Songwriters On Songwriting: Van Dyke Parks
“I think a good melody can be evocative. It can remind you of someplace that you’ve been. And if a melody jars memory, I think it serves a great purpose.”
I wrote my first song when I was 14 years old. Over the years, I’ve composed hundreds of songs. It was that interest — music — that led me to take a year off from pursuing a doctorate and led me down the circuitous path that has been the rest of my life.
I don’t write songs nowadays, more focused on screenplays and writing about writing. But I can’t help but think at least some of who I am as a writer derives from all that time studying and composing songs.
Which is why I say that one of my favorite ‘screenwriting’ books is “Songwriters on Songwriting, a collection of interviews by Paul Zollo with some of the great songwriters of our time, from Mose Allison to Frank Zappa. For what are songs but stories?
Each day this week at this time, I will post insight from a songwriter about their craft in the hope their words may inspire you as a writer.
Today: Van Dyke Parks.
What do you feel makes a melody great?
A melody is first an exposition. It goes somewhere from somewhere. A melody takes us through time. A good melody indicates development. The melodies I work on are highly derivative. This is the way I work. I realize that I have heard something before. But I never know exactly where. But I think a good melody can be evocative. It can remind you of someplace that you’ve been. And if a melody jars memory, I think it serves a great purpose.
I use melodies as evocative tools. Tools which jar memory, so that a felling of familiarity and safety is created. So that, perhaps objectionable or revolutionary thoughts, or unsettling thoughts, can be accommodated. The melody, to me, should be comforting. Or easily digested. Invitational. So that the thought may be accommodated. That’s what I try to do.
I absolutely love this quote for multiple reasons, but here let me focus on one aspect: “I use melodies as evocative tools.”
If there is a better way to describe story than that, let me hear it.
No matter what we do when we produce a screenplay, we want to craft a story that evokes memories, evokes feelings.
Because if we do that, then we have achieved a connection with that reader. A personal connection. And they are much more willing, indeed, enthusiastic to follow us wherever we take the narrative.
Here is a great Van Dyke Parks song from one of my all-time favorite animated movies The Brave Little Toaster:
For the rest of the Songwriters on Songwriting series, go here.
