Week 8: Imagery

In today’s seminar was an elaboration of lyric writing, but in particular, incorporating imagery into your lyrics to get the listener to feel more more involved in the song by making them feel emotions through imagery.

After reading through several hits which used images in their lyrics to communicate/express an abstract idea, I could instantly identify songs that I felt very connected to, and most of them used visual imagery in lyrics.

I had subconciously written lyrics which had expressed images to convey my idea in the bridge of my song ‘Popular Girls’. The lyrics are

Little school girl listening through your stereo
Tell me what do you do, babe, when you get home?
You put on your glitter
Use your hair brush as a mic
Stand infront of the mirror
And dance under the light

When I wrote these lyrics I literally pictured what I used to do as a 14 year old each day after school. The images describe the situation and event of what I would do as a 14 year old. The lyrics create an experience and bring the listeners into the scene, my scene, and let them experience it for themselves. These are currently my favourite, most emotional lyrics and I can now recognize why – they not only tell a story, but they paint a picture of that story. I have had many people tell me that when they heard these lyrics, they remembered themselves in their room at some point singing into their hairbrush.

You can listen to the bridge of ‘Popular Girls’ here

Week 7: Rhythmic Elements

Today’s lesson was focused on Rhythmic elements and subdivisions within a song. Syncopation. Rhythmic subdivisions in relation to musical styles. There was a particular focus on rhythmic patterns in accordance to genre, and we covered several patterns followed by examples of their use in different genre’s of songs.

Some of the patterns we went though include:

• Straight 8th notes
• Swung 8th
• Shuffle
• Swing

Straight eighth notes: Most music is in 4/4 time (especially pop and rock music) uses the straight 8th rhythm pattern. That means 4 beats per bar/measure and each beat equals 1 quarter note. If we divide each of those quarter note beats in half, we get 8 eighth notes. To determine if the rhythm is a straight 8th feel, you need to know there the main beat and the subdivisions fall. It helps me to  think of it as 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

Shuffle/swing eighth notes. It is a very familiar rhythmic feel that’s heard in rock, blues, and jazz. These rythms use triplet rhythms. These are three notes played in the space of two notes. Shuffle eighth notes use both long notes and a short note. The long notes fall on the beat and the short notes fall in-between on the upbeat. I find it easy to think of it as 123-123-123-123 (the bold *1 being where the main beat occurs)

Follow up homework:

After practising some straight 8th notes at my piano, I practiced alternating by playing one bar on the beat and one bar playing the upbeats. This felt quite free and easy to play

Here is an example of some of the straight 8th notes which I practiced