5 ms·

I just listened to the song and it is quite remarkable he put that together so quickly. Rivers Cuomo from Weezer has claimed to have a very prolific songwritin

I just listened to the song and it is quite remarkable he put that together so quickly. Rivers Cuomo from Weezer has claimed to have a very prolific songwriting approach as well, apparently at least for periods of time doing a song per day. Apparently during the first couple years of The Beatles' songwriting career John and Paul would knock out songs very fast, within hours - they actually 'scheduled' time to work together in a time-boxed fashion, so they could fit in songwriting time around their otherwise hectic schedule. Now they didn't produce that many throwaways, but in a period prior to this over several years they learned ~500 songs by ear. They learned these songs well enough live and used them as tools to figure out how to light up a crowd, and more or less had a foundational vocabulary from which they moved forward with.

baddox 13y ago
In songwriting circles, the two most common pieces of advice are "write tons of songs even if they're not great" and "finish all your songs, even the ones that aren't great." It's very similar to common advice in computer programming circles, and presumably any creative discipline.
- brandall10 13y ago
  True, but I think that extra lesson from The Beatles - learn thoroughly/attempt to recreate the work of those you wish to emulate, is a good, perhaps even more important one. You have to have the ability to finish your work. But to steadily improve you must push yourself in deliberate ways. You need both the discipline and the vocabulary. Brian Wilson carried this out to an almost healthy extreme in his attempt to break down Phil Specter's wall of sound technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Worry_Baby http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Worry_Baby "Brian Wilson cited the song as his attempt to capture the essence of his all-time favorite record, "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes, who would later cover this song. At one time, Wilson listened to his 45 record of the song he "could never do" up to 100 times a day."
drifkin 13y ago
Rivers also methodically analyzed many songs, including all of Nirvana's songs to help him with his songwriting. He writes about his songwriting process in the liner notes for "Alone II", an album of his home recordings. The liner notes are amazing. He goes through each song on the album and explains the back story, often mentioning what kind of methods he used to write that particular song. I dug up an old Rolling Stone article where he talks about his "Encyclopedia of Pop". They also mention him writing several hundred songs in 1999: https://web.archive.org/web/20080228012507/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5933454/rivers_cuomos_encyclopedia_of_pop https://web.archive.org/web/20080228012507/http://www.rollin... The names he gives some of his methods are pretty excellent. Some examples: * Intellectually acquired emotionally volatile concept: http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Intellectually_acquired_emotionally_volatile_concept http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Intellectual... * Incipit-Melody-Guitar-Develop-Tea : http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Incipit-Melody-Guitar-Develop-Tea http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Incipit-Melo... * Arbitrary-Progression-Distortion-open-Strum-Intro-Melody-Arrange: http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Arbitrary-Progression-Distortion-open-Strum-Intro-Melody-Arrange http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Arbitrary-Pr...
- brandall10 13y ago
  Wow. This is pure gold, thank you much!
- bradleysmith 13y ago
  Agreed, this is fantastic, thanks for the share. Weezer's continued success and variance in pop-style is no surprise having read this.
easy_rider 13y ago
Not so hard if you have your (digital) equipment setup right. A lot of bands used to do almost everything in one recording. And now that is before the digital age.

baddox 13y ago

In songwriting circles, the two most common pieces of advice are "write tons of songs even if they're not great" and "finish all your songs, even the ones that aren't great." It's very similar to common advice in computer programming circles, and presumably any creative discipline.

brandall10 13y ago
True, but I think that extra lesson from The Beatles - learn thoroughly/attempt to recreate the work of those you wish to emulate, is a good, perhaps even more important one. You have to have the ability to finish your work. But to steadily improve you must push yourself in deliberate ways. You need both the discipline and the vocabulary. Brian Wilson carried this out to an almost healthy extreme in his attempt to break down Phil Specter's wall of sound technique: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Worry_Baby http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Worry_Baby "Brian Wilson cited the song as his attempt to capture the essence of his all-time favorite record, "Be My Baby" by the Ronettes, who would later cover this song. At one time, Wilson listened to his 45 record of the song he "could never do" up to 100 times a day."

drifkin 13y ago

Rivers also methodically analyzed many songs, including all of Nirvana's songs to help him with his songwriting. He writes about his songwriting process in the liner notes for "Alone II", an album of his home recordings. The liner notes are amazing. He goes through each song on the album and explains the back story, often mentioning what kind of methods he used to write that particular song. I dug up an old Rolling Stone article where he talks about his "Encyclopedia of Pop". They also mention him writing several hundred songs in 1999: https://web.archive.org/web/20080228012507/http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/5933454/rivers_cuomos_encyclopedia_of_pop https://web.archive.org/web/20080228012507/http://www.rollin... The names he gives some of his methods are pretty excellent. Some examples: * Intellectually acquired emotionally volatile concept: http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Intellectually_acquired_emotionally_volatile_concept http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Intellectual... * Incipit-Melody-Guitar-Develop-Tea : http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Incipit-Melody-Guitar-Develop-Tea http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Incipit-Melo... * Arbitrary-Progression-Distortion-open-Strum-Intro-Melody-Arrange: http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Arbitrary-Progression-Distortion-open-Strum-Intro-Melody-Arrange http://www.weezerpedia.com/wiki/index.php?title=Arbitrary-Pr...

brandall10 13y ago
Wow. This is pure gold, thank you much!
bradleysmith 13y ago
Agreed, this is fantastic, thanks for the share. Weezer's continued success and variance in pop-style is no surprise having read this.

easy_rider 13y ago

Not so hard if you have your (digital) equipment setup right. A lot of bands used to do almost everything in one recording. And now that is before the digital age.