few chords and what a chord progression is, you go to school and you take a mandatory grade school music class, you're a member of a church and you sing the the choir and you learn a few things from the choir director.

Now you become curious and self motivated. You buy an instrument and you experiment and noodle around until you can do a few things by ear. Maybe you buy a book or two and you start practicing some scales and rudiments. And next thing you know you're playing at a high school dance and writing some little ditties of your own.

You don't have conservatory training or systematic training, so your knowledge is ad hoc and spotty -- maybe you don't know the history of music, maybe you don't know what things are called: you can write a song and have functional knowledge of the typical chord movements of Western harmony but you don't know what tonic, dominant and subdominant means, or know Phyrgian mode from Lydian mode. But you know from practice and listening that this note goes with that chord, and this chord leads you to that chord.

That's how most people learn most of the stuff they know.