[stylist] Feature article

[Shelley J. Alongi]

nice article, Brad.


Shelley J. Alongi
Cell/text: (714) 525-9632
Read my Metrolink writings and other essays and stories
http://www.storymania.com/cgibin/sm2/smshowauthorbox.cgi?page=1&author=AlongiSJ&alpha=A

Updated: October 16, 2010
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brad Dunse" <lists at braddunsemusic.com>
To: "Writer's Division Mailing List" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2010 8:49 PM
Subject: Re: [stylist] Feature article



>Robert and Marion,

Thanks. Sure, where they will be published is at:
http://www.musesmuse.com/musenews.html

An older sample is below. Now that it is in a
venue beyond just my site I'll try to put the
grammarian hat on a little tighter :)

This month's tip deals with music and melody
rather than lyrical content. Melodies and music
are like people's lives, they like a bit of
repetition, patterns, and familiarity. Not every
one of course but the majority by far.

Most people like a certain amount of predictable
direction, their expectations being met, and
sense of familiarity so they feel at home and can
join in comfortably. Ever have a couple friends
play a card game you never played, they ask you
to join in and you say "No thanks, I'll watch for
a while and see how it's played first." People
like adventure but they do like things somewhat
familiar to them so they can join in comfortably and safely.

Melody and music is very similar. Have you been
at an open mike night, heard a song that starts
out cool, and you think you might want to sing
along or at least feel comfortable with its
direction? Then as the song went on the melody
kept drifting to and fro, up and down, twisting
around in all directions and never seeming to
have any sense or pattern to it? It felt like
going from Point A to Point B by landmark
directions only without any indication of how far
between landmarks. It seemed like it lasted
forever right? No doubt you found it frustrating.
Or worse you were the one behind the mike and
wondered why you lost folk's attention.

Getting people into your music quickly is easier
if you set up the melody or music with cyclical
patterns or some set of shorter phrasings easily
remembered. Blues guitarists do this often with
their short but catchy "call and response" type
riffs. Repeating phrases, building tension, and
then releasing it. This can be done in your
songwriting, including the background
instrumentation to compliment the melody and syllable patterns.

Here are a few examples of what I mean. Take a
good listen you can search for these songs on You
Tube and hear what I mean. Check out Billy Joel's
"We Didn't Start The Fire". There are a ton of
items in this song what we call a grocery list. A
smattering of names, places, events in history
and other assorted goodies. I'm sure Billy knew
that there just weren't no way his listeners were
about to memorize all that stuff. So the
instrumentation, melody, and music had to be very
cyclical. Both verse and chorus are filled with
short similar phrases and though he doesn't stick
to a constant syllable uniformity, the melody
feel and phrasings are all similar in fulfilling a listener's expectation.

 From the Country market you can find another
example with Dierks Bentley's "What Was I
Thinkin'". Again a very repetitive familiar
pattern with the choppy one line rhyme scheme to
help it along. Another advantage to introducing
your listener to this in your songs is it can
serve as a catapult for your hook or chorus.
Folks get just enough taste of the familiar
phrasing and before they get to the point of "OK,
I've heard this enough times now I'm ready for
different", you take them to a pre-chorus or lift
and slingshot them to the chorus.

Some other examples to check out are: Runaway by
Love and Theft, Sweet Thing by Keith Urban, Dirty
Laundry by Don Henley, Ironic by Alanis
Morissette, and maybe Enrique Iglesias's I Can Be
Your Hero. All of these examples use short catchy
repetitive phrases which have made them huge
hits. They are easy for people to remember, to
sing along with, and to ask for on the radio or when searching I-Tunes.

Take a look at what you've been writing. Are your
melody lines stretched out and complicated? Are
they difficult for people to remember? Perhaps
you can find one in your catalog to use as a
project to rewrite the melody and groove using
the characteristics of the above examples making
it more memorable and attractive to a listener.
Or you can purpose to write a new song this week
using these tools and see how your writing and
thinking about your songs might change. One way
is to take one of the above songs and write a
different lyric to it following the syllable
pattern and feel, then go back and re-write a different melody to it.

Happy writing. see you next month!





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