The Music, The Message
When I first started imagining a music company for children I had a number of long term goals in mind that I wanted to accomplish.
First, I wanted to create and present new music for kids that offered them a level of musical complexity and sophistication in the compositions themselves as well as in their arrangements, performances and recordings, that had hitherto rarely been attempted.
I was imagining a new kind of kid's music that did not condescend by sounding childish or silly but that offered something more lasting that would grow with them and hopefully become part of them and part of their experience; food for the soul, even.
I also wanted to seek out the best of our traditional music and reintroduce it via recordings and performances to new generations in a manner that was both modern and accessible but without losing its connection to the Earth and to the times from which it sprang.
The most long-term goal was to help to inspire and support a new regime of musicians and songwriters who were excited and passionate about these ideas and would devote a worthwhile portion of their energies and talents to making them a reality, both here in the UK and in the US, as well.
This is the core philosophy behind Walking Oliver.
I was concerned because I didn't see children's music growing anymore--partially I think because we have an industry right now that doesn't see enough profit to be made from investing in recordings of children's music but also because, in my opinion, we have created a rather disposable society in many ways. Nothing is designed or expected to last and anything that is older than 6 months can already be perceived as being boring and obsolete.
Added to this we now find ourselves in the digital age where a piece of recorded music can be copied an infinite number of times within seconds and spread around the world within minutes. The perception has therefore become that because music is now freely (if not legally) distributable, then it has therefore also lost its inherent value.
Music can offer so much to a person! And songs are that magical combination of music and words that can speak so eloquently and yet so powerfully to a child as well as to an adult. Songs can be there for kids as a source of strength in happy times and hard times throughout their whole lives. And once you know a song all you have to do is reach out your mind and take hold of it and it's yours, it's there for you free of charge. Open up your mouth and sing it and you can make a whole world feel something. That's the power of music. That's been my experience and I know I'm not alone.
It's a great and precious gift we can give to our kids and its an opportunity that often slips away all too quickly. As we grow from childhood to adulthood, the day-to-day cares and worries of life in the fast lane take charge of our lives. If music has been a part of our experience from childhood it never leaves us---it's always there for us when we want it or need it.
Walking Oliver: Paul's Place
Songwriting Tip No. 6
Writing Children’s Songs––After receiving much mail requesting advice on writing music for kids I’m caving in and writing a separate group of tips just on this subject alone.
I’m going to offer some general advice on writing songs for children to start off with. This is because I’m currently involved in a project writing children's songs for a publisher that markets to the schools, so a lot of this information is very fresh in my mind.
Here we go––
When writing songs for kids assume that the kids are going to want to learn the song and sing along. Therefore:
1) Whenever possible keeps the scansion (the analysis of verse into metrical patterns) consistent throughout. For instance,
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers
has a total of 12 syllables over a period of 6 beats. So in order to mirror that in the next verse try hard to keep the scansion consistent. You might write something like,
Albert Ammons played a piece of eight bar boogie
Again, count'em. 12 syllables total over a total of 6 beats.
Now, you’d probably want to keep all that alliteration consistent, too, but that wasn’t my point and I didn’t want to confuse the issue. ;-)
2) Pitch the song in a key that your audience can sing to. You have to remember that although most kids will have a bash at just about anything, you can make the experience a lot more accessible by knowing what age you’re writing for and finding out where the average voice lies at that age. Obviously sticking fairly close to the speaking range is going to be easiest and then varying above that in the more exciting bits.
3) It may seem obvious––but know your audience and write for them, not just to them. I’ve worked with too many adult would-be writers for children who seem to think that writing a song about what they think about kids is actually interesting to kids.
Truth is, it usually isn’t.
The vast majority of kids don’t care how wonderful you think they are, or how well you can relate to them, or how at 37 you still feel like one of them––they want to be entertained and moved by things that they are interested in. So study children, not just yourself!
More soon!
Musical Activities for Preschool Children––Part 3 of 5
PART 3—Coordinated movement––Getting more of the body involved.
In part 1 of this article about musical activities for preschoolers I described using the natural sounds around us to stimulate the senses and get kids really listening. In mimicking those sounds, their pitch and rhythms, kids start to hear music in nature. Whether they then hear a pop song on the radio or a symphony in the concert hall they’ll now have a framework for listening to those sounds.
In Part 2 we got the body involved and learned how to move to music, count beats and construct a square pattern by marching in a set meter to music.
In part 3 we’re going to go yet a step further and add in some structured improvisation that is designed to stimulate creativity while at the same time promote coordination throughout the body. These exercises will also help teach a child to shift weight from one side of the body to the other. This will really gets those brain synapses firing!
THE EXERCIZE
Right! First, let’s go back to marching the square pattern we set up in Musical Activities for Preschool Children Part 2. Just to refresh, we were marching while listening to music with a 4/4 beat pattern (counting 1,2,3,4, - 1,2,3,4, etc.) and after each 2nd 4 count we would turn to the right (or left, as you wish) until we had completed a square pattern in the room.
So, choose some good 4-beat music and you and your child get into the mood by refreshing the square pattern a few times first before we advance.
Okay, now that we’re warmed up let’s get to the new stuff––
Start by asking your child if he or she can imitate the walk of a chicken. If they are not sure how to go about it, you demonstrate first. Start with just the arms and make the wing motions, elbows out, flapping up and down. Once you’ve got that down pat try making those wing motions along with the music, one flap per beat. Don’t involve the feet yet––one thing at a time.
After your child is comfortable with that march the square pattern again along with the music, this time adding the chicken wing motions. Do this several times around the square until it becomes second nature.
When you’re both ready, stop and prepare the next step:
This time practice moving your head back and forth the way a chicken moves and invite your child to join in. When you’ve both got the hang of it add the feet. Move around the room now flapping your elbows and moving your head back and forth, sort of like the Funky Chicken dance if you’re old enough to remember that one. Feel foolish? Well, that’s what having kids is all about, isn’t it?
I have to mention that all of these exercises should be done in the spirit of fun and never presented as a proper lesson. The less pressure to perform that is brought to bear on your child, the better. The more he or she feels that they are free to experiment and have a good time the less inhibited they will be. That’s when the best results will be achieved here.
Okay, time to practice with the music!
Back to the 4/4 square pattern and this time with the chicken movements. If you or your child gets confused just stop, have a laugh and begin again whenever it feels right. Add chicken sounds, too, if it helps get you in the mood. Buck-bucks or pawk-pawks, whatever. Feel free to loosen up with the movements but do try to keep your movements with the beat of the music.
This is a great rhythmic coordination exercise and will greatly help develop balance in the body, shifting of weight in time to music and diverse movements of arms, legs and the head.
Once you’ve exhausted the chicken movements, try some other animals on your own. How about an elephant? Monkey? Kangaroo?
Songwriting Tip No.5
Textual Content
In Songwriting Tip No. 4 we looked at a Verse/Refrain type song model and how you might structure it. In Songwriting Tip No. 5 we’ll look at a verse/verse model and see how that might differ in structure from verse/refrain.
In verse/verse writing you don’t have a repeating summary statement as you do in the verse/refrain structure. Therefore you have to make your point or tell your story in a more tantalising way. One way to do this is to write your verses so that your content (or subject) grows and becomes more expressive as your verses progress. So in a very simplistic example, your war protest song has three verses––perhaps verse 1 is something like this:
Can’t think about nothing else no more
My mind is on the brink
I know we’ve all been here before
Don’t know what else to think
So here we have some general thoughts, what the writer’s feeling. Not why he’s feeling this way, not what he’s thinking about––just feelings. These lines have to hook the listeners. The opening lines have to grab them by the shirt and say, “You have to hear this!”
In verse 2 the writer gets more specific––here’s why he’s upset.
The folks in power are full of greed
Corrupted to the core
Blind to all but their own needs
They take us all to war
So, now we know what the writer’s upset about. In verse 3 (assuming this is a 3 verse lyric) the writer can do any number of things to sum up his feelings. He can offer a solution to the problem, he can further drill home his message by making an even stronger case, or he can end with an unexpected twist such as I've done here––
Here in a plane I’m mission bound
They bought me with their lie
My bombs are falling toward the ground
How many more must die?
In this last verse we find out who the writer is and get a double whammy––he’s not only protesting a war, he’s an active part of it.
A well-constructed lyric can be a layering process a little like peeling an onion and finding out what's at the core. Make sure that you leave your listeners with your strongest sentiment. And be sure you know how you want to leave your listeners. Do you want to leave them feeling satisfied after hearing your song? Do you want them to feel angry? Curious? Depressed? All this is determined by your final verse.
It’s also possible to construct a verse/verse song in just the opposite way, by starting with a very broad or grand statement and narrowing it to a very specific point in the final verse. We’ll look at this idea more closely in Songwriting Tip No. 6.
(Above printed lyrics are ©2005 by P.A. Kelly. These three verses are posted here for demonstration purposes only and do not necessarily reflect the views of their author)
Songwriting Tip No.4
Textual Content––Okay, now that we’ve dealt with a few ways in which to colour our text (and admittedly this is a slightly backward approach on my part) let’s talk a bit about how to manage the content itself.
There are many different song forms but only several are common. Let’s assume for Songwriting Tip No. 4 that you’ve chosen a verse/refrain form for
your song.
Here’s a tried and true approach––Write a refrain that summarizes in some way what you are saying, or what your song is all about. Usually this is where your vocal hook (the part that literally “hooks” your listener) will be and more often than not the hook will be the title of your song, as well.
Then write verses that are either “examples” of what your refrain summarizes, or in some way expands upon the content of your refrain.
Or it could be that your verses tell a story and your refrain summarizes or celebrates your story in some fashion.
Here’s an example from one of my kid’s songs––
The ants all threw a party
For a Bumble Bee last night
And they served Black Beetle Pudding
Which was greeted with delight
The bumble bee did stuff himself
Until he finally swore
That unless they served him Brandy
He’d be headed for the door
REFRAIN
Oh, Poor Bumble Bee
Such an invitation is rarely as it seems
Oh, Poor Bumble Bee
Wishin’ this was all a bad dream.
(Excerpt from POOR BUMBLE BEE © 2002, P.A. Kelly)
The verse tells the story and the refrain sums up the situation by commenting on the story.
Of course it never has to be this simplistic or this literal. There are many devices you can use and still write within the verse/refrain form. We’ll take a look at some of the other ways in upcoming Songwriting Tips.
Songwriting Tip No.3
Colourful text phrases-––Here’s the third songwriting tip for writing memorable lyric lines. This one belongs to the poets primarily but if used with care and intelligence we all have a bit of poet in us. And as I’ve said before, our goal here is to make our lyrics memorable. This is another valuable tool for your arsenal.
This tip involves the use of colourful adjectives and what I often call tinsel; combinations of words that are a pleasure to say and repeat aloud as well as just to listen to. You want to write a line that people not only enjoy hearing the singer sing, but like it so much they want to try it out for themselves and
sing along with you.
Lines like, “Koo-koo-ka-choo, Mrs. Robinson,” by Paul Simon and “Edna Million in a drop dead suit, Dutch Pink on a downtown train” by Tom Waits are such lines.
Of course the line should also connect to the rest of your lyric and make some sense! It all has to be connected together like a well made puzzle, as good songs often are.
The combination of alliteration See Songwriting Tip No. 2 and unusual names in these lines is irresistible. And irresistible is exactly what you want your songs to be.
Songwriting Tip No.2
Colourful text phrases––Here’s a second songwriting tip also involving the creation of memorable text phrases, and as long as it’s used for a reason and not overused, it can be a particularly useful tool.
Alliteration, the putting together of words that begin with the same letter or consonant sound, can be another one of those ear catching devices that can hook your listener and make your song more memorable. For instance, “ in the cool, cool, cool of the evening,” or “strawberry fields forever,” are more memorable in the way that they linger in the ear than if they were “in the cool soft breeze of the evening” or “strawberry fields eternally.”
Neither of those lines is bad but they’re not the ear candy that the former lines are, and that can make the difference between a line that is memorable and one that is quickly forgotten.
Songwriting Tip No.1
Colourful text phrases––The faster a lyric line from your song becomes lodged in the ear and mind of your listener, the better. Now you’ve hooked your listener into learning your song and remembering your song without them having to break a sweat.
Lyric lines of poetry can be made memorable in different ways. One way is to use phrases that people actually use in conversation. Not clichéd phrases but phrases common enough to resonate. Phrases that trip off the tongue and are pleasing to the ear are best. Think of lines like “That’s the way I’ve always heard it should be,” and “I love you just the way you are.”
Both lines flow beautifully when you say them out loud. Both lines sound familiar and yet are not hackneyed from overuse.
As with all lyric writing, keep a notebook or recorder with you at all times! All that good stuff that occurs to you while you’re riding the train to work? Get it down now and work on it later!