My Song|

My Finished song. https://soundcloud.com/jessicamusicking/wetherspoons

Singing|

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCOC1YwNwZw

Before I recorded the lyrics I looked at this video as it had a similar idea to how it wanted my song to sound as in how they sing purposely with an accent to make the song more humours.

 Because they have the same accent as myself it helped me to get a feel on how to sing/perform my song.

With myself not being very confident at singing or a strong singer as I don't usually sing I find that singing in my accent really helps and because its more about the humour and listening to the lyrics I find that it doesn't really matter if you can really sing or not.

Piecing It Together|

I started to piece my song together on GarageBand cutting pieces out that didn't sound to good and fading out the end and piecing it together so it all fit.

This was the final guitar piece after trying different strumming patterns.

https://soundcloud.com/jessicamusicking/guitar

Chords|

I originally wanted and F# but it did not sound right on the guitar so we tried an F which seemed to work better.

I worked out the chords for guitar and wrote them whilst looking at the lyrics and worked out how each chord would go alongside the lyrics and how my times i would need to repeat each chords in the versus and chorus.

Once i worked out the chords and how i wanted them throughout the song myself and chloe started working out strumming patterns to the lyrics to create my song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTPJQDtJvyo&feature=youtu.be

Creating My Song|

I wanted to base my song around something I can relate to and something everyone else can relate to, I have quite an amusing humour and found that writing a love song or a sad song wasn’t something I wanted to do and I thought I might struggle finding my inner emotions and actually putting it in to words to create a song.

 I really struggled to think of a song at first and started to come out with random ideas. I then started to think about a theme that everyone can relate to.

When thinking about something everyone has experienced I instantly thought about ‘being drunk’ and then having that nasty hangover the next day and this is one of the most obvious things we can all relate to.

Once I had my starting point I the looked at Lucy Spraggan's lyrics and songs to inspire me on how to write my song.

I work part time in a Wetherspoons in Newcastle and thought it would be comical to write a song about being in your local Wetherspoons drunk.

Once I had this in mind I started to write my lyrics.

I had a few attempts at writing a song and finally came up with this, when looking back I have noticed that it may not be technically correct in how a song should be written but it was a first attempt. I have also used some words that are 'slang' to make it a little bit more funnier and more relatable to myself as I am from Newcastle and wanted to add a personal touch.

Spoons

Last night i went out to the Toon

Rang for a taxi to the local Wetherspoon

Walked through the door to find it was bouncing 

Tried to sing along but ended  mispronouncing

I just love to be out with all my friends 

drinking to much but needing a good cleanse 

I wish that i could stop this behaviour

but i cant help it, i think i need a saviour.

Went to the bar and asked for a drink

'Gin and tonic please love, and let me hear the clink'

Several hours later and i was wasted

Even the bouncer said i looked pretty pasted

Carried on drinking, didn't know when to stop 

Even when they videoed me doing the slut drop 

Looked through the menu 

''Ill have every shot, 

all the Wrey Nephews please love' But i think i better not

So.. Last night i went out to the Toon

Rang for a taxi to the local Wetherspoon

Walked through the door to find it was bouncing 

Tried to sing along but ended  mispronouncing

I just love to be out with all my friends 

drinking to much but needing a good cleanse 

I wish that i could stop this behaviour

but i cant help it, i think i need a saviour.

My hangover tomorrow wont be ideal 

Might go back to spoons for my big breakfast meal

Until i find the video of me doing the slut drop

So i think i better stick to my local corner shop 

Last night i went out to the Toon

I think i better leave it now and go out not so soon. 

Song Writing|

To help me get started with my song I looked at some blog posts to help me get ideas on how to write a song as I have never done it before. 

You’ll realise just how similar most songs are. Certain patterns, themes, motifs and chord structures are repeated across artists and genres. As a songwriter, analysing songs should become a habit, a reaction as natural as pulling your finger away from a hot stove.

Song Structure

Most pop songs follow a simple structure: Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Chorus or similar variations.

Chord Progressions

Most pop and rock songs follow simple chord progressions. As mentioned above, I, IV, and V chords in any scale are called its primary chords. Combining these chords in various permutations is the basis of thousands of songs.

Let’s see some examples:

I-IV: Used in verse of “Imagine” by John Lennon,

I-IV-V-I: Used in “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt.

I-V-IV-I: “All the Small Things” by Blink-182

Throw in a minor chord – Vi – and you get the most popular chord progression in music (I-IV-V-Vi). This is often called the pop-punk progression and has been used in thousands of songs. In fact, it is so popular that there’s even a Wikipedia entry with a huge list of songs based on it. You’ll recognise some of these – “Not Afraid” by Eminem, “Someone Like You” by Adele, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver, etc.

You can use this tool to generate chord progressions automatically.

 Writing Lyrics

For many people, writing lyrics is the easiest part of songwriting. For others, it is the hardest. Whichever side of the divide you may fall on, you can benefit from these lyric-writing tips:

Notice how Adele stretches the ‘ee’ part in ‘deep’ when singing “Rolling in the Deep”. That’s because words ending in vowels can be stretched while singing. Keep this in mind while writing your lyrics.

Write like you would sing. Hum each line while writing, preferably accompanied by a guitar or piano.

Being poetic doesn’t mean being profound. Sometimes the silliest of things can sound great when sung.

Borrow motifs and themes commonly used in your genre, but don’t over-rely on them. To write truly great songs, you must break the mould and go beyond what’s comfortable.

(Mikoluk, 2013)

Songwriters will: find warm-up exercises that revolutionise songwriting imagery; use a rhyming dictionary and a thesaurus to generate ideas and find snappy rhyme; create meaningful metaphors and similes while avoiding cliches; develop verses by using or breaking conventional rules; experiment with point of view in every lyric to make a song stand out (Pattison, 1995)

I also looked at a video on how to write a song and I came across this video of Emeli Sandé talking about how she comes about writing song which i found really interesting. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75z2Vl11cd4

Folk & Pop|

Pop music is, in common with jazz, primarily an aural and improvised music. Pop and jazz represent parallel, yet only indirectly related, developments, despite their sharing a common folk music ancestry. Pop music initially drew its repertoire from the folk traditions of the US, and thus indirectly from previous African and European traditions. (Hatch and Millward, 1989) The phrase “pop music” was first coined around the middle of the 1920′s, it meant a piece of music had “popular” appeal. Numerous things that took place during the recordings of the 20′s could be seen as being the start of the modern day pop music industry, which includes rhythm and blues music, as well as, country, folk, and others. Pop music has been a profitable industry in America since the 19th century, but Early Pop/Rock is a style that took shape in the post-rock & roll era, once the more conservative elements of the record industry had come to terms with the new musical landscape. Popular culture is distributed across many forms of mass communication including newspapers, magazines, radio, television, movies, music, books and cheap novels, comics and cartoons, and advertising. It contrasts with high cultural art forms, such as opera, classical music and artworks, traditional theatre and literature. In mass communication, the term popular culture refers to messages that make limited intellectual and aesthetic demands through content that is designed to amuse and entertain audiences. (Maurice Dekatt (ft. Michael Jackson)- pop music, no date)

As times have changed, folk music has changed to reflect the times. Many of the old labour and protest songs are still sung today, albeit with new verses that were added to reflect the context in which the songs were resurrected.

Traditionally sung and played within communities - i.e. not made for popular consumption - American folk music became embedded in the mainstream tradition, creating some combination of folk and pop music, during the mid-20th Century "folk music revival". Thanks to radio and recorded music, artists and fans in New York could develop an interest in the music indigenous to the Gulf States. Folks in Seattle could discover the fiddle tunes and dance numbers from the folk music tradition of lower Appalachia.

Thus, traditional American folk music started to blend with mainstream recorded pop music, as the Baby Boomers came of age all at once, many of them listening to Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music. (Ruehl, 2014)