BLOG 19 – POP SONG CONTINUED

Now that me and Connor have formed the basic structure of the pop track in terms of instrumentation, it is now about forming the lyrics and vocal melody. Below is the starting point of lyrics that have been put together and can be heard in the track below as a draft.

LYRICS AND MELODIES:

Above are the starting lyrics that we have come up with. Although these lyrics are very simple, and are very typical in a sense, they do fit with the melody really well! We will now continue to create the melody and lyrics for the verse and the bridge. This hopefully shouldn’t take too long, which will then allow me to record the vocals and then have them sent to Connor for his thoughts and advice.

When writing these lyrics, it was rather difficult to come up with something interesting that would fit the melody. Fosbraey et al .(2018, p.x) state that ‘the song lyric has come be such a strong part of art and culture, being ephemeral, throwaway, unforgettable and memorable all at the same time, it is like no other art form’. I found this really interesting, however, because most pop songs are mostly about love, this was the easiest route to go down. As highlighted by Austin et al. (2020), there are a few points to follow when song writing:

1. Find a message/story to write about – ‘a sure bet is anything about love’
2. Simple melody
3. Chord changes

When creating this song however, we did create the melody first before the lyrics. This may be something that needs to be done differently next time as this has made putting lyrics to fit in the melody very challenging for us both. This was also something we did mention at the beginning where we will experiment with lyrics or melody first, in this sense, this has proven that inserting instrumentation and creating the melodies/chords into the DAW first makes it difficult to form the lyrics after.

What Next?

My next aims for this particular song are to mainly

1. Write the rest of the lyrics and melody
2. Start to think about mixing and mastering, the instrumentation, etc with Connor
3. Continue to work on the other songs

Reference List:

Austin, D., Austin, L.C., Peterik, J. (2020). Songwriting For Dummies. Hoboken: John & Wiley Sons.

Fosbraey, G., Melrose, A. (2018). Writing Song Lyrics: A Creative and Critical Approach. London: Macmillan International Higher Education.