Part 1 – The Challenge; Initial Work

 Michael Lee Johnson (MLJ): It may not be easy since my poems are free verse.

I could send a batch of four and let you see if any of them have any potential.

Mike Turner (MT): That will be part of the challenge. I’ve successfully adapted poems to songs on several occasions, including a few of my poems by my late grandfather and a couple of collaborators. I can only think of one that started as a free-verse poem, and even in that instance, the song adapted from it had a rhyme scheme. I’ve also had a few attempts that failed, and no song came of it. Four sounds about right to give me a selection to choose between.

MLJ: You will receive your nightmares soon!

Of the poems Johnson forwarded, Turner felt one, “Deep In My Couch,” to have potential from both thematic and structural perspectives. There followed some clarification between the poet and artist on how much permission Turner had in modifying the poem to adapt it into a workable lyric.

MLJ: Other musicians who have set my poems to music were almost overly cautious not to alter any words but changing or adapting is an option.

MT: I’ve had both experiences: poems that translated almost verbatim to song; and others that required significant adaptation, new verses/sections, to work. Sometimes the original poem is the actual source material for the final lyric; sometimes, the “source” poem serves more as inspiration for what falls out of the lyric and musical processes.

Turner subsequently began work on the “Deep In My Couch”-sourced poem:

• developing a melody and concepts for instrumentation
• shortening some sections of the poem
• adding some lines to fit the melodic structure and fill out the narrative of the piece, which deals with reflection, remembrance, and regret

Johnson again remarked on his assumption that the process was “not easy.”

MT: I wouldn’t say “not easy,” I’d say “challenging.” What I’m coming up with is quite different from anything I’ve written before. If I had to classify it, I’d call it progressive rock with some heavy soul and blues influences (it uses a classic blues chord progression). It’s not the type of folk/blues-style song I typically write. The challenge in doing even a demo recording for you to consider is that it needs some percussion and overdubbing to get the full effect. It’s not something you’d play solo, singing and strumming a guitar. There are overlapping vocals, with the line “Deep in My Couch” functioning as a refrain. I like it because it’s a growth for me in my songwriting.

MLJ: So interesting. I have often wished for a studio for sound and effects. However, I don’t have the space [Johnson creates videos, reciting his poems to background music for posting online]. Also, each time you take on new software, there is a significant learning curve that is time-consuming. Learning new software takes time and is frustrating but inventive.

MT: I don’t have a permanent studio set up; like you, I don’t have the space – I set up/take down my equipment when I want to record; quite often, I wait until my wife is away and then do several days of recording at once. To start will be just a rough recording. So, I’m not as concerned with background noise. I will do a more “produced” version of the song when the time comes. I’ll want to focus on mic selection, placement, and acoustics.

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After exchanging messages about the differences between poetry and song, poet Michael Lee Johnson invited songwriter Mike Turner to collaborate on adapting one of Johnson’s poems into music. What follows are extracts of their discussions as the project proceeded.

 Part 2 – Initial Demo; Adapting Poem to Lyric and Adding Music

Turner subsequently produced an initial “work tape” to layout the lyric and basic melody, using his preferred writing instrument, a baritone ukulele. Then mixed a primary digital audio MP3 to forward to Johnson for review and comment, along with some questions for Johnson’s consideration.

MT: I found the process here to be very close to progressive soul, even rap, in terms of how those genres lay down a “groove” and then overlay melody/lyric on top of it. So the “meter” here is more in the music than in words if that makes any sense. It gives the vocalist certain freedoms. To phrase the lyric within the groove structure, allowing to sing ahead of or behind the beat, groove, and even melody, allowing for specific variations, helping accommodate non-rhymed, free verse.

As they say in jazz, the spaces between the notes are just as important as the words in maintaining the song’s meter/beat/groove and “atmosphere.” It’s hard to describe, but it (hopefully) makes sense when you hear it. Phrasing is critical in songs that don’t strictly adhere to traditional songwriting conventions like verses/choruses and rhyme schemes. It’s not a soul or rap song as I’m composing it, but the concept of an underlying beat/groove with sung words on top is similar. If I had to choose a genre, I think the closest would-be progressive rock or maybe fast blues.

MLJ: Yes, it makes sense “‘ meter’ is more in the music than in words, if that makes any sense.

MT: Much of my poetry is a stream-of-consciousness thing: I’ll get inspiration and start to write. Once finished, I’ll do some light editing for length to eliminate duplicate word usage and firm up the meter and rhyme scheme (if any). And that’s about it. Songwriting is much different; I will sometimes labor for weeks or months to swap words around and get a lyric that expresses what I’m after and is “singable.” The musical elements drive part of that. I usually start with a rough partial lyric and see what melodies, tempos, styles, and cadences begin to suggest themselves to me, which generally leads to a melody and a musical arrangement, and then back to editing the words to make it all flow together. The process of adapting a poem like “Couch” to a song is similar. With many of the words in front of me from the poet, composing melody, crafting the words to work “singable” way is a lot of cut-and-paste. 

I do some of my best musical work when driving in the car. Something about the “rhythm of the road” inspires me to melody and tempo. It helps that I’m not tied to an instrument at those times. I tend to compose more creatively when I’m not stuck in the rut of the standard guitar/ukulele strumming patterns that I typically use. I’m adapting another friend’s poem to a song right now. The melody I’ve come up with, “in the car,” is a LOT different and I think a lot better than I first came up with just working at home on a baritone ukulele.

MLJ: I would imagine the most challenging part is taking the raw poem and creating a rhythm for the song.

MT: Yes, the most challenging part for me is taking the raw poem and coming up with a rhythm and song structure that the poem can fit.  For me, that usually happens in a non-linear way.  I start with what the verse is saying to me and how I “hear” it in my head, which leads me to a song structure and melody.  Then I have to go back and mold the lyrics to fit into the structure/melody I hear and adjust, adjust, adjust the music to make it all come together.  For “Couch,” I initially tried a more folk-oriented approach to melody and rhythm.  However, I rejected it because it seemed to give the song a tone of resignation to me.  So I used a faster tempo and vocal phrasing to lend a sense of urgency – it’s as though we can see the images and feel the singer’s sense of disappointment and loss.  We want to DO something about it.  The poem suggested to me, and I liked conveying the lyrics and music to pass that sense of immediacy, urgency, and emotion to the listener.

MLJ: I appreciate the way you think; it is different from a poet’s way of constructing.  In the near distant future, it is on my agenda to study and learn more about songwriting- a bit late, but what the hell.  Songs have always appeared to me to be too simple.  When I read what you are saying, the lyrics are almost a byproduct of the process in its totality.

MT: I think the songwriting process is different for different people.  I find my process equally driven by the philosophical meaning in the lyrics and the emotional content of the music and its delivery.  I see a synergistic effect between these elements.  I generally start with lyrics and find a structure and meter that drives a melody and tempo, then readjust the lyrics to fit inside the structure and melody I’ve created.  It’s a process that I carry into the actual practice of performing the song.  It has to be “singable.” Sometimes, some words I’ve selected don’t “sing” that well.  Or are hard to physically articulate in the music framework, which leads to more editing/adjusting until I’ve got something.

MLJ: I love your sharing of the thought/emotional process summated with the keyword synergistic. I always find the lives of significant people in areas of interest, history, anthropology, and archaeology fascinating. Often my poems come from a video of a person of interest or myth, a picture painted, a drunken rant. I especially like these lines,” it has to be singable, and I sometimes find that some words I’ve selected don’t sing.” 

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After exchanging messages about the differences between poetry and song, poet Michael Lee Johnson invited songwriter Mike Turner to collaborate on adapting one of Johnson’s poems into music. What follows are extracts of their discussions as the project proceeded.

 Part 3 – Discussion of Structure; Setting Poems to Music vs. Adapting to Song; Poets and Songwriters

Johnson and Turner turned to a discussion of the structure of poems and songs.

MLJ: The problem with “structure” is, if obsessed with “structure,” I would never write a creative poem. Structure creeps in on its own in limited ways in my case.

MT: The whole concept of “structure” in a song is one of the reasons I branched out from songwriting, which I’ve been doing for about ten years, into poetry, which I’ve only seriously pursued for about three years. There’s much structure, convention, and repetition in song (and, more generally, music). Except for some types of jazz, almost all songs/music adheres to a structural and repetitive convention. We have verses, pre-choruses, choruses (usually repeated within the song), and bridges. And, of course, rhyming – again, not always in song, but predominant. That’s a lot to cram into 3 minutes (the standard radio-play length for a song, although obviously, that can vary). I find that the repetitive aspect of the song, particularly repeated choruses, doesn’t translate well to the written page. And the more I wrote songs, the more I found that some stories I wanted to tell, some messages I tried to convey, did not “read” so well with all that repetition or time/length constraint. So, I started working with poetry, mainly free verse.

One doesn’t have to adhere to all those songwriting conventions. There have been some studies that show that listeners expect them to a degree. There is a particular psychological aspect to giving the listener what they expect to hear in structure and rhyme. So that not hearing them does not disorient them and thus miss the deeper meaning of the piece (unless, of course, one’s goal was to confuse them and so, in that way, capture their attention).

I still try to have a cadence and meter to my poems. I write them more as orations, in the spirit of some of the great orators. I would include Southern Baptist ministers in general (my family was Baptist, although I’m not. I heard many of them growing up) and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in particular. I “hear” them as I write/read them. My delivery is somewhat in that vein. I give a rhythmic quality to the reading. Like what you’ve done with YouTube readings of your poems, “Deep In My Couch” among them).

I found a particular “structure” to the poem version of “Couch.” I found it broke down into stanzas of 3-line length and even an unintentional rhyme (“dark” with “black tar”). Both helped me “hear” a preliminary structure and melody when I first started working on the song.

Johnson and Turner also discussed some differences between Turner’s treatment of “Couch” and some of Johnson’s poems that others had adapted to a song.

 MT: I listened to the other songs [adapted from Johnson’s poems], and I liked them. I would say there are three reasons this song, “Couch,” is different (not “better,” but different) from the others:

1. There’s the fact that it’s at a faster tempo than the other songs are.
2. It’s a different genre. The other songs, I would say, were in folk or country genres, or maybe progressive rock ballads. This song is more along the lines of a blues (it uses a blues chord progression and, to a degree, is in a blues structure) with progressive rock and soul influences.
3. There’s a subtle difference between “setting a poem to music” and “adapting a poem as a song” I would say that the other songs tend more toward the former.

In contrast, this song tends more toward the latter. I’m not saying one approach is “better” than the other, only that they bring different results. Setting a poem to music retains the original wording and flow of the poem without much impact on songwriting conventions like verses/choruses/refrains. While adopting a poem treats the poem more as source material and overlays some songwriting conventions.

“Couch” incorporates a bit more songwriting convention than the other songs did – structural things like intros/outros, the structure itself (this song follows what’s called an AABBAA structure: in other words, there are two musical patterns, the A pattern and the B pattern, alternating as shown, AABBAA).

MLJ: I have some experience being a poet, not a songwriter. I like your distinction, “setting a poem to music” and “adapting a poem to the song” as two different things. Deep in My Couch is the latter since much of the structure must be in the musical pattern, not reliant on the poem. When I was young, I thought of writing songs but found the idea too simplistic but profitable. Poetry was more challenging to me than songwriting.

MT: On the topic of poet versus songwriter: in the songwriting world, if you are involved in creating a song, be it writing the lyrics, composing the music, supplying a “beat,” or whatever, you are considered a “songwriter.” When giving credit for the completed work, the music industry doesn’t distinguish those different aspects/people. A “song” is only created when you have both lyrics and melody. There are people in the music industry who only write lyrics. They hold themselves out as “lyricists.” Folks who only write music think of themselves as “composers.” If it’s a musical piece without lyrics, like a classical music piece, it’s technically not a “song”; it’s a “composition”). When credited for contributions to creating a song, one is credited as a songwriter-whether one contributed lyrics or music. Look at Lennon/McCartney from The Beatles. Some of their songs were primarily written by John and others primarily by Paul. However, they’re both fully credited as songwriters in their collaborative works. In the case of “Couch,” you are the “poet” who wrote the original poem and a co-writer of the derivative work/song that we’ve created (me being the other “co-writer”). Suppose we were cutting and releasing this as a physical record. In that case, that’s how we’d be credited on the liner notes, record label, and cover. Don’t reject being credited as a “songwriter,” embrace it – think of songwriting as an extension of your role as a poet.

Deep In My Couch: The Poem: https://youtu.be/5VG2YPSvJRU 

Deep In My Couch: The Song: https://youtu.be/i-z2I9Yb4no