Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to lesson number seven in the Songs for A Better World unit.

My name is Mr. Chapman.

And in today's lesson, we're going to be exploring how to write lyrics and how to write a melody.

Often that's the scariest part for lots of people when writing a song.

So hopefully by the end of today's lesson, you'll feel a lot more confident in writing lyrics and melodies.

So without further ado, let's check out what we will need to be successful in today's lesson.

In this lesson, you will need a piece of paper, a pencil to write notes with, you'll also need your voice or instrument, or access to an online app, or instruments or digital audio workstation such as BandLab.

This lesson is better with headphones, but is not required.

You can use recorded video to get any of the equipment you see on the screen or find a quiet space to work in.

Please do so now and press play when you are ready.

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 13s only.

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

Text setting.

In music, text setting is the alignment of syllables in speech to the pitches of a melody.

There are two main types of text setting.

Syllabic and Melismatic.

Syllabic, is one note per syllable.

So each syllable is assigned to a specific pitch.

Whereas in melismatic music, a single syllable is sung over many notes.

Here's the example, from John Lennon's Imagine.

Can you find an example of syllabic text setting, and find an example of melismatic text setting? You may pause the video to have a closer look at the score.

First, we'll take a look at the syllabic text setting.

As you can see, each syllable has its own notes.

I- ma-gine, all- the- peo- ple.

Now I haven't put a line under the word ple, because you can see that that one syllable, has three notes.

In bar three of this extract.

Again, Li-ving for to-day.

All have one note each, whereas the ha, has four notes and therefore, the ha, is an example of melismatic text setting.

Generating lyrics.

Let's take a look at how to generate some lyrics.

I follow the following three steps every time.

The first thing I need is a song theme or a title.

Once I have that theme or title, I can start to find connected words.

After I have a bank of connected words, I can then start to find words that rhyme with those connecting words.

For example, if I wanted to write a song about the Black Lives Matter movement, that would be my topic.

Words that I associate with that topic, or my connecting words could be, protest, breathe, worth, pain.

Of course there are many others.

Then I need to find words that rhyme with those connecting words.

For example, if I pick pain, I could say that inhumane, slain, stain, explain, brain, blame, video game, are either perfect rhymes or half rhymes with the word pain.

I would then repeat that process for all of my connecting words.

Brainstorm words for your song.

Draw the circle or a table on a piece of paper.

Take 10 minutes to complete the task.

You will need a song theme, connected words and rhyming words.

Do as many as you can.

The larger your bank, and the more words you have, the easier it will be to put them in an order that will create your song.

Generating lyrics.

Tips.

Let's think about the difference between a verse and a chorus section.

In your verse, you're going to be telling the main story, and your chorus section you'll be saying the main message.

When your verse repeats, they will be different lyrics, but when your chorus repeats, it will be the same.

Perhaps your lyrics in these sections are influenced by the chord progression.

Your verse and chorus may also have different rhyming schemes.

ABA, AABA, and others that we will look at very shortly.

Show not tell.

Use imagery and metaphor to make simple things more interesting.

Use different types of rhyme, such as perfect like table and fable.

You can use para rhyme, fell, fill, fall, and other poetic devices such as alliteration like Fabulous Friday.

You can also use opposites to great effect, especially in a protest song, such as "Full of Empty Feelings".

Your task then is to generate some lyrics.

This will take roughly 15 to 20 minutes.

Write a sentence of your lyrics that demonstrate each of the four tips.

Make sure to be using words from the bank that you have already created.

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

Let's take a look at how to make sentences with our word bank.

I've taken the rhyming words from my connected word pain.

I'm still focusing on the topic, Black Lives Matter.

So I've put pain, blame, explain, and brain on the screen.

And I've shifted them over to the right, because I know that I want them to be the ends of my sentences and I need to fill the rest of the sentence in.

If they're at the end, then I know that my sentences are going to rhyme.

So, for the word explain, perhaps I could say, I'm not quite sure how I explain, and then there'll be another line after it perhaps.

For blame, I don't know who to blame.

For pain, perhaps I could say, we go through all this pain.

And for brain, even though we share the same brain.

These sentences still relate to the topic and I'm not just filling them in with random words.

I'm always thinking about linking them back to the central theme.

It then becomes a case of reordering these sentences to make the song make sense.

Crafting lyrics.

Rhyming structure.

Only think about the order of our lyrics and trying to make the song flow and make sense.

Rhyming structure becomes really really important.

You might be familiar with some rhyming schemes already from English.

AABA is an example of a rhyming structure.

That would mean that the first two lines will rhyme with the last line, and the third line would not rhyme.

I have generated my own lyrics using the processes that we've talked about in this lesson.

I'm not quite sure how I explain.

What I have to go through.

So many things I wish I knew.

About why people have to inflict this pain.

Of the three rhyming structures on screen, AABA, ABBA, and AABB, which one fits the lyrics? Feel free to pause the video while you work this one out, and we will reveal the answer very shortly.

Yes.

It's ABBA.

The first and last line rhyme, explain and pain.

And the middle two lines also rhyme, through and knew.

Okay, let's try another one.

Tell me that my black life matters.

Not on Instagram, no clout chase chatter.

Look me in my big brown eyes.

Same blood, same mind, same tears we cry.

Would that be AABA, ABBA, or AABB? Again, feel free to pause the video while you work this one out.

Correct.

It was AABB.

Matters, chatter.

Eyes, cry.

And finally, Tell me that I'm worth it.

Tell me that I'm perfect.

Tell me that I'm beautiful.

And let's stop all this conflict.

AABA, ABBA, or AABB? Yes.

Well done.

It's AABA.

So lines one, two and four rhyme.

Worth it, perfect, conflict.

And line three does not rhyme.

Task.

Finalise your own song for "Better World" lyrics.

Think about the rhyming structure as you write lyrics for two verses, and one chorus.

Feel free to record your lyrics and share them, although that is not required.

Pause the video to complete your task, and click resume when you're ready to continue with the lesson.

Writing a song, follow me.

Setting lyrics to a melody.

Even my title rhymed.

So when we're thinking about setting lyrics to a melody, there are certain things we need to be aware of.

What are the chords in the song? What mood are we trying to create? What is the tonality? What text setting are we going to use? Do we want our melody to go by step, or by leap? So, for example, like in "Imagine" perhaps my chords are chord G and C.

My tonality is Major, and I want my melody to go by step.

Like most songs, I'm going to stick to a syllabic text setting.

And I want my mood to be joyful.

Let's head over to BandLab and see how I would go about writing a melody that fits all of those parameters.

Okay.

So here we are in BandLab, and now it's time to look at I'm going to write a melody to our lyrics.

So, we've talked about how we know the chords that we're writing for, C and G, just like in "Imagine" by John Lennon.

We know that our tonality is major.

We know that we want to be using a syllabic text setting.

So that's one syllable per note, and we know that it wants to be stepwise and joyful.

So, I've just written out the lyric, take away my voice, and take away my freedom.

Like so.

Those are the lyrics I'm going to be writing a melody for right now.

So the first thing we need to do is obviously write in these chords.

So I will pop those chords into BandLab right now, and then we can think about writing a melody.

Okay, so just popped those chords in and they sound like this.

Good.

So got my C chord and my G chord.

So, the first thing I've put here is start small.

And I've said, just using one note to get started.

So if I'm going to be playing a C chord, then I can try seeing what a C, sounds like, in the right hand.

♪ Take away my voice ♪ Then I can go to the G.

♪ Take away my freedom ♪ If I didn't like the sound of that, then I could choose any of those harmony notes.

And I've put the harmony notes for both chords at the bottom.

And what I mean by a harmony note, is a note that is in that chord or triad.

So for C is CEG, and for G is GDD.

So, just for argument's sake, let's say I wanted to do E from the C major chord, followed by a D, in the G major chord.

So that would sound like this, ♪ Take away my voice ♪ ♪ Take away my freedom ♪ But, if you think that's a little bit too boring and basic, then we can start to add more than one note per chord.

How about three? Let me use notes, one, two and three.

So that's the root, the second and the third.

In C, that is CDE and in G that is GAB.

So, let's see how about with sound? So even with three notes, there are quite a lot of possibilities, for quite an interesting melody.

Now, as we want it to be a stepwise melody, how about we add five notes into the mix? One, two, three, four, and five.

So in C, CDEFG and in G, GABC and D.

That might sound something like this.

Crucially, as we want to write a syllabic melody, we need to know how many syllables are in each line.

So my first line I have, take- a-way my-voice, that's five.

And then, take-a-way-my-free-dom.

We have six.

So what I could do is come up with a random number pattern between one and five.

And first one I need five.

So I could say one, five, two, four, three, and then for the second line, I could say, five, two, three, two, one, three.

And that would sound like this, ♪ Take away my voice ♪ Same process could apply if we were doing a melody for.

for an opposite type of melody.

If it was minor melismatic and contained leaps, we would still need to know what chords we were playing to, what notes we had at our disposal.

So, before you have a go at writing your own melody for your lyrics, make sure you know your notes of each chord in your chord progression.

And you know how many syllables are in your sentence, or which word you're going to stretch for your melisma.

Once you have all that sorted, you're ready to go and experiment on the keyboard, or on the virtual keyboard on BandLab.

Writing lyrics can be daunting.

You need to be making sure to be taking time, and not getting too worried If it doesn't sound good straight away.

You'll get there, don't worry.

Create a melody for a verse.

Use the protest as a general topic, and write lyrics to two verses and one chorus.

Choose one of those verses to write a melody for.

Pause the video to complete your task and click resume when you're ready.

And click resume when you're finished.

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.