Exercise 3 from Songchops
http://songchops.com/songwriting-exercises/
Today I started work on some songwriting exercises, both from a couple of books from the library and with a website specifically for beginner songwriters.
First off I worked with a site called songchops, which has pages of exercises for devising song lyrics. I decided to start there, as I find that lyrics come to me quicker than a tune or melody does.
I decided to use their third exercise on the list, Ghost Song (Lyrics);
“Pick a song you like
Write a new lyric for the entire song (each verse, chorus, bridge) as is
Now take the lyric and write new music (e.g., choose tempo, chords from a diff. song)
Take the new song and focus on it, rewriting as necessary”
Source: http://songchops.com/songwriting-exercises/
I began with the song ‘Synthesizer’ by Electric Six, which I have linked here;
And here are the lyrics I referenced;
Lyrics from Google Play, verified on AZ Lyrics;
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/electricsix/synthesizer.html
You can shake it all around
You can go up and down
You can lose what you found
But you can’t ignore my techno
You can go west or east
Confess your sins to a priest
You can slay the wicked beast
But you can’t ignore my techno
-Instrumental-
You can go to the doctor
You can cough in his face
Infect the whole human race
But you can’t ignore my techno
You can laugh you can cry
You can live you can die
Spend your days asking why
But you can’t ignore my techno
You can trip on my synthesizer
Electronic world for every boy and every girl
You can trip on my synthesizer
In the end technology unto the world will set us free
Be all that you can be
Just as long as you are free
You were blind and now you see
That which is my techno
You can trip on my synthesizer
Electronic world for every boy and every girl
You can trip on my synthesizer
In the end technology unto the world will set us free
You can trip on my
You can trip on my
You can trip on my
You can trip
You can trip
You can trip on my synthesizer
You can trip on my synthesizer
Let’s go
-Instrumental, fade out-
I began with this track because it has an unusual but clear structure. The song seems to have four verses before the initial chorus, with each line of the verses being separated by a short melody (Which is the intro repeated as the verse plays). After the chorus the song then proceeds in a more familiar verse-chorus pattern, with the final chorus being broken down and repeated by the singer before the song plays out on an instrumental.
The rhyming pattern flows well, with each verse holding self-contained rhyming lines and ending on the word ‘techno’, forming a rhyming pattern across the song.
When the rhyming pattern is noted according to the above lyrics, it looks like this;
(Verses)
AAAB
CCCB
-Instrumental-
DDDB
EEEB
(Chorus)
FGFH
(Final Verse)
IIIB
(Chorus)
FGFH
JJJ
KK
FF
L
The pattern is distinct enough that the song is interesting, but not complex enough to feel overwhelming to rewrite. I was excited to begin working on this, but found it hard at first to shake the spectre of the original song. (I suppose picking a distinctive song for this is a double-edged sword!)
Bearing this in mind, I decided to look at the lyrics for inspiration. Thinking about synthesisers and techno made me think of electronics, which made me think of robots. Not too far away from the subject matter, but not close enough to be a direct copy. I was interested to see where this would lead.
Already the subject matter changed the tone of the song entirely. I wrote the song from the perspective of a robot as it explained what it could and couldn’t do. It was tricky at first finding words and phrases to fit the rhyming scheme (I decided to keep the sounds of the song, keeping the rhymes as well as the rhyming scheme.) I ended up writing the fifth verse first;
Your feelings mean nothing to me
I cannot breathe, I cannot see
I am what I am meant to be
And that is a robot
Reading this back it sounds angry, almost bitter. I was unsure if I wanted to continue with this tone, and so decided to try and take the bitter edge off of the other lyrics where possible.
I decided not to maintain the rhymes for every verse of the song. For the first verse I decided to think of ways to introduce the robot to the listener, and maybe try to see if I could take them by surprise when they realise it is a robot singing;
People say I am a bore
Although I glide across the floor
It is my job to do the chores
Because I am a robot
I took a few liberties with the chorus, sticking to the number of syllables and the rhyming pattern but changing the stresses of certain words to fit the lyrics in my head into the pattern. As I wrote the verses I began to create a rough melody – which I found was vastly different to the source song.
The breakdown section of the song was by far the hardest part to rewrite because of the shifting tone of the song – my lyrics were much more contemplative and steady, whereas the final lyrics of Synthesizer are much more upbeat and carefree. I decided to rewrite the ending so that the breakdown of the lyrics was less of an invitation for the listener to dance and more of an indicator of the robots current state. Throughout my song the robot sings about the things they cannot do that humans can – such as breathing, seeing and going outside. The song is gentle but sombre, and the end of the song needed to reflect this. So, the robot in the final verse of the song tries to imagine being human and finds they drain their battery trying.
I have completed the lyrics to the song and will upload them as a separate blog post. I can imagine there being a piano or some sort of mechanical/electronic melody in the background of this track – maybe something like musical floppy disks? The melody would be slow, simple and possibly minor in key.
I found the exercise to be really useful – it took me a couple of hour overall to write the song, and though it was tricky at first it became easy to detach from the source song as the lyrics took their own form and shape. As a stimulus exercise it was really interesting and quite fun to shape work this way, and this is definitely something I want to try again.
For fun, here is a group of floppy drives singing 🙂
