[stylist] Feature article

[Robert Leslie Newman]

Brad good article, made sense to me --- made sense to me ---oh yes, made
sense to me. 





-----Original Message-----
From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
Behalf Of Brad Dunse
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2010 10:50 PM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
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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