15th March - Song Writing

Tuesday 15^th March

Song writing:

First of all we split off into our TIE groups to rehearse our pieces, then we came back as a whole and performed our pieces to the class.

Seb, Tom and Francesca’s song was about Children in Divorce. I liked how it set the mood and scene. It was quite heart wrenching. They had chosen to use a Cornet, a piano and a tambourine to create the effect they desired. The cornet sounded really good with the piano and I had wished to hear more (for Francesca to play for longer) and for Tom’s bit (the tambourine) to be softer and played more in time with Seb and Francesca.

Abi, Frankie, Olly and Jack’s song was about Gender Equality. I liked how they used different styles of singing, for example Frankie and Olly would sing normally and then Jack would come in with a rap and then Abi sings normally. I liked how they did this as it made it more controversial. They had decided to use a piano, a guitar, a tambourine and drums. The melody was really good and apt for the piece but unfortunately I couldn’t hear the lyrics because of the dynamics of their singing and the instruments. All in all it was great though.

Then it was our groups turn to perform but within our group we had decided only Imogen would sing and play the guitar. This is because out of all of us Imogen has the best voice which is not only the best but sounds absolutely superb and stunning. We also only chose a guitar for our melody as our piece is quite a lonely, minor piece and the acoustics alone sounded perfect and I could imagine our piece straight away. We decided it would be best for Imogen to also use a microphone as she sang rather quitetly. Imogen chose the chords from a Kate Nash song she likes and played on it a bit to create her own chords from an inspiration of Kate Nash. I think the lonely sort of sound it has makes the piece sond good and fit with our Eating Disorder Theme. To start the project we experimented with telephone melodies and 12 bar patterns to create sufficient chords. We didn't use this method to create our chords this time but I do like the idea of these methods for future references. We use the verses to tell a story of The Skeleton In My Closet which is an eating disorder. The chorus repeats the message many times to conver the metaphore of the skeleton. We are trying to educate people of the strugglt the Mother went through during her high school years and how traumatic her past actually was.

Afterwards we gave and received feedback for each group and lots of constructive criticism was given. Our feedback was for Imogen’s diction to improve so that the lyrics were heard clearer  as you couldn't really tell what she was singing and to explain our motives for only having Imogen playing and singing. Also we were advised to bring it to a better close as it stops quite abruptly. The feedback helped me a lot and as a result helped my group a lot and our whole TIE piece. Other groups liked our song and said it had power and meaning. I think our song will fit best at the sart and end of our performance.

The Process of song writing:

First we tried to gather inspiration by researching other eating disorder songs. We went on YouTube and several lyric websites by Googling Anorexic based songs. There are lots of anorexic based songs but none of them quite apt for our TIE piece as they don’t approach the issue quite as well as I had thought. Instead we chose to create the chords and come back to the lyrics. Imogen, being the most musically tuned in, wrote the chords which she thought appropriate.

Reading our story and script gave us a great idea to include the lines from our script and make them song lyrics.

I am really happy with our song and really like how we have “Powerful Lyrics” as quoted by Seb :)