I recently completed a Coursera (link)
on songwriting. The instructor is Pat Pattison of Berklee College of
Music. It is a phenomenal course focusing on lyrics. Pattison is one
of the biggest names in songwriting, so I strongly suggest anyone
with an interest in writing songs with lyrics take the course. It
will be offered again in October 2014 (and likely every six months
after that).
My final project is a song called
Looking to Alaska (link2)
The piano track is at (link3):
Mr. Pattison teaches a songwriting
process that includes story development, rhymes, and lyrics. With lyrics,
the length of lines, number of lines, parts of the song, emphasis,
phrasing, are all subtopics. There are no prerequisites. For
non-musicians, there are music loops. The assignments involve writing
lyrics, and then recording vocals set to music (either your own music
or the one of the loops).
I tend to be a process oriented person,
so I liked the style of teaching. I'd guess that about half of the
25,000 participants are true beginners. Some other songwriting
workshops focus on writing more songs, often to a theme or topic. I
found some of the topics to be quite a challenge, and still struggle
with some. The course gives a songwriter more tools, whether a person
decides to use them is another question.
Lyrics follow:
Looking
to Alaska
Verse1
There's
this old photo
grandfather
Amar
standing
so tall,
Inuit
proud
Verse2
Get's
me to thinking
'bout
my life here
too
many people,
too
many cars
Chorus1:
Looking
to Alaska,
Land
of soaring eagles
natural
cathedrals
and
my native home
Verse3:
So
many worries
how
'bout the money?
how
will I live there?
how
'bout the cold?
Chorus2:
Looking
to Alaska
ocean
breeching whales
wise
old ancient tales
and
my native home
Bridge:
I
have to go there, I have to try
I'm
gonna make it, I'll feel alive
Chorus3/4
Looking
to Alaska
searching
for salvation
find
my revelation
and
my native home
Looking
to Alaska,
Land
of soaring eagles
natural
cathedrals
and
my native home...
notes
on music: the verses and bridge are all white piano keys. The
choruses all black keys. The five black keys form a natural
pentatonic scale, which gives a primitive feel to the music. I'm not
sure about Inuit music, but there is a lot of Native American music
uses a five note scale. The music is relatively simple, but I like
the mood and tempo changes from verse to bridge to chorus.
notes
on lyrics: The title is derived from the book title Looking for
Alaska. The story came to me after going through the process, and
there is this photo of the Inuit grandfather. I moved that to box1
because it is what sets the song in motion. I choose not to rhyme the
words in the title, because the rhyming words feel clumsy. The name
Amar is short for Amaruk, which is a popular Inuit name that
translates to wolf. The focus of the song turns to the animals. I
have some rhyming in the verses, but delete them to keep the verses
unstable and also for matching verse lengths.
