How do you know when the song is done?
How do you know when the song is done?
How do you know when the song is done? Ah, the age old question. When am I ready to share my song with the world?
I just finished tracking a song yesterday that I’m sending to a songwriting competition that Burl Audio is sponsoring. Burl Audio is a California company that makes high end recording hardware.
The last thing two things I track when I’m recording a song is vocals then guitar solos. I do guitar solos last because sometimes they’re going on when the vocal is there. I like the guitar solos to complement the vocals.
After I finished the guitar solos, I put a compressor on the master bus to “glue” the song together and give the song a listen from beginning to end. When I finished listening to the song yesterday I realized… This song is done! On to mixing!!!
So what led me to thinking that this song was done? Here’s a list of what I need a song to have to feel done:
- It needs to grab my attention in the first 8 seconds. It needs to surprise me. I heard Sting say this in an interview recently. The song has to be interesting in the first 8 seconds or we might lose some listeners. I think in this day and age that this rings more true than ever.
- Honest Lyrics. David Bowie said in an interview that this is what he admired most about John Lennon. Lennon wrote very direct lyrics. There was no “fat” on John’s lyrics. Very direct and straight to the emotion.
- Interesting bass riffs and drum fills. I like for there to be 1-2 interesting bass riffs in the song. Drum fills maybe 3-4. I don’t like when there’s an excess of these two elements but the song has to have some bass and drum candy sprinkled throughout for the song to sound complete.
- Unique outro. I like for my songs to have an outro riff or jam that take you to a different place than what the bulk of the song sounds like. I was listening to Rory Gallagher’s song “I Fall Apart” last night. It’s a beautiful, fragile love song and then he hits you with a tough, pointed guitar riff at the end. Gov’t Mule does this particularly well!
- Emotive guitar solos. David Gilmour, David Gilmour, David Gilmour!!! The guitar solos have to get the hairs on my arms standing up or maybe even get me a little misty. I’m not a big fan of flashy guitar solos. They need to take me up into the clouds, past the moon, past Jupiter and beyond!
- The last thing I think about is - “How does this song make me feel?” If the song is done then it feels like it takes me away. It takes me from my present state of “being” and puts me in a state of “becoming”. Becoming happy, sad, anxious, excited…The song is maybe taking the feeling I had before I sat down to listen to it and replaced it with another feeling or maybe the song has added to the feeling I already have.
For my songs to be done, I need to feel like I’ve presented an interesting, unusual and emotive part of myself.
Leave me a comment below if there’s anything you’d add to this list
I hope you get to play some guitar today!
-Arlo
I read an interview with somebody a few months ago that talked about the effect that streaming has had on music writing. Spotify doesn't pay an artist until a listener has listened to 30 seconds of a song - the result of this is that song intros are basically gone now and songs will get to the chorus a lot faster (or even start with it). Your 8 second rule goes well with that approach.
I was listening to the Alice In Chains album “The Devil put Dinosaurs Here” recently. I didn’t listen to that album when it first came out. There’s a couple songs that grab you right from the beginning and are awesome.
“Phantom Limb” being one of them. Then there are two other songs that start out bland to me but I decided to listen to them completely anyway. Pleasant surprise 2/3 of the way through there are some amazing pieces of music.
In this brave new flip, flip world we gotta slow it down when we get to music consumption. Enjoy the tunes and listen for the good stuff
