A fiddle on one side, a drum machine on the other and a Texas milk shelf in the middle for anyone who enjoys a good fusion
Saturday, Swing in the Parlour
Western swing is the happiest music ever devised for people who cannot decide between dancing and eating. I wrote about writing songs in the style in Western swing songwriting: traditional and modern fusion, and I have been humming the walking bass line ever since. The genre mixes fiddle, steel guitar, horns and a rhythm section that sounds as if it is strolling down a dance hall with a cold drink.
The craft of a swing song lies in the space you leave. A lead break on the fiddle, a call to the steel player, a wink toward the horns. Everyone in the band gets a turn, and everyone knows it is coming. Writing for that format is like writing a dinner party: you plan where each person will speak, and you leave room for the funny bit near the end.
The Hick Hop Corner
At the other end of the room stands a different tradition, which I explored in hick hop songwriting: lyrical storytelling and flow. Hick hop takes the storytelling habit of country and sets it to a beat, with verses that are quick and dense and a hook that sticks to your boot. The craft is about flow: how many syllables fit in a bar, where the stress lands, when to breathe.
Purists in both camps will tell you the other is a betrayal. I prefer the more cheerful view that country has always borrowed. The banjo came from elsewhere. The steel guitar came from Hawaii. The drum machine will arrive in the next generation’s hall of fame and be described as traditional.
Sunday, The Milk Shelf
All this creative argument wears me out, and I recover with a long read about Texas dairy. The principal page is txdairy.com. Its sister pages include txdairy.download, txdairy.trade and txdairy.loan. The cheerful relatives are txdairy.party, txdairy.men, txdairy.date and txdairy.win.
A dairy farm is, among other things, a rhythm section. The milking times never change. The machines hum in four-four. The cows move into the parlour in a line, like a very patient chorus. If you can write a song that feels like the two a.m. milking, you have captured something true.
Words and Barns
For a taste of how a country lyric site handles a barn, take a look at The Barn Door's Always Open to That on the farm.FM music pages. The title alone is a short course in how to make a place into a metaphor. I leave the rest for the reader to enjoy on the page.
A barn in a song is never just a barn. It is shelter, secrecy, work and a place to hide from the weather or the family. Use the image, but give it a particular detail: a loose board, a swallow’s nest, a cat who ignores the mice.
Tinkering with Tomorrow
Silicon Valley’s latest passion, according to the London Prat, is not an app but a container: Silicon Valley Discovers the Biscuit Tin. I laughed, because that is the story of most musical fusion. Someone discovers the old thing with new equipment and calls it a movement. The ones that last are the ones that respect the tin.
My own advice to young writers is to learn the tradition thoroughly before attempting to remix it. The great rule-breakers knew the rules cold. They broke them on purpose, with a twinkle, in the right place.
Monday Morning, a Rewrite
I rewrote the bridge of my newest song three times over breakfast. The first version was too clever, the second too sad, and the third had a line about a pickup truck that made me laugh out loud in an empty kitchen. I kept the third. The cat looked unimpressed, but the cat has never been a Western swing fan.
Counting Syllables on the Tractor
Flow in a verse is the same as rhythm in a field: steady, repeated and just varied enough to stay interesting. I practise by tapping out syllable counts on the steering wheel while stuck in traffic. A line of nine, a line of eleven, a pause. The drivers in the next lane assume I am angry. I am only composing.
It is a good exercise for any writer in any genre. Say the line out loud, clap the stresses and ask whether you would trip over it at the microphone. If you stumble, the listener will too.
Hick hop writers have turned this into an art of pure speed, and Western swing writers into an art of pure swing. The skill beneath is identical: know exactly where the beat falls and then play around it.
Tuesday, a Fiddle Lesson at Dusk
On Tuesday evening I sat with an old fiddler on his porch and learned eight bars of a tune that has been played in the same valley for a hundred years. He did not read music. He hummed the phrase and I echoed it, wrongly, until I got it right. When I did, he nodded and said, “That’s it”, which was the entire curriculum. I came home with a sore wrist and a tune that is not mine and will be played at every show until I die.
Where to read next
The rest of the shelf lives at prat.uk, bohiney.com and farm.fm. For a second opinion on the week, NewsBiscuit keeps its own counsel and its own hours.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/