Writing for Vaudeville Part 37

With a pad of ma.n.u.script music paper, and a flying pencil, he jots down the melody nearly as fast as the composer can pound it out on tne piano. "Get a 'lead-sheet' ready as quick as you can, commands the Boss. "We'll try it out tonight."

"Right!" grunts the arranger, and rushes away to give the melody a touch here and there. As often as not, he comes back to tell the composer how little that worthy knows about music and to demand that a note be changed or a whole bar recast to make it easier to play, but at last he appears with a "lead-sheet"--a mere suggestion of the song to be played, with all the discretion the pianist commands--and the composer, the lyric writer and the "Boss" go across the street to some cabaret and try out the new song.

Here, before an audience, they can tell how much of a song they really have. They may have something that is a "winner," and they may see that their first judgment was wrong--they may have only the first idea of a hit.

But let us suppose that the song is a "knock 'em off their seats"

kind, that we may get down to the moral of this little narrative of actual happenings. The "pluggers" are called in and bidden to memorize the song. They spend the afternoon singing it over and over again--and then they go out at night and sing it in a dozen different places all over the city. On their reports and on what the "Boss" sees himself as he visits place after place, the decision is made to publish immediately or to work the song over again.

It is the final test before an audience that determines the fate of any song. The new song may never be sung again, or tomorrow the whole city may be whistling it.

And now permit me to indicate a point that lies in the past of the song we have seen in process of manufacture: From somewhere the composer gets an idea for a melody--from somewhere the lyric writer gets an idea for a lyric.

But we must put the music of a song to one side and devote our attention to the lyric.

II. POINTS ON SONG BUILDING

1. Sources of Ideas for Song Lyrics

As a popular song becomes popular because it fits into the life of the day and is the individual expression of the spirit of the moment, Charles K. Harris was doubtless right when he said:

"The biggest secret of success, according to my own system, is the following out in songs of ideas current in the national brain at the moment. My biggest song successes have always reflected the favorite emotion--if I may use the word--of the people of the day.

How do I gauge this? Through the drama! The drama moves in irregular cycles, and changes in character according to the specific tastes of the public. The yearly mood of the nation is reflected by the drama and the theatrical entertainment of the year. At least, I figure it out this way, and compose my songs accordingly.

"Here are just two instances of my old successes built on this plan: When 'The Old Homestead' and 'In Old Kentucky' were playing to crowded houses, I wrote ''Midst the Green Fields of Virginia'

and 'In the Hills of Old Carolina,' and won. Then when Gillette's war plays, 'Held by the Enemy' and 'Secret Service' caught the national eye, I caught the national ear with 'Just Break the News to Mother.' But these are examples enough to show you how the system works."

Irving Berlin said, "You can get a song idea from anywhere. I have studied the times and produced such songs as 'In My Harem'

when the Greeks were fleeing from the Turks and the harem was a humorous topic in the daily newspapers. And I have got ideas from chance remarks of my friends. For instance:

"I wrote 'My Wife's Gone to the Country' from the remark made to me by a friend when I asked him what time he was going home. 'I don't have to go home,' he said, 'my wife's gone to the country.'

It struck me as a great idea for a t.i.tle for a song, but I needed a note of jubilation, so I added 'Hooray, Hooray!' The song almost wrote itself. I had the chorus done in a few minutes, then I dug into the verse, and it was finished in a few hours."

L. Wolfe Gilbert wrote "Robert E. Lee" from the "picture lines"

in one of his older songs, "Mammy's Shuffiing Dance" and a good old-fas.h.i.+oned argument that he and I had about the famous old Mississippi steamboat. That night when I came back to the office we shared, Gilbert read me his lyric. From the first the original novelty of the song was apparent, and in a few days the country was whistling the levee dance of 'Daddy' and 'Mammy,' and 'Ephram'

and 'Sammy,' as they waited for the Robert E. Lee. Had Gilbert ever seen a levee? No--but out of his genius grew a song that sold into the millions.

"Most of our songs come from imagination," said Joe McCarthy. "A song-writer's mind is ever alert for something new. What might pa.s.s as a casual remark to an outsider, might be a great idea to a writer. For instance, a very dear young lady friend might have said, 'You made me love you--I didn't want to do it.' Of course no young lady friend said that to me--I just imagined it. And then I went right on and imagined what that young lady would have said if she had followed that line of thought to a climax."

"It's the chance remark that counts a lot to the lyric writer,"

said Ballard MacDonald. "You might say something that you would forget the next minute--while I might seize that phrase and work over it until I had made it a lyric."

But, however the original idea comes--whether it creeps up in a chance remark of a friend, or the national mood of the moment is carefully appraised and expressed, or seized "out of the air," let us suppose you have an idea, and are ready to write your song.

The very first thing you do, nine chances out of ten, is to follow the usual method of song-writers:

2. Write Your Chorus First

The popular song is only as good as its chorus. For whistling purposes there might just as well be no verses at all. But of course you must have a first verse to set your scene and lead up to your chorus, and a second verse to finish your effect and give you the opportunity to pound your chorus home. Therefore you begin to write your chorus around your big idea.

This idea is expressed in one line--your t.i.tle, your catchy line, your "idea line," if you like--and if you will turn to the verses of the songs reproduced in these chapters you will be able to determine about what percentage of times the idea line is used to introduce the chorus. But do not rest content with this examination; carry your investigation to all the songs on your piano. Establish for yourself, by this laboratory method, how often the idea line is used as a chorus introduction.

Whether your idea line is used to introduce your chorus or not, it is usually wise to end your chorus with it. Most choruses--but not all, as "Put on your Old Grey Bonnet," would suggest--end with the idea line, on the theory that the emphatic spots in any form of writing are at the beginning and the end--and of these the more emphatic is the end. Therefore, you must now concentrate your chorus to bring in that idea line as the very last line.

3. Make the Chorus Convey Emotion

As we saw in the previous chapter, a lyric is a set of verses that conveys emotion. The purpose of the first verse is to lead up to the emotion--which the chorus expresses. While, as I shall demonstrate later, a story may be proper to the verses, a story is rarely told in the chorus. I mean, of course, a story conveyed by pure narrative, for emotion may convey a story by sheer lyrical effect. Narrative is what you must strive to forget in a chorus--in your chorus you _must_ convey emotion _swiftly_--that is, with a punch.

While it is impossible for anyone to tell you how to convey emotion, one can point out one of the inherent qualities of emotional speech.

4. Convey Emotion by Broad Strokes

When a man rushes through the corridors of a doomed liner he does not stop to say, "The s.h.i.+p has struck an iceberg--or has been torpedoed--and is sinking, you'd better get dressed quickly and get on deck and jump into the boats." He hasn't time. He cries, "The s.h.i.+p's sinking! To the boats!"

This is precisely the way the song-writer conveys his effect. He not only cuts out the "thes" and the "ands" and the "ofs" and "its"

and "perhapses"--he shaves his very thoughts down--as the lyrics printed in these chapters so plainly show--until even logic of construction seems engulfed by the flood of emotion. Pare down your sentences until you convey the dramatic meaning of your deep emotion, not by a logical sequence of sentences, but by revealing flashes.

5. Put Your Punch in Clear Words Near the End

And now you must centre all your thoughts on your punch lines.

Punch lines, as we saw, are sometimes the entire point of a song--they are what makes a "popular" lyric get over the footlights when a performer sings the song and they are the big factor--together with the music punches--that make a song popular. However lyrical you have been in the beginning of your chorus, you must now summon all your lyrical ability to your aid to write these, the fate-deciding lines.

But note that emotion, however condensed the words may be that express it, must not be so condensed that it is incoherent. You must make your punch lines as clear in words as though you were drawing a diagram to explain a problem in geometry. The effect you must secure is that of revealing clearness.

Be very careful not to antic.i.p.ate your punch lines. For instance, if Mr. Gilbert had used "All day I sigh, all night I cry," before "I'd sigh for, I'd cry for, sweet dreams forever" in his "My Little Dream Girl," the whole effect would have been lost. As your punch lines must be the most attractive lines, keep them new and fresh, by excluding from the rest of your song anything like them.

If you can put your punch in the very last lines, fine. If you wish to put your punch lines just before the last two lines--in the third and fourth lines from the last--well and good. But it is never wise to put your punch so far from the end that your audience will forget it before you finish and expect something more. It is a good rule to write your punch lines and then end your song.

Having constructed your chorus from a beginning that uses or does not use your idea line, and having by broad strokes that convey emotion developed it into your punch lines, you end your chorus, usually, but not invariably, with your idea line--your t.i.tle line.

Now you are ready to write your first verse.

6. Make the First Verse the Introduction of the Chorus

If you have characters in your song, introduce them instantly.

If you are drawing a picture of a scene, locate it in your first line. If your song is written in the first person--the "you and I"

kind--you must still establish your location and your "you and I"

characters at once. If you keep in mind all the time you are writing that your first verse is merely an introduction, you will not be likely to drag it out.

(a) _Write in impersonal mood_--that is, make your song such that it does not matter whether a man or a woman sings it. Thus you will not restrict the wide use of your song. Anyone and everyone can sing it on the stage. Furthermore, it will be apt to sell more readily.

(b) _"Tell a complete story"_ is a rule that is sometimes laid down for popular song-writers. But it depends entirely upon what kind of song you are writing whether it is necessary to tell a story or not. "A story is not necessary," Berlin says, and an examination of the lyrics in the preceding chapter, and all the lyrics on your piano, will bear him out in this a.s.sertion.

All you need remember is that your song must express emotion in a catchy way. If you can do this best by telling a story, compress your narrative into your verses, making your chorus entirely emotional.

(c) _"Make your verses short"_ seems to be the law of the popular song today. In other years it was the custom to write long verses and short choruses. Today the reverse seems to be the fas.h.i.+on.

But whether you decide on a short verse or a long verse--and reference to the latest songs will show you what is best for you to write--you must use as few words as possible to begin your story and--with all the information necessary to carry over the points of your chorus--to lead it up to the joining lines.

7. Make Your Second Verse Round Out the Story

You have introduced your chorus in your first verse, and the chorus has conveyed the emotion to which the first verse gave the setting.

Now in your second verse round out the story so that the repet.i.tion of the chorus may complete the total effect of your song.