This week:
We worked on:
1. Pop songs - making it sing well
2. Simplifying lyrics
Pop Songs:
One of the biggest things that a songwriter has to learn (especially one that comes in with great writing abilities in general), is the difference between a poem and a song.
Poems are full of deeper meaning, worrying less about rhythm, cadence, and clever rhymes and more about making sure the lines are artistic and well spoken.
Songs (most of the time) are more simple, worrying about the rhythm, getting the ideas across in a simple way, and the combination of the lyric and the melody.
When beginning the songwriting process in general - it is awesome to come to the table with poetry running through your veins. It makes you a better writer, makes you think deeper, and ultimately write better songs. However, holding on to all of the poetry running through your veins tends to clog them - and backfire into songs that aren’t radio friendly.
Ella is getting better and better with each song we write!
She has such awesome ideas and is a great lyricist.
As we move forward, my goal for her is that she will be able to eventually write a song completely on her own. Because of this, I am challenging Ella in her lessons to write a little bit differently to help shape her songwriting brain. We are trying to move away from poetry and move more into songwriting.
Right now, she is extremely poetic with her lyrics, which has been awesome! Our process has been, taking her deep thoughts and editing them into lines that are a little bit more simple and that sing a little bit better. (a great place to be)
With this new song that we started today, I wanted Ella to move away from anything poetic or deep - to try and write a simple pop song with the sole objective of it singing well. Forcing her to write this way will help her so much as we go back and forth to the kind of songs she is used to writing. It will help free up the part of her brain that holds on to the complex for her songs- letting her begin to write songs that FEEL deep.. that don’t necessarily have extremely deep or complex lyrics.
She did awesome!!!
Here are our videos from today!