Song writer or composer?

[Montunoman 2]

I guess I consider someone who writes lyrics a song writer and someone who writes music to be a composer. Also a composer brings to mind someone who writes  for orchestral, film, musical theater, or other large ensembles, while, songwriters writes for smaller pop type settings. 

 

So would Elton John be a composer. ? He "writes" the music not the lyrics but his music would fall under the pop category.  What about Frank Zappa ? Antonio Carlos Jobim? 

 

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. 

[Al Coda]

what about song-poser ?

 

 

A.C.

[Jose EB5AGV]

22 minutes ago, Al Coda said:

what about song-poser ?

 

 

A.C.

 

Or perhaps comp-writer? 🤭

 

Speaking seriously, I think there is lots of overlap. Let's read what others say

[Al Coda]

A songwriter is not automatically a lyrics writer,- and it might be more in the sense of typical/ average pop/ rock songs while composer is more in the direction of more complex creation, opus etc..

It might also depend on the "level of originality" which is also a definition of (some nation´s) copyright act.

 

 

A.C.

[Tusker]

It's an interesting question and one to which there might not be a 'correct' answer. As EB5AGV pointed out, there's lots of overlap.

 

You would use the words in different ways. The way I use the terms is very specific and to me Elton John is clearly a songwriter. But of course he means more to our world than that. Let me explain ...

 

For me a great songwriter is a master of a certain craft within the larger domain of composition, but the songwriter typically focuses around the needs of short-form composition, usually in popular genres. One could be a skilled songwriter and a rudimentary composer, or vice versa. Very few people are masters of both. The first person who comes to mind who might be both is Leonard Bernstein. I wouldn't think of him as a master songwriter except that I have encountered  several of the artfully written songs in West Side Story.  

 

I expect a master songwriter to have very strong skills in creating easily sung melodies, effective functional harmony, and popular rhythmic idioms for example. I expect a master composer to have skills in orchestration and arranging for large ensembles that I don't expect a master songwriter to have. However a great songwriter has often developed a ear for a melodies which are singable and memorable, and for arrangements, riffs and hooks which leap into the consciousness, in a way that a master composer may not. These are significant skills also.

 

One label isn't necessarily more lofty than another is it? It's perfectly ok to think of songwriting as a particularly speciality, much as being a transplant surgeon is a particular speciality. I know there are untrained songwriters but we are speaking of Elton John....

 

Elton John's music has given joy to billions of people and served as the soundtrack to important events across several generations. He has made this remarkable contribution to our lives by writing and performing songs. He is a songwriter. A great one.

[MathOfInsects]

I use both terms for myself and they specifically mean different things. When it's a self-contained 3-minute song, it's "songwriting." When it's longer form, soundscapy, or otherwise of no expectation that the random pop listener would have any interest in it, it's composing. There's a middle ground in "arranging," since writing string parts is more composing than songwriting, but those parts often go on pop songs. 

 

I don't agree with the lack-of-lyric distinction; plenty of art music has lyrics, with no expectation it would ever be considered pop (or a "song").

[KuruPrionz]

The lines are blurred, advances in technology have changed how artists work. Gray areas? We have that, and then some!

Since Tusker brought up Elton John, I'll mention another difficult to define artist who stands out in my mind. 

Joni Mitchell. She is definitely a great songwriter, no question of it. Listen to the background vocals on this track:

I would say that is some gorgeous and stellar composition as well. She worked on tape recorders at that point. Those voices are all hers. 

Now we have recording systems on our computers that have far fewer limitations (including much lower cost) than anything previously available. 

 

We can put dots on paper as they've done in Europe for centuries, that is the tradition of writing music. It works but it is no longer our only option. 

We can also create composition using tools that Bach and his contemporaries probably never dreamed of having. 

We'll never know if Beethoven would have used our modern tools but I suspect he would have at least given them a spin.

At this point, words are just words. You can call somebody a songwriter or a composer or a compiler or whatever. It's simply a "comfort zone" thing for your personal spin on what is happening in our new world. 

 

Things will only become more diverse where musical creativity is concerned, definitions may bring comfort to some but the blender is on Frappe at this point. 🙂

[The Real MC]

I recall no one referring to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchiakovsky, et al as "songwriters".

[AnotherScott]

18 minutes ago, KuruPrionz said:

The lines are blurred, advances in technology have changed how artists work. Gray areas? We have that, and then some!

 

Yeah, people are doing all kinds of new things with old music. And one of the songs that blurred lines was Blurred Lines.

[Adam Burgess]

3 minutes ago, The Real MC said:

I recall no one referring to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchiakovsky, et al as "songwriters".

There were definitely some songs in all those operas! 

The term singer-songwriter these days seems to have took to mean a guy with a guitar (usually a beard).
Songwriters write stuff all the time - sometimes to commission, sometimes for something, or someone.
Composers write songs, and pieces without vocals…

As pointed out above, the overlap is great. Maybe not all composers are songwriters, but all songwriters are composers…?


 

 

[Tusker]

2 hours ago, Montunoman 2 said:

So would Elton John be a composer. ? He "writes" the music not the lyrics but his music would fall under the pop category.  What about Frank Zappa ? Antonio Carlos Jobim? 

 

I spoke to your question about Elton John but forgot to address Zappa and Jobim. I think it would depend less on the stature of the person and more on whether they focused primarily on short-form compositions and melody-accompaniment (homophonic) textures with are the most typical textures for songs. 

[Docbop]

I say it's all just labels is it tomato or toeMAtoe they write music. 

[Montunoman 2]

27 minutes ago, Tusker said:

 

I spoke to your question about Elton John but forgot to address Zappa and Jobim. I think it would depend less on the stature of the person and more on whether they focused primarily on short-form compositions and melody-accompaniment (homophonic) textures with are the most typical textures for songs. 

Yeah, I would definitely consider Elton John a song writer even though he doesn't write lyrics.  I'm not super familiar with Zappa, but I have a feeling he could be in both categories. AC Jobim. maybe a song writer, but his melodies and harmonies seem more complex and unique for standard pop, so sometimes I think of him as a composer. 

 

I also have a hard time classifying some  jazz artists that write original music,  like Duke Ellington for example.  Song writer or composer? Both?  

 

Also someone brought up Leonard Bernstein. I always thought of him as a composer, but defiantly those great tunes from West Side story, work well in a pop or jazz setting.  

[Montunoman 2]

22 minutes ago, Docbop said:

I say it's all just labels is it tomato or toeMAtoe they write music. 

True dat. 

[stoken6]

Classic example of the songwriter/composer dichotomy is George Gershwin. When he wrote Porgy & Bess, the music press of the time was all "who does this Tin Pan Alley guy think he is?"

 

4 hours ago, Tusker said:

The first person who comes to mind who might be both is Leonard Bernstein. I wouldn't think of him as a master songwriter except that I have encountered  several of the artfully written songs in West Side Story.  

Of course, Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics in WSS. 

 

Cheers, Mike.

 

[Tusker]

2 hours ago, stoken6 said:

Of course, Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics in WSS. 

 

Yes, as we discussed, a songwriter who writes music and leaves the lyrics to someone else as Elton John does with Taupin or Bernstein did with Sondheim ... is still a songwriter. 

[MathOfInsects]

8 hours ago, The Real MC said:

I recall no one referring to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchiakovsky, et al as "songwriters".

Well, that's a slightly stacked deck. Certainly in the wake of that era, "Lied" or art songs were extremely common among the "Bachs/Beethovens/Mozarts" of the Romantic era. And lest we forget....
 

 

[Geoff Grace]

I've spent much of my career being a songwriter and a composer. While I agree that the line between the two can sometimes be blurry, put simply, a songwriter is someone who writes songs (short pieces of music, usually with words), while a composer writes music but doesn't usually specialize in writing songs.

 

If you keep those concepts in mind, it's usually pretty easy to differentiate between the two professions.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[mcgoo]

20 minutes ago, Geoff Grace said:

... While I agree that the line between the two can sometimes be blurry, put simply, a songwriter is someone who writes songs (short pieces of music, usually with words), while a composer writes music but doesn't usually specialize in writing songs.

 

And just to blur the lines more, I think of myself as a composer, but over the last 20+ years I've also written many jingles... Short pieces of music, usually with words (usually either 15, 30 or 60 seconds long), with the goal of becoming an ear worm. Does that make me a songwriter? 

[Geoff Grace]

5 hours ago, mcgoo said:

 

And just to blur the lines more, I think of myself as a composer, but over the last 20+ years I've also written many jingles... Short pieces of music, usually with words (usually either 15, 30 or 60 seconds long), with the goal of becoming an ear worm. Does that make me a songwriter? 

 

I would think of you as a "jingle writer" on those occasions. While it's true that one could describe jingles as "short pieces of music, usually with words," an even better description would be "very short pieces of precise lengths—typically 15, 30 or 60 seconds long—consisting of music, usually with words." Songwriting (at least, as it’s commonly understood) is not the practice of writing pieces that short or that exact in length.

 

Technically, all music writing is composing, so writing jingles and songwriting are forms of composition. It's just that we typically only refer to ourselves as "composers" when we're writing music for media (film, television, video games, etc.) or classical forms, such as a symphony.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[KuruPrionz]

4 hours ago, mcgoo said:

 

And just to blur the lines more, I think of myself as a composer, but over the last 20+ years I've also written many jingles... Short pieces of music, usually with words (usually either 15, 30 or 60 seconds long), with the goal of becoming an ear worm. Does that make me a songwriter? 

It sounds like you are doing both composition and songwriting.  Songwriter/composer or switch them around / use the one that is appropriate for your current endeavor. 

[dixonge]

From a technical/licensing standpoint, words used in a song are generally referred to as lyrics. So Bernie Taupin would be a lyricist. Elton would be a music composer (for lack of a better term) - both of them would split the 'songwriters' rights 50/50. The song/composition would also pay the publisher, generally a company. So composition royalties would be 50% publisher, 25% Elton, 25% Bernie. The sound recording would be 100% Elton, depending on the label contract and which right or licensing is in question (streaming, CD sale, movie soundtrack, etc.) 

 

But that's just technical definitions. In the real world, I would just say that Bernie wrote the words, Elton wrote the music and leave it at that.

[bill5]

tomato, tomahto. It seems more people think "song" implies lyrics (with or without music), but some don't. There's no pat answer I know of. I don't distinguish.

 

And tbh I was never a fan of the word composer. It sounds too close to compost. Well in my case it would be accurate lol 

[DrEsophagus]

I write my music & lyrics although admittedly the lyrics need a lot of time to gestate and sometimes get changed/re-arranged and may even end up on a totally different melody. I don't think I'd call myself a composer though.