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Jimmy Webb

Jimmy Webb Books

Singer-songwriter

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“A critic can call any poem 'doggerel.' That is no more than a slur. 'Doggerel' or 'maudlin' or 'sappy' or 'sentimental' is in the ear of the listener. By the by, 'sentimental' is okay as it is defined as 'marked or governed by feeling, sensibility, or emotional idealism.' It is 'sentimentality' that is to be avoided, like the fiddleback spider, being as it is 'the quality or state of being sentimental to excess or in affectation.' Again we are faced with a judgement call and must keep a sharp eye on our outpourings to insure they are not overly gooey. The intellectual elite probably believe that most of the lyrics songwriters create are 'doggerel' of one kind or another--that is to say 'trivial"......the young songwriter has now been warned about the implacable nature of the enemy. Under a rather large umbrella, preferred twentieth-century taste in art of all kinds has been characterized by a kind of detachment, or sangfroid. It is simply not chic to be carried away in one's emotional reaction to a subject. All serious communication or complaint must be carefully wrapped in a protective coating of irony and/or satire.”

CriticismCriticsSongwritingSentimentalitySongwriterSentimentDoggerelHipsterism
Book:Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting
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“Even if chords are simple, they should rub. They should have dissonances in them. I've always used a lot of alternate bass lines, suspensions, widely spaced voicings. Dfferent textures to get very warm chords. Sometimes you're setting up strange chords by placing a chord in front of it that's going to set it off like a diamond in a gold band. It's not just finding interesting chords, it's how you sequence them, like stringing together pearls on a string. ... Interesting chords will compel interesting melodies. It's very hard to write a boring melody to an interesting chord sequence.”

IfsShouldWritingSometimesHardTogetherUsedLinesSimpleInterestingFrontsStrangeBandFindingsGoldShould HaveBoringWarmSettingSettingsStringsMelodySongwritingDiamondPearlsSequenceChordsBassTextureSuspensionDissonance
Author:Jimmy Webb
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“You certainly don't hear any country music on pop radio today. But for a while you did, and it was a lovely thing to have all the different genres of music cohabitating the Top 40 - the folk sound, The Beatles, the British sound, the Motown sounds, that kind of light country - it was a welcome relief after a few hard rock records. Everyone was sharing the airwaves, and I think it was a beautiful time for American music.”

ThinkingKindDifferentCountryHardLightTodayBeautifulSoundMusicRecordsRocksFolksRadioPopsBritishLovelyWelcomeGenreReliefDifferent GenresAmerican MusicMotownLovely ThingsHard RockGenres Of MusicDifferent Genres Of Music
Author:Jimmy Webb
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