admin November 28th, 2007
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Started by Paul - Last post by Paul
Any one in Melbourne Australia this weekend would have just experienced the Australian Football League premiership. Certainly we celebrated at our house. 3 salads were prepared, fried rice; with a mountain of bacon bits, rice, sliced egg, bean shoots an other morsels. A potato salad; boiled potatoes standing about like icebergs in a sea of egg and spring onion. Garden salad; plenty of leafy jungle greenery, with flashes of capsicum, and cucumber.
People had started drinking at 11 am - the match started at 2.30. It was meant to be a barbecue lunch but it was gone 2 before a single piece of meat sizzled on the hungry hotplate. Even then the organization was so haphazard that one of the 11 o’clock drinkers had to do the cooking - successfully I might add. Then to the game.
The MCG [Melbourne Cricket Ground] was a brilliant picture on the television. A wonderful bright green, with those adverts dyed into the ground so they appear to hover in the air, waitng to pounce on you. The roar of the crowd as the first ball was bounced was a throw back to a gladitorial colosseum, and the contest was on. Though what you call it when one side completely dominates the other is not a ‘contest’ . Geelong were premiership winners after 44 long years and 6 unsuccessful attempts. Meanwhile the party continues. I think there was only about 6 of us actually watching the game. I’m not much of a football fan, but, you had to admire the grace of the team, like a pack of running gazelles, they were almost effortless in their ball skills and execution of goals. The steak I had had earlier still rested upon the memory of my tongue, slightly burnt but cooked enough to mean I tasted no blood. It was matched with the well prepared, but little utilised salads, it was a terrific lunch.
As evening wore into midnight, the revelery continued, those who had started drinking at 11 were still standing, but were certainly swaying like williows on a river back moved by whichever gusts of drunkeness were passing them at the time. I had been drinking only ‘light’ beer so was able to observe the whole procedure through rational eyes.
#TITLE#Songwriting Hints and Tips / Get Your Song Undwerway II on: October 06, 2007, 01:46:32 AM
Started by Paul - Last post by Paul
I had to write up a flow diagram the other day for the process I need to follow to get a song/lyric from idea to completion. You might find it useful;
1./ You are walking down the street thinking about nothing in particular. One thought leads to another and suddenly you are struck by what seems to be a great idea. A concept arrives waiting to be fleshed out. This is often called ‘ The Muse’. Any bit of inspiration or muse that passes by is worthy of pursuing. It might come from your walk down the street or it might come from an exercise such as object writing. Object writing is the process of writing from your senses about a particular object/thing/person/place or time. Have a look at the site Objectwriting.com for some ideas on what to do.
2./ If your great idea has not come from object writing then you need to do some; Find a quiet place to set yourself up with pen and notepad, or word processor if you’re computer inclined. Set a stopwatch or timer, most mobile phones have one these days, and write for 10 minutes on your subject. For example this afternoon I came up with the concept of “losing altitude” .This could be about a relationship running out of steam or taking a dip or going through a period of turbulence, so, the challenge is to take metaphors related to the concept and make them into useable phrases for our song. Here’s some example writing;
Losing altitude, we’re dropping down, my tummy is left up in the sky somewhere. Losing altitude, who’s in control of this plane? I’ve got my hand on the controls, but you keep wrestling them away. While we’re wrestling the plane is going into a dive and we’re losing altitude. The ground is spinning up to meet us, I want to jump out of this plane and be free wheeling on a parachute, pulling my own cords, not be your puppet on a string. etc.
Usually you can find a few choice phrases from your stream of consciousness sense based writing that can be valuable to expand on, which is part 3.
3./ Pick key words or themes from your main idea and find rhymes. I am a great fan of the methods of Pat Pattison of Berklee Music college. In his book Writing Better Lyrics Pat advocates that we not just look for perfect rhymes, but also family rhymes, assonant rhymes and near rhymes. So, from our example we might look at the words altitude, dropping, sky, control, plane, dive, losing, spinning, parachute and cords, to find a database of rhymes we can use.
For “altitude” you might try: solitude, latitude, attitude, unscrewed, voodooed, argued, stewed, mood and feud. Now any of those combinations can open up a world of possibilities,but if you stick ‘on theme’ you might get a coupe of rhyming lines like;
Hey, I know we argued
and you’re in a terrible mood
and I’m reaching for my parachute, ‘cos , [ I brought in one of the other key words which happened to be a near rhyme]
baby we’re losing altitude.
not the greatest prose in the world but a starting point. What about dive? Drive, test-drive, arrive, survive, alive, real-life, jaws of life.
We’re in a nose dive
this isn’t a test-drive
if we’re gonna survive
somebody’s gonna have to go and get the jaws of life.
4./ Once you’ve got a few more ideas flowing try to story board your song and work out if there is a narrative flow. What will each part of the song say? To carry on the example, part one could be; boy and girl are going on holiday they are flying and he thinks that there are problems in the relationship. Part 2 could be the woman’s perspective, what she thinks is wrong. Part 3, a bridge, might be them playing out disaster scenarios, and a final verse might be a happy ending as they are coming in to land at their destination, losing altitude, but in a controlled way. Could this journey be a plan to rekindle the romance?
5./ Rewrite the main idea using new lyrical/rhyming ideas within the story board
6./ If you’re stuck for a rhythmic idea try to extract it from the working title of the song- Our working title of “losing altitude” could be broken up to represent he following; Loo-zing-al-ti-tude or, ta Tum ta ta Tum. Try ta Tum ta ta Tum at different speeds to see what matches the ‘feel’ of the song.
7./ Start speaking out loud some of your rough prose and rhyme to see how it might fit against the rhythm and start trying out melodic ideas
8./Hit the record button on your tape recorder or computer and get writing, and rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, until you’re done!
