Jay Graydon: Songwriter

In the ‘90s, Graydon began toning down his activities. To some degree, he went into semi-retirement — the royalty cheques of the 200-plus songs he’d (co-)written, many of them classics, obviously came in very handy — but he also focused more on developing a career as an artist in his own right, first with a band called Planet 3 with renowned songwriter and keyboardist Glen Ballard, then working together with the legendary keyboardist, songwriter and producer David Foster in Airplay. Graydon released his first genuine solo album, Holdin’ On To Love, in 1994. In 2001 he set up his own record label, Sonic Thrust, and in that same year he released an album called Bebop, which, as the title suggests, contained a collection of instrumental jazz tunes. Bebop was clearly not designed to set the charts alight, and during the last 15 years Graydon has apparently been quite content to keep a relatively low profile. A significant part of his time went into sharing his experience and encyclopaedic knowledge of guitar playing and the music-making process in a number of articles, books and tutorials.

In late 2008, rather unexpectedly, Graydon returned with another stab at the limelight with the band JaR, a collaboration with fellow songwriting legend, keyboardist and Nashville resident Randy Goodrum, known for classic songs like Anne Murray’s ‘You Needed Me’ and Toto’s ‘I’ll Be Over You’ — Goodrum was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall Of Fame in 2000. JaR’s excellent first album, Scene 29, stands firmly in the tradition of Steely Dan, with 11 pop songs full of unusual lyrical twists, nifty arrangements and jazzy chord changes. Barring an additional vocal in one track and a brief orchestration in another, the album is entirely a duo affair, with Goodrum and Graydon jointly responsible for the songwriting, vocals, arrangements, instrumentation, engineering, mixing, production and mastering. The only genuine solo elements are Graydon’s rip-roaring guitar solos. Highly acclaimed by those in the know, Scene 29 remained below the radar of the mainstream music press. Undeterred and despite the fact that Scene 29 took two years to record, Graydon and Goodrum are currently in the studio recording a follow-up. While in the middle of this the Los Angeles guitarist and songwriter took some time off to share details of his approach to songwriting, then and now.

“By contrast, the song ‘Cure Kit’ came about in a very different way. I had just purchased a Yamaha Motif 73 keyboard because it has a good Rhodes patch. My good friend Tim Hosman and I were hanging out in my studio and Tim started messing with patches in the Motif. He found an acoustic guitar performance patch that has a built-in rhythm when you hold down notes on the keyboard. Tim held down notes in the Dm chord, changed to a Dm(maj7) chord and then followed with a Dm7 to Dm6. It’s a very common chord pattern, but I dug the way the patch worked with the chords. Later that night, I adjusted the tempo of the patch and found a good tempo for the groove, and matched the tempo to Pro Tools. I added more chords until I thought I had a good chord structure for the verse. I then recorded the part and overdubbed a rough vocal melody. Randy modified the verse melody and wrote a chorus. The song was completed within a few days with Randy and I sending each other MIDI files and MP3s. Tim didn’t write any of the song, but because his chord change idea was the reason the song was written, we gave him a share in the song.

Chord progressions, harmonic movement and ‘back-cycling’

The essential principle of harmonic movement can be a bit tricky to grasp because it’s so counter-intuitive. However, it only takes a simple shift of perspective to make it super-easy, so bear with this explanation. Music moves forwards in time and so musicians will naturally think forward in time when playing melodies, rhythms, solos and chord progressions. If one is at point ‘A’ in a piece of music, one moves from there to point ‘B’ and then to point ‘C’ and so on. However, from a time-based perspective, harmonic cadences (called ‘turnarounds’ in jazz) are based on reverse logic. The idea is to go straight to an end point of a song section and then look backwards. Essentially, in traditional harmony, when trying to get from point ‘A’ to point ‘C’, one doesn’t find point ‘B’ in between by looking forward from point ‘A’, but rather by looking backwards from point ‘C’. Cadences, or turnarounds, are constructed in this way and doing this is therefore called ‘back-cycling’.

For instance, say the beginning of a song is in the key of C. For some reason, you want to end up in the key of Eb-maj at the end of the section you’re writing. Rather than think how to get from C to Eb, the idea is to think Eb and then back-cycle from there to C. This involves placing the mother of all cadences in front of Eb — the famous II-V-I progression — in which Eb is the I, also called the ‘tonic’. In the scale of Eb (Eb, F, G, Ab, Bb, C, D), the II chord is Fm7 (it’s also called the ‘subdominant’ and can be interchanged with the other subdominant, on the fourth step, which in Eb is Ab). The V in the key of Eb, also called the ‘dominant’, is Bb7.

So the II-V-I progression in Eb is Fm7-Bb7-Eb. However, none of these chords occur in the key of C, so one may want to back-cycle even further to a bridge chord that works in both C and Eb. This can be done by thinking of either the subdominant (in this case Fm7) or the dominant (Bb7) as a temporary tonic and placing a dominant (V) in front of that. In turn, one may, if one likes, place a II before that new dominant (remember, the basic sequence is always II-V-I).

In this case, if one defines Bb as a temporary tonic, its dominant is F7, and the second chord or II in the key of Bb is Cm7. This still does not yet lead us to C-maj, but by regarding Cm as a new tonic and sticking a dominant on that, one does arrive at a shared chord, for the dominant of Cm7 is G7, which is also the dominant of C-maj. G7 can therefore function as a bridge chord. So the whole back-cycled progression would go: C (the initial key)-G7-Cm7-F7-Bb7-Eb. When playing this, one can immediately hear the characteristic (some would say clichéd) bass movement in fourths.

It is important to note that the post-modern view of music harmony holds that there are no rules, so anything is possible and allowable and the only true judge is your own good, or bad, taste. However, these harmonic cadences are deeply locked in our collective subconscious, and using them will help make a song or a piece of music sound more palatable. This can be very helpful when trying to write a hit song, or to provide some degree of recognition for a piece of music that is, on other levels — lyrically, sonically, rhythmically, harmonically — rather left-field. For example, write a piece consisting only of atonal, heavily distorted guitar notes and put a cadence under it, and it immediately will be more palatable to a larger audience. It may also benefit aesthetically from the mixture of the experimental and the traditional.

With regards to the problem that II-V-I progressions can easily sound totally and utterly clichéd, skilled composers and songwriters have all sorts of tricks to disguise II-V-I and find variations of it. Sometimes they only hint at it. Jay Graydon expands, “It is always an ongoing process to find new ways to get to a new tonal centre without using a stock II-V-I progression. One trick is to make sure that the chord before the next chord has a common tone. For example, in the song ‘After The Love Has Gone’ the last chord of the verse is B-maj7. The first chord of the chorus is Cm7. The common note is Eb. David Foster came up with that and it is total genius! I have learned over the years that when I need a four-chord turnaround, back-cycling is in play, so I look at the tonal centre I am going to. The dominant chord could also be the flat II chord, or any chord with a common tone that makes some kind of leading sense. Then the question is what the next chord is to back-cycle to, which would lead into the dominant chord. If I had to compose a four-chord transition at this moment, my first stock choice would be F#-maj7 to D#m7 (a very pleasing VI chord) to Bm7 — the common tone is Fb — to D triad over E bass (many common tones). After more thought, the turnaround might be F#-maj7 to E triad over F# bass to Bm7 (the common tone is B) to D triad over E (again, many common tones).”

Some more examples of the use of the II-V-I progression in similar genre hit songs can be found in an interview in Sound On Sound with America’s top songwriter Diane Warren: www.soundonsound.com/sos/aug08/articles/warren.htm.

Inspiration and perspiration: two classic songs

Jay Graydon shares his memories of writing two classic songs.

‘After The Love Has Gone’ (Graydon, Foster, Champlin)

“David Foster had produced an album for Jaye P Morgan, and he and the investor had a meeting at Motown to pitch the album. Foster started playing a song on piano and got lost. Since he is such a genius, he improvised a chorus. Not sure what happened next in the meeting, but when David left he drove to my house freaking out because he had come up with such a great melody! We went into my studio and David played the chord changes and melody, and I was knocked out!

“I picked up a guitar and played A(add 2) to Dm6 and then back to A(add 2) and sang the melody that starts the verse. David then played C#7#9 to F#m7 and so on, keeping my melody pattern in play. I can’t remember how we dealt with the ‘B’ section, but it happened quickly. The trick was to connect the last chord of the ‘B’ section (Bmaj7) to the first chord of the chorus (Cm7). So the chorus was already in play, as that was the idea we were starting with.

“The next thing to do was to find a turnaround so as to get back to the second verse. In the original version (recorded with Airplay) we’re going from F#maj7 back to the key of A. I don’t remember what chords we used for the turnaround. Note that the verse in the Earth, Wind & Fire version was in F, which meant that there was another turnaround.”

‘Turn Your Love Around’ (Champlin, Graydon, Lukather)

“Tommy Lipuma at Warner Bros had hired me to produce two songs for Benson’s collection album [1981]. I had four days to come up with a great song that could be used as a single. I went to work, but after two days I still had not come up with anything I liked. Then, while in the bathroom sitting on the toilet, I came up with a melody for the chorus! I kept singing it over and over, and as soon as I could I went into the studio to record it. I also had the chord changes in mind, so I played the chords and sang the melody into the cassette recorder.

“The next night, Steve Lukather and I (along with our ladies of the era) were to go to dinner. I asked Luke to come over early to see if he could come up with the verse. I played him the chorus a few times and then let him mess around with ideas as I took a shower. About a half hour later, I went back into the studio and Luke had nailed a great verse! We went to dinner, and after we returned to the studio we called Bill Champlin and asked whether he could come over to work on a bridge and lyrics. Bill showed up and he nailed the bridge! He wrote the lyrics the next day and we demoed the song that night. Benson and the record company dug the song and we recorded the track shortly thereafter.

“During recording I had trouble finding a good muted rhythm guitar part for the chorus. I finally found a part that worked, and five minutes after I had recorded it arranger Jerry Hey called and said that he had come up with a good horn section line for the chorus. He sang the line, or maybe he played it, over the phone and it was the exact same notes I had thought of for the guitar!”

Jay Graydon: Songwriter

American West Coast music