Lesson video

In this lesson you need a piece of paper, and a pencil to write notes with.

You will also need your voice, or an instrument, or access to an online app or instrument, or digital audio workstation such as BandLab.

This lesson is better with headphones but it's not required.

If you need to pause the video to get any equipment that you see on the screen or find a quiet space to work in, please do so now and press play when you are ready to continue.

Using music software.

You can create music using audio mixing software.

The demonstrations in this lesson use a free programme called BandLab.

BandLab is for use by over 13's only.

And if you are over 13, you still need permission to use it from your parent or carer.

Planning your song.

There are many ways to compose a song.

People have different processes and starting points.

In this lesson, we will piece together musical ideas we've already explored to begin planning a song for a better world.

Some of the things we're going to need to think about in today's lesson, are what instruments do we want to use? What's our key message? What's our central topic? Who are our audience? And what mood do we want our song to create? Write a paragraph or draw a mind map that shows all of these different things.

So just come up with some starting ideas for instruments, topic, key message, mood and audience.

Take three to five minutes to do that now.

Lyrics.

This diagram will be familiar if you have watched lesson seven in this series, where we looked at how to write lyrics.

If you haven't seen that lesson, it might be useful to go and watch that now, and then come back to this lesson.

We start with a song theme or title.

We then find connected words.

And then rhyming words.

Hopefully, you have got lyrics from lesson seven and you are ready to write your lyrics into BandLab or neatly on paper.

If you don't have lyrics and have watched lesson seven, spend some time now to come up with some lyrics for a verse and a chorus.

So here we are over in BandLab and this is a very, very quick video to show you how to put lyrics into your project.

So here we I am in the main window of the mix editor and as you may have seen before in the bottom right hand corner, there is a panel for lyrics and you can literally just write your, take away my voice, that's how my song starts.

I'm going to quickly type up all of my lyrics and then I'll show you what that looks like.

Okay.

So I finish up typing my lyrics.

And if you don't want to see them anymore, you can just pop them away.

And if you were recording your vocals, which we'll talk about later, then you could have them up and record, and you could read from there.

So that's a convenient place to store your lyrics.

Let's head back over to the slides and see what's next.

Once you've written your lyrics out, either neatly on paper or on BandLab, it's time to annotate our lyrics.

Let's highlight all of the poetic devices we use, our key messages, where the climax of the song is, a vague plan of texture, And by that, I mean, what layers are there in the song at any one time? Perhaps the introduction only has a piano and vocals, whereas the chorus has the full band.

And any other musical ideas you have and you have had while planning your song.

I've put my lyrics up on the left hand side of the screen, and I've made a start at annotating my lyrics.

I've used repetition a lot in my song.

Takeaway is used three times in the first paragraph.

In the third stanza I used the word, same, three times on the same line.

And then in the fourth stanza, I say, tell me, again, three times.

I also have rhyming in different patterns, got metaphors, and I also have my key messages here about pain and change.

I want my song to be reflective, but also hopeful.

I've said that I want just the piano and the vocals in the introduction.

And then I will slowly add the drums. And I'm thinking because we have, we march on, maybe I could have a march type drum kits, maybe just on the snare, a little drum beat.

By the time we get to the fourth stanza, I want to be building up now because I know we're getting close to the chorus.

Annotate your lyrics to help you plan your song for a better world.

Your annotations could show poetic devices, key messages, the climax of the song, a vague plan of the texture and musical ideas.

Pause the video to complete your task and click resume once you're finished.

Now I have my lyrics written into BandLab and I've annotated them, I'm going to start thinking about my chord sequence.

Now, hopefully you've seen lesson six where we talked about chord sequences and chord accompaniment styles.

When picking a chord sequence, you need to be thinking about the tonality.

So is it major or minor? And perhaps your annotations will help you with this decision.

Like I said, I wanted mine to be reflective and hopeful.

I think I'm going to choose a minor key for mine for that reflective mood.

Whereas if you're thinking of doing a more happy song, then you might want to do a major key.

Although there are some happy songs in minor keys.

We need to think about cadences.

So that's the end of sentences and the chords that we're using at ends of those sentences.

Remember cadences are like musical punctuation.

So if we're at the end of the song, maybe we want to think about putting in a perfect cadence and that's using chords five to one.

My accompaniment style, as we've discussed in previous lessons, helps me to make my chord progression more interesting.

Perhaps I want to think about using broken chords in the verse, or using melodic passing notes.

I could also think about using inversions to make the piano part more interesting, but also making the baseline more smooth and flowing.

The last thing I want to think about when making my chord sequence is the structure.

Am I going to have the same chord sequence for the verse and the chorus? I'm free to do so.

I think I'm going to decide not to, because I want to make my song more interesting.

So, what chords am I going to use for my verse? What chords am I going to use for my chorus? Potentially I have a bridge section.

And if I do, what chords am I going to have for my bridge section? So there are lots to think about here.

And maybe you've already done this thinking in your planning or in the chord progression lesson.

Let's head over to BandLab and I will show you how to input a chord progression, or it might be a reminder for some.

And then we can start to think about how these lyrics are going to fit in with the chord progression.

Okay, so here's a quick reminder on how to input chords onto BandLab.

So I'm in my mix editor.

I'm going to create a region in bar one.

I'm going to name it the chords that I decided to use in this sequence.

So my chords are B minor, followed by D major.

That is an inversion, but we'll talk about that in a second.

B minor D major, then G major, and then E minor.

So that is my progression.

Let's start writing this in.

So I'll move my face out of the way.

First chord is B.

So I've got B, D and F sharp.

I'm going to make that the length of the bar.

And I have a D major, but I said, it's an inversion.

So I'm going to do second inversion.

And the reason I've done that is because you can see that the top two notes are the same.

And the bottom note only goes down by one.

So for a player, that's a lot easier to do instead of jumping your whole hand down.

Then I'll do G major.

So I'm using G, B and D, and E minor.

Now, I could actually do another inversion here.

And again, the bottom two notes are the same, and it's only that top note that is moving.

So let's hear that progression from the top.

There we go.

That's good.

So we will talk about how to make that more interesting very, very shortly, but that was just a quick recap on how to put chords into BandLab.

So I've just spent some time putting in a different chord sequence.

This chord sequence is going to be used for my chorus section.

The chords are E minor, D over F sharp, So I've got an inversion chord there, G, A, B minor and back to A.

Now, as you can see, it looks very different to the first one, because I've decided to use some broken chords as well to make it more interesting.

So let's hear how that sounds.

So you can hear the, well you could also hear the metronome, which I'll turn off, but you could hear the broken chord style there and the smooth baseline.

Let's listen to it one more time without the metronome and see if you can focus on that smooth baseline created by the inversion chord.

So hopefully you heard that it was just going in a scale.

Brilliant.

Okay.

So now we've got two chord progressions.

Let's move on to the next stage.

Setting lyrics to chords.

We must decide when to play the chords in our chord sequence, and which words to play the chords on.

This process will also help us decide on the rhythm of the melody.

So let's go back over to BandLab and see what that looks like in practise.

So one of my favourite ways to do this is to simply just speak the lyrics over the chord progression.

I put my loop bar on, and I'm going to let it loop once so I can get the tempo, and then I'm just going to speak the lyrics.

One thing that works quite well is trying to do one line per chord change, and I'll show you what that sounds like now.

I'm getting my pulse, getting into the groove of the song, and now I will speak my lyrics.

So here we go.

Take away my voice.

Take away my history.

Take away my freedom.

You don't care for me anyway.

Now notice how I didn't always say my lyric on beat one.

That is something we've talked about in "Imagine" as well, both in the verse and the pre-chorus John Lennon doesn't speak on beats one.

There was a quaver rest.

Now, sometimes it just makes the lyrics fit into the bar much better.

Let's move on.

We'll keep the same chord progression.

Let's move on to a different one.

This is going to be a bit tricky because I've got four chords and only three lines.

So let's see how this one fits.

Hand in hand, we march on, black and white, we are one.

I think I'm going to wait a little bit.

A cause worth fighting for.

Let's try that again.

Hand in hand, we march on, black and white, we are one, and then we'll have a bar rest.

A cause worth fighting for.

I think that's the rhythm that I would prefer to do.

Okay.

Now I know that this is going to be my chorus, where it says I'm strong, I'm brave, right here.

So I'm going to move my loop bar over to start on bar five and I'm going to do the same thing over there.

Just going to get into the groove of this one.

So I'm going to let it loop one through.

And I know I'm not going to start on beat one.

I'm actually going to start before beat one.

So it's going to be, I'm strong, I'm brave.

I'll take this pain to the grave unless we change our ways.

Let us lead the way.

So that's how I go about setting lyrics to chords.

Just hearing how the words fit with the chords and the bars and the timing.

And then I can think about adding a melody on top.

So what I would like you to do is get your chord progression or chord progressions.

Use your loop bar to loop over the core progressions and use the lyric panel or a word document, or your piece of paper to read your lyrics from, with no melody.

Just trying to get that rhythm right.

If you want to, you can write the, if you've written them on paper, you can write the name of the chord.

So if I was doing C, G, A, F, maybe I'd want to write C, G, A, F on the actual words.

You don't have to do that, but it's completely up to you.

That's how popular music is usually notated, the lyrics with the chords then above.

Pause the video to complete that task and click resume when you're ready to talk about structure.

Structure.

Let's recap structure in pop songs.

We did this in lesson four.

So again, if you haven't seen lesson four, I encourage you to watch that.

So you can familiarise yourself with the vocabulary and the definitions, but I will do a brief recap now for everybody.

So the intro is found at the start of the song and establishes the key, the tempo and the mood.

This can be instrumental, which means there are no, there's no singing, no rapping, no lyrics of any kind.

The verse tells the main story.

You can have multiple verses in the song.

It can be the same melody, but different lyrics when you hear those repetitions.

The chorus is usually the climax of the song.

It's repeated, it's simple, and it has the main message.

And it could include the title of the song.

The bridge is a break from the repetitive nature of the song.

It has different lyrics and different chords, and again, could be instrumental.

Not all songs have bridges.

An outro gives the listener closure.

They might fade out, or they might have a repeated line.

The song sounds finished.

Looking at my lyrics and my chords, I want to make a structure now in BandLab.

Let's see what that process looks like.

Okay, so here we are back in my favourite place, BandLab.

And the first thing I want to do when considering my structure of the song is go through my lyrics and decide what's in the verse, what's in the chorus, what's in the bridge, what's in the intro, what's in the outro.

I haven't actually done that yet and you might have done that, and if you have, well done.

Bear with me for 30 seconds.

So I know that this is going to be my verse section.

So I'm just going to label it verse.

I know that this is my chorus section, so I'm going to label it chorus.

I also know that I don't have a bridge section, but I do have a rap section, which I've labelled there.

Take some time now to label your lyrics, verse, chorus, intro, outro, bridge, whatever sections you have and put it in the right order, whether that's on paper or in BandLab, and then click resume when you have finished.

So once you have done that, the next thing we can do is create some different tracks.

So I've put a track called piano verse and something called a piano chorus.

Now automatically, BandLab will change the colour of one of your tracks if you make a new one.

You can always change it by going to the very edge and right-clicking.

You can change the colour to whichever one you want.

Then I need to figure out how long each stanza takes to play.

I know that my first stanza is four bars along.

In fact, I've arranged my whole song to be in groups of four bars.

So I know that each line is one bar, or each stanza is four bars long.

So if I know that I've got one, two, three, four verse chords repetitions before my chorus, I can then copy and paste into BandLab.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to minimise my lyrics panel for a second, and I'm going to click on my piano verse.

I can copy it and move my cursor or my selector to go to bar five.

I'm in the right track.

And if I use control V, or right-click and paste, it will copy that in.

So I need to do four, like so, before my piano chorus comes in.

There we go.

Let's just double check that.

Lyrics, one, two, three, four, then my chorus.

Now I actually want my chorus to be repeated.

So I'm going to have two, so let's do that again.

I copy, I go to put my selector in the right place, and paste.

There we go.

Again, you can use control V, command V, whatever it is that you want to do.

For my rap, I want to go back to my verse progression.

So I'm going to copy that and paste it there.

My rap is one, two, three, it's four long.

So three, four.

Put my four there.

And then it does say, take away my voice, which uses the verse chord progression, but actually I've had a last minute change of heart and I want to repeat my chorus section.

So let me change that in my lyrics.

So that's the good thing about having an in BandLab, you can just add and remove whenever.

Woops.

Okay, and that means that I'm going to need one more chorus repetition, and I will copy and paste them both over to 41.

So if I get rid of my lyric panel again, and I use the zoom tool, I can see my overall structure.

Now take some time to do exactly what I have done.

If you've got multiple sections, perhaps you would like to create another track and call it the bridge.

Bridge section.

And what you could do is, and then you can clearly see when that bridge section comes in.

This will take anywhere between five and 10 minutes.

Take your time.

There is no rush and just come back and click resume when you're ready to move on to the next section.

Decide your structure.

Decide on how you're going to structure your song and write this out on paper or BandLab.

It's important to know that the process we've just done on BandLab is to sketch out and see the overall structure.

We will be developing this structure and we won't just rely on copy and paste to fill our song.

The best songs are the ones that develop throughout.

So even if we're playing the same chord progression in the intro, the verse and the chorus, when we hear that chord progression, it should be sounding different and developed, through texture, harmony, accompaniment style, instruments, and other musical elements.

We will be looking at this in a lot more detail in lesson 11.

So make sure you stay tuned for that.

Set your lyrics to the chord sequence and perform your songs so far.

Today, we've done some work on figuring out how our lyrics and chord sequences will fit together.

You may be at a stage where you wish to perform your song at this work-in-progress stage to somebody in your house.

If you're not there yet, don't worry.

This final task is an optional one.

If you know your song is a rap, then you may be good to go.

And if you already have thought of a melody, similarly, you might be ready to do a work-in-progress performance.

Please make sure now to do the quiz, to check that we've understood the content of this lesson.

Make sure to stay tuned for lesson 11, where we will finish the song, make it sound like it's come from a studio.

We'll be downloading the song to an MP3 or WAV, and get it shared to whoever we want or not, as the case may be.

I've hoped you enjoyed this lesson and the creative process of making a song.

I'm looking forward to hearing some of these and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.

Bye.

Share your work with Oak National.

If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.