Taylor Sappe

BMI affiliated published songwriter since 1979
Private Music Instructor at DeMelfi School of Music and "in-your-home" instruction

Photo by Ken Gallagher

Songwriting FAQ

Q. What was the process you used with your student Kirsten Evancho, who wrote "Jesus Are You There" and "Chasing After Promises"? Also Kelly Sacco's "Drop By Drop", Jeannie Z's "Ultimate Lover"?

A. They came in with a rough melody and lyrics and sang it for me. The melody was pretty good, but there were notes that they wasn't sure of and wasn't singing them in the scale. So I had her sing a phrase, then played it back for her with the correct scale tones and asked her if that was what she was looking for. When she said "yes", I recorded that phrase into the sequencer, then had her sing the next phrase and repeated the process. Sometimes she would have too many words in a phrase to make it fit properly into the musical structure, so I made an occasional suggestion for changing the lyric to fit the phrasing, which she was totally receptive to. Once we got the basic melody, rhythm and structure down, I went back and added chords to the melody with the piano sequencer. After the basic song structure was laid out on the sequencer, I added a bass line and drums. Then I gave her a mix with the melody we recorded with the keyboard in the sequencer. they took this home and worked on singing it with those notes and phrasing, making some minor changes as she felt necessary.

While she was working on that, I was adding a guitar track, which was to replace the piano track, but it was just strumming chords and no melody (she is to sing the melody over top of it). Next time she came back, we recorded her voice on top of the rhythm tracks. As she recorded it, I made an occasional suggestion for lyric changes that would make the song more interesting. they accepted about 75% of the suggestions, but wanted to keep some of the things the way they were. When she told me how she justified keeping them, I agreed with her.

After we got her lead vocal down, I recorded some violins and cellos, then added a harmony part (which I have on a version of the song that you didn't hear). The song still needs a little structural tweak because there is a section near the end that is a bit redundant, and the song is too long overall, but as it stands, it will make a good demo.

That was the same method that I used with Jeannie when we did "Ultimate Lover". Except Jeannie gave me a little more musical input. I had trouble coming up with an interesting synth solo for it, but Jeannie had one in her head and sang it for me. I used most of her ideas and added a few of my own to it.