Songwriting

Q. So when do you get the bug to start songwriting?

There is that initial stage where you are just so delighted to play a single chord, that is fingered correctly and where the strings are not buzzing and there are no dull thuds (where the string hasn't been held down hard enough), and your fingers no longer sting. After that comes the challenge of changing to another, equally successfully held chord and then back to the original one, or... onto a new another one!

The tutor books will show the chord name or a chord box detailing the fingering and with this information you expand your knowledge. Then you hit a song with 'F' or 'Eb' in it and have to rethink this whole song playing idea.

But with perseverance and some swearing you get through this steep learning curve and plateau out to be able to get through a whole song without too much scrambling about. You may have even started to change songs into a more playable key (avoiding 'F' and 'Eb')!

My first sheet music was for songs by T-Rex, Sweet, Moody Blues and Alice Cooper. I really didn't understand the dots, but could manage the chord/chord boxes. Looking back, they are the songs I would just busk along with now, intuitively knowing where the chords would be going. But how did I learn this? I suppose it was just with trial and error.


So, going back to the songwriting question, it had to be once I got my first guitar and started to string chords together.

The big question is... What was my first song? Now this is where it gets a little complicated. Is that a completed song, with lyrics and everything, or the first attempt at writing an original tune? My first tune was called 'Cascade'. I am not sure why it was given that name, and all evidence of it is long gone. I must have written it in 1973 or 1974. My first song with original tune and lyrics was 'Waiting on the Station'. Some of this does exist. I have a couple of verses (lyrics) with the chords and can vaguely remember how it went. One day I will record a bit of it as a record of how far I have come in the past 40 years!