This week we started songwriting!!!! So exciting!!
I challenged Ella to bring everything that she had worked on and then gave her examples:
- Any finished songs she wanted to work on or improve/structure differently
- Any lyrics she had written and had a melody to but no chords
- Any song ideas - from hooks/choruses to subjects or even single lines
Ella brought her awesome notebook and started with the lines:
I hesitate to run the race, because i'm afraid to come in second place
Some of the things we learned this week:
- We're learning that there are a million different melodies within the same chord progression, and even more different ways to sing those melodies depending on tempo, cadence, and rhythm. We're learning how to pick different melodies/rhythms out of the same chord progression.
- We're learning how to structure a song and how the transitions look between the different chunks. With our transitions and needing slightly different melodies/cadence in each different section we are using the first thing that we started working on.
To accomplish this - I showed Ella a few random chord progressions and melodies that went with them. When we decided on a chord progression I gave Ella a certain number of syllables to a certain tune - singing it to her as "da da da" and told her we needed to fill those "da da"s with words.
- We're learning that sometimes it's not just about wordiness - but that some words actually sing better than others. We wrote one line in our song several different ways so that Ella could see the differences between words with the same amount of syllables - the different levels of poetic phrasing, how the difference consonants sing, ect.
- We learned the art of the scribble - and that reworking and writing a line over and over is not bad - but the best thing we can do! It also helps us be more creative and give us more freedom when we don't have to worry about messing up the piece of paper that we're writing on. I showed Ella a few of my past songs and how they're all sorts of scribbled up.
Then! We did what will help Ella learn how to write a song faster and better than any tip I could give her alone! We started writing a song!
She has incredible instincts! And such awesome ideas!!!
We got through a verse, pre chorus, and half of a chorus! SOO awesome!!
These were our lyrics when we finished our lesson:
Verse:
I hesitate - to run the race
I fall behind - and come in second place
I jump then fall into regret
then wind up hurting all alone again
Pre Chorus:
I can't be all the faces
you expect to see from me and
I hide in __ __ places
where lonely can't get to me
Chorus:
What can i say
I've tried to change
I may look strong
But i'm crumbling
I wont look back
at who i was
the girl who felt she couldn't be enough ...
(To be continued)
Ella is doing wonderful! I'm so glad she has a place to vent and learn and be so great!
I'll see you guys soon!
Labels: Ella H., songwriting
