Song+making

=Making a good Song=

===Songs are the magical language of humans, and songwriting is a quest for the sacred, the comical, or the singular within everyday life. Songwriters journey with an ordinary object, image or event and discover what makes it extraordinary. There are many paths in the creative process of songwriting, but on each path songwriters access similar tools to craft something unique and new. In this unit we will explore these tools together, crafting and work shopping songs. We will do in-class writing and creating, both individually and in groups. We will also tackle out of class assignments. The expectation is that you will participate fully, coming to each session prepared to share your work in progress and to offer your feedback to others. For evaluation, you will be required to submit a final portfolio and recording of both finished songs and song fragments representing the assignments and/or your proposed alternatives. Assignments - These assignments are intended to both help you focus your attention on one aspect of song writing, and to generate some ‘song seeds.’ In any week you may propose alternative assignments if some other song is pushing at you, but you should have attempted at least one assignment in each category before the end of the term.===

How to start:

 * 1. lyrics: you need a good lyrics to start with, lyrics is always the starting point of song making. **

The content of lyrics differs from every day life stories to social events. For example, in Luis Armstrong's [|what wonderful world] he expresses his appreciation towards all the wonderful things in our life, such as friendship, family, marriage, blue sky and green trees. In John Lennon's "[|Imagine]", he refers to wars, conflicts that bring pain to people, he pictured a peaceful world without any conflicts and pain. Beatles' song "[|Penny Lane]" is about memory of ordinary stories that happen in Penny lane every day. Eric Claption uses simple words to describe the beauty of his wife and expresses his love in the song "[|wonderful tonight]", and he mourns his lost son in the song "[|tears in heaven]"

I have listed a few topics for you to choose to start your own lyrics: global warming, terrorism, war, politics, school life, friendship, lost of love, Romance, family, you can make up your own mind what is your lyrics can be.

You also need to decide the structure of your lyrics. As we have looked at blues song form, AAB, you possiblely need to write something longer than traditional blues songs. You either can choose a AABA form or ABAB form and each part of the lyrics should be in similar length.

After you finish writing your lyrics, you need to think about what chord progression to use in order to make the foundation of the song. Remember in class we have discussed the 12 bar Blues form. I-I-I-I IV-IV-I-I V-VI-I-I
 * 2. Chords **

Please write down all these chords in C major in your book as an exercise.

Many songs follow this simple chord progression, simple does not mean bad, a lot of famous songs use simple chord progressions.

For example, have a look at John Lennon's Imagine, find out every chord in this song and write them down in your book.



Now listen to this song, try to follow the chord progression (how often the chords change?) [|Imagine]

 * 3. Melody **

To create melody, you can use notes from the chord progression, can you work out all notes that used in the first verse? Do you see there is a connection between melody and chords?