shape. You very rarely write a song... beginning to end, lyrics finished, melody sorted." (Interview for The Beat Goes On exhibition, June 2008)
Eddy Amoo from the Liverpool soul band the Real Thing also uses chords as a starting point commenting that songwriting,
"usually starts off on my guitar, whereas I'm playing some chords on the guitar and I think that sounds good and I'll think of a sort of like, a nice melody to go over it, you know, start hearing these riffs in my head." (Interview for The Beat Goes On exhibition, April 2008)
Despite this process of experimentation by songwriters, many songs are based around variations on a fairly small number of chord sequences. For example, there are a number of very simple chord progressions which have been constants throughout the history of Anglo-American songwriting. They include the so-called I/IV/V sequence which has been the basis of countless songs across varying genres. This sequence uses the tonic, subdominant, and dominant chords within the scale (the first, fourth and fifth steps in that particular scale, hence the name). For example if a song was in the key of C, this would mean that the C, F and G chords are used. This sequence has been the basis for songwriting across folk, country and blues and as a result it has fed into many differing types of music from rock, pop to rhythm and blues. Many songs use simple variations on this sequence. The Beatles' 'Love me Do' for instance, uses two chords (I/V) in the verse and mixes the sequence in the bridge/refrain section (I/IV/V). Other sequences add related chords within a given key (for instance a very popular structure is I/vi/ii/V), often adding minor or diminished variations in order to change the mood of a song. Songwriters give variation to these sequences by adding extra notes to individual chords giving new harmonic interest and suggesting new melodic possibilities for the sequence. These simple structures provide the basis for almost limitless variations. Just because a song shares a common starting point with another does not mean it cannot be original. As Ian McNabb of the Liverpool rock band the Icicle Works comments:
"A lot of the time what happens [within the songwriting process] is I hear something on the radio or hear somebody else's song and think, 'Wow I wish we would have written that'. So then I start trying to write something that is a bit like it... You try and assimilate it and hopeful end up with something that has got somewhere close to it but isn't a direct rip-off." (Interview for The Beat Goes On exhibition, May 2008)