Songwriting self assessment

Subject: Songwriting self assessment
From: SlickerBill
Date: 01 Jan 03 - 10:45 PM

Here's something I've been wondering about for a bit.

I've been going through some of the songs I wrote awhile ago for an upcoming set,particularly stuff I used to play and then for some reason stopped playing; not because I didn't enjoy the songs, but rather, when I had played a set people would say "i liked this song or that tune" or whatever, but no mention of these tunes. Thing is, having gone back over them, I quite like them. So what's the deal? Do you find there are songs in your set that you never get any direct feedback on, but you just play them because you like them, and that's good enough for you? Or is it better showmanship to go for the more appealing tunes, even covers if need be (which is, in retrospect what I think I've done here)? Any thoughts?          SB

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: Cluin
Date: 02 Jan 03 - 12:39 AM

Might be some element of selfishness involved... or a "not casting your pearls before swine" kinda thing.

That sounds like a harsh assessment of an audience, but it's pretty tough to keep offering examples of your own work if they aren't seeming to be valued. That feeling is definitely there a bit with myself and with a few others I know.

Yes, you do tend to tailor your sets to what you think (or, later on, know) will go over better, but it's only human nature to want to be a bit protective of your "offspring", non?

Just a thought...

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: Mr Red
Date: 02 Jan 03 - 06:25 AM

Not everyone voices their opinion. They imagine your discomfort based on their own unease at praise and as for the reaction not liking something they sqirm. So they say nothing. I found the audience come with a preconception of you or the night. I remember two clubs where I started as s joker in the trad club and as a very serious poet in the less stuffy one and had more difficulty doing the "other" material in the venue thereafter. It was easier in the latter to change their expectation of me.

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: Jeanie
Date: 02 Jan 03 - 06:35 AM

Thinking about this purely from an audience's viewpoint, people do tend to like what is familiar to them, and depending on the style of song it can take a while for new lyrics to sink in. How do songs become familiar and loved ? By being played and heard !

- jeanie

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: Genie
Date: 02 Jan 03 - 06:41 AM

Yeah, Bill, I've been there.  More perplexing to me is sharing a song with different audiences with one group going apoplectic over it and another having no reaction at all (even when both audiences seem to be the same "type").

Sometimes I'll a song for a group one time and get no reaction and do the same song later for that same group and get an excellent response!  But then, new song sometimes grow on me, too.

If I'm being paid to perform, I sing mostly what my audience wants to hear (what's common to their tastes and mine.)  But if you really like a song, why not throw it into the set occasionally?  I don't think you should chuck a song that you like just because it wasn't an audience favorite the first time you sang it.

Funny thing about my own songs, though.  I've gotten ho-hum reactions to songs written by Nanci Griffith, Tom Paxton, "trad.", Iris DeMent, Kris Kristofferson, and others at one particular song circle where other songs get "ooh"s, "ah"s, and "let's do that one again"s, and that does not keep me from presenting the song on another occasion.  But if I present one of my own that I like (always without drawing attention to my authorship) , and I get no visible reaction, I'm intimidated about doing it again for that group.  Doesn't make sense, rationally, now does it?

Genie

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: Genie
Date: 02 Jan 03 - 06:47 AM

Interesting timing. As I was typing the above, PBS was airing a tribute to George Gershwin. Right now they're showing an old home movie where G, Gershwin talks aobu the history of his song "The Man I Love." It was included in at least two musicals,with no accolades, before he finally got it recorded by Helen Morgan, after which it became an American standard, recorded by many artists.

I'm reminded of how MGM studios tried very long and hard to cut "Over The Rainbow" from "The Wizard Of Oz," and how a number of other songs that ended up being very popular were initially rejected by the studios, the radio stations, audiences in general, and even the composers themselves.

Genie

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: alanabit
Date: 02 Jan 03 - 07:10 AM

I believe "Moon River" by Henry Mancini was another example of this, Genie. Can you imagine "Breakfast at Tiffany's" without it?
Going back to the original point, I often find that it takes several attempts to make a song work. I do mainly originals (cos I'm not much good at covers). I think that the first couple of times that I play a new song, I just am not playing it well enough to move an audience much. That comes with practice like anything else. You have to give yourself a chance to get good at performing a song. It doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the song itself just because you are not able bring it off at the first or second attempt.

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: Willie-O
Date: 02 Jan 03 - 09:06 AM

Well of course, don't drop songs you think are good. (It might be worth trying to edit them to make them even better, though. Perhaps they're not getting through to the audience that clearly.) But the ones that people keep telling you they like, those ones you need to keep playing so they will listen to the other ones!

W-O

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: BuckMulligan
Date: 02 Jan 03 - 09:26 AM

Tough to balance. I think a lot depends on why you're performing: to please the crowd or to please yourself (I know, the answer's "Yep.") If you think highly of a song, and your performance of it (regardless of authorship), and you think it says something you want to say, then you should do it. But if no one's listening, what's the point - which is where familiarity is a great tool. Opening with a couple of sure-fire connection numbers puts people in a much more attentive mood for less familiar stuff. I think.

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 02 Jan 03 - 09:43 AM

As soon as you start talking about performing, you talk about connecting with your audience. And, as each audience is different, and each night is different (even when you are coming back to the same place to sing,) I find it best not to have too many preconceived ideas about which songs I am going to sing. Often, it has less to do with whether particular songs (ones I've written, or traditional songs)are "good" than it does with what people respond to that night.
There have been times when I've peeked around a corner and got a look at the audience and threw my set list out the window.

A good performer should know which songs are going to be enjoyed by the time they're into the third or fourth song of the first set. You can sense how the audience is responding to different types of songs and adjust you set list for the evening. For me, set lists are a guideline, not a "program." It's probably been years since I followed a set list completely.

Much of performing is placing the song in context with the songs immediately before and after it, and how the song is introduced. As Genie points out, a song may go over well with one audience, and get very little response from another. I also remember a concert that I did that had an overflow audience (rare for me)where the audience looked like a herd of cows chewing their cud. No one laughed, or even smiled at my introductions, and they might as well have used their hands for paper weights. I thought I had really failed to reach the audience until the concert was over, and suddenly everyone was animated, and I sold the most cassettes I'd ever sold. They just weren't a demonstrative audience.

The other side of this has been stated most succinctly by Ricky Nelson in Garden Party. There's a real danger in just doing the songs that have receive the greatest response. You don't want to become an "oldies" act. I can think of one performer in particular who I booked many times, who used the same set list, and I swear I could have done his introductions, because I had them almost memorized, word for word. The performer mailed in their performance, and I finally stopped booking the performer.

Performing is connecting. It's as simple as that. A good performer connects with the audience, and sets aside songs that they know won't be enthusiastically received that evening. The next concert, that same song may bring the house down.

Finally, some of the songs I've written that I think are at best throw-aways, have been enthusiastically received by some audiences, and have even been recorded by other musicians. Your own evaluation can be as innacurate as can a particular audiences.

You can do a fine song for an audience that doesn't appreciate it, too.

It finally comes down to being aware of the audience that night, and making that connection with them. The rest comes naturally.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 02 Jan 03 - 10:33 AM

The feedback that I value most in determining what works and doesn't work is that of other musicians. Problem is that the participants in many song circles often don't want to hurt others' feelings and can be overly non-critical. So, you can't assume that a fairly warm reception is a genuine indicator of a well-done song. Even the guy who just bought a guitar last month is going to get some claps. It's when the response is plainly above the norm, or when someone compliments a song after the session is over, or when someone requests a song that they heard at a previous session that you know you've got a keeper.

Bruce

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Jan 03 - 11:13 AM

There has to be a mix. If you just stick to singing the songs you know pretty surely will go down, that's a kind of betrayal, but if you just churn out new ones mechanically without singing them in, that's at least as bad.

What's good is when you sing a song you like, and maybe noone's ever commented on it, and suddenly someone picks it out as one they specially liked.

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: Malachy
Date: 02 Jan 03 - 08:29 PM

I think Cluin couldn't have put it better.. and 'casting pearls before swine' cracked me up!
Fair play to you Cluin..you hit the nail on the head!

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: Genie
Date: 02 Jan 03 - 09:27 PM

Yes, Alanabit, I was going to mention "Moon River." Someone told that story to me after someone requested the song on New Year's Eve. But I couldn't remember for sure whether it was Mancini, the director of the movie, or even lyricist Johnny Mercer himself who thought that a line like "...my huckleberry friend..." would never be accepted by the public and wanted the song cut from the movie! Then it won the Oscar for best song that year.

And, Jerry, I'm with you about using the set list as only a guide. I use mine mostly to remind myself of certain songs, so I won't have that slap-my-head-and-say-"Oh-s**t phenomenon when I finish a set and realize I've omitted the perfect song for that gig. Not only do I toss set lists aside when I'm reading the audience differently, but if I'm doing a story song (especially one that's like a joke with a punch line) and if becomes obvious everyone's using me for background music, I may cut the story short, to some workable ending, and move on to the next song, with no one being the wiser! Then I can use the song some other time when at least some folks are paying attention. :-D

Again,Slicker, ya gotta give a song a reasonable number of chances to click with folks, or maybe to find its audience.

Genie

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: alanabit
Date: 03 Jan 03 - 04:58 AM

I agree about being ready to change a set list, but I do like to have one to give me a shape for the set. That sounds like an idea for another thread though... One idea emerging here though is that it can be the wild card which makes the evening memorable. I'll bear that in mind the next time I go out!

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: SlickerBill
Date: 03 Jan 03 - 04:49 PM

Some great thoughts here.

Okay, along the same lines, what about people close to you. My wife for example is my biggest fan, and of course is very open about what she likes, but of course not so much what she doesn't. What I've noticed is she prefers the "up" stuff vs the sad songs. Don't you find yourself almost unconsciously moving in that direction? It's an interesting, and unexpected challenge to maintain balance in your performing I'm finding.

Saw Johnny Cash on Larry King the other night, and he actually thought Ring Of Fire was a stinker; tried to get it pulled off the air before he found out it was a huge hit. Go figure.    SB

Subject: RE: Songwriting self assessment
From: reggie miles
Date: 03 Jan 03 - 06:30 PM

I think the subject has drifted a bit from the original topic line so I hope no one minds that these ramblings drift a little further.

I'm not so interested in being a juke box or playing only what an audience is already used to hearing via the radio or MTV. I actually enjoy some of it myself but those folks have all the coverage they need without my help. I look on what I do musically as a self expression. I've never been paid so much $ as to alter that point of view. I don't know if, at this point, anyone would choose to hire me with the intention of having me perform only a certain genre of music, different from what I'm already involved with, but I guess that's not altogether out of the realm of possibility. It's just not very likely. I've only ever played and sang what I've enjoyed.

As was pointed out by others here, sometimes it works and other times it don't. We could spend all our lives trying to guess at the whys and how comes for the reasons of this random outcome and still never fully understand the answers. The cosmic math involved in trying to calculate such is beyond our reckoning. I've experienced all of the above reactions to the presentaions of my material and a great deal more. My only response is to continue to try my best and hope that things fall into cosmic allignment.

Lately I've tried to seek out venues that offer a more conducive atmosphere to listening. I can make a connection with an audience easier when I know they're listening. When the energy I've created is well received the response of the audience is evident and the cycle is complete. There's nothing like that feeling. You give of yourself and they give back in a continuous circle. Keep that circular transference in motion and you'll have a successful show. The tools you use to create that are the strength of your performance and the quality of your material.

Problems with creating a succesful show can result when performing at venues that do not recognize the need to focus energy on the performances. The club may hire you or your band to play and pay you handsomely but they then divide the attention of the audience by providing other forms of entertainment at the same time, pool, darts, tvs, and other games or distractions. Every distraction can impede a successful performance so it's best to try to minimize them at the outset with contractual riders that dictate your needs for your show.

The little coverage I get for my material comes only from my performance of it. Audiences are transitory and my gigs are few and far between so there's only a slim chance that I'll have an opportunity wear out one of my songs on them. Most of the places I play are familar with what I do already so there's little need to accomodate any requests for new or different material beyond my own explorations.

Even as I type this, I've received a call telling me that I've lost the one regular, once a month, venue where I've been performing for the last year or so. It's a restaurant/brew pub where the focus is primarily on dining customers and not on my presentation. They were a bit restrictive there not wishing me to develope a connection with the audience but rather only wanting my performance as a sort of sonic wall paper. Presenting what I do in that very linear fashion is not very fulfilling and ultimately not a very succesful way to offer my show. Like many other bars they also kept the tvs going throughout my performances, though they did turn the sound down. They also allowed the kitchen staff to play music while I was performing. The open design of the kitchen area allowed that canned music to bleed into the space where I perform. These unpleasantries were something I put up with only because the gig was on a Wednesday. A difficult day to get any sort of work playing. They scheduled me for one last go this month. Beyond that they only offered only casual employment throughout the year. I'm not sure I'm all that interested.