Jachin's Songwriting and Performance Journal

During my gap year last year, I spent a fair amount of time playing different chord progressions in my own time, but I never thought to look at why certain progressions work in the abstract, or maybe I’d notice certain progressions re-occuring but not understand why. However, Robyn’s lecture⁷ showed me how much easier it is to process why certain progressions work by looking at chords with numerical analysis and seeing things as I – V – vi – IV instead of D – A – Bm – G. I was also able to build on the concept of unstable and stable melodic tones by learning about unstable and stable chords and how naturally a chord made up of multiple unstable notes will also sound unstable.

7 Habel, Robyn. “Harmony – Part 1”. Lecture presented at the course Song Writing and Performance 1A, University of Adelaide, April 29, 2019.

Writing to a brief is a new concept for me (having never been commissioned to write a song for anyone before) so it was constructive to have the key elements of that process outlined by an industry professional. As someone that enjoys the complete creative control that comes with writing my own music, learning about how to process client requests for changes and adjustments is crucial for not only development as a musician in the industry but just as a professional in any sense – compromise is necessary in any workplace, but sometimes that is hard to swallow when it encroaches on artistic spaces such as music composition. As a starting point on improving this aspect of my writing, I focused on creating a kids theme song by carefully selecting musical elements true to the theme such as a jaunty rhythm and repetition in the lyrics, while still allowing myself to add the twist of the song topic being a serious issue such as global warming instead of the expected fictional horror. See that? I compromised with myself in order to work on compromising with clients. I’m sure that counts for something.

https://soundcloud.com/jachin-mee/kids-show-theme-tune

While it always felt intuitive to write melody that is appropriate for a given situation, sometimes it’s hard for me to know why certain melodies seemed to work. Before this topic was presented in the lecture, I had only really encountered tension and release in relation to harmony, so while in hindsight it seems obvious, I hadn’t considered the effect melodic phrasing would have on building and releasing tension, with the presence of instability that is caused by unstable colour tones⁶. I decided to analyse the United States’ Marines Hymn to understand how a melody is characterised as “anthemic” – discovering that the tune’s strong resolutions, stationery melodies and conjunct motion are all contributing factors towards that.

6 Habel, Robyn. “Melody – Part 1”. Lecture presented at the course Song Writing and Performance 1A, University of Adelaide, April 1, 2019.

Robyn’s lecture⁴ highlighted an interesting technique that inspired my musical listening for this week – internal rhymes. I found a lyricist named Daniel Dumile that employs this technique masterfully, poring through multiple songs he wrote under the name Madvillian to gain a further appreciation for utilising internal rhymes. Here is an example from the song “Figaro”⁵:

Do not stand still, boast yo’ skills

Close but no krills, toast for po’ nils, post no bills

Coast to coast Joe Shmoe’s flows ill, go chill

Not supposed to overdose No-Doz pills

While I am not generally writing in a hip hop style, I still found it beneficial to see how he manipulates language to create his rhyme scheme – I’m especially fond of how he arrives at the unique phrasing “po’ nils” to mean “poor zeroes”, i.e. a no-hoper.

As a result, I constructed some of the lyrics of one of my songs to have a stronger internal rhyme scheme in order to make it flow better, with this being the outcome:

Oh no, she’s a deliberating girl

now that you want her you’ll see

try to be strong and abscond from her

know that you’ll never be free

The words ‘want’, ‘strong’, and ‘abscond’ form a notable internal rhyme scheme that I’m quite happy with.

4 Habel, Robyn. “Lyrics – Part 1”. Lecture presented at the course Song Writing and Performance 1A, University of Adelaide, March 25, 2019.

5 Madvillain. “Figaro.” Madvillainy. By Daniel Dumile and Otis Jackson, Jr. Produced by Madlib. 23 March 2004.

Initially I didn’t think it was important to analyse song form at first – an aspect of writing I had often taken for granted. However, it became apparent the value of understanding something properly before then breaking those rules – as Robyn explained the names and structure of the various song forms (such as ), I was able to appreciate where certain forms would be appropriate – for example, using an AAA structure with a refrain to achieve a folk-y feel. There was also a discussion emphasis on the effect of pre-choruses, so I attempted to write a track that I felt utilised the pre-chorus to launch into the chorus effectively.

Initially I didn’t think it was important to analyse song form at first – an aspect of writing I had often taken for granted. However, it became apparent the value of understanding something properly before then breaking those rules – as Robyn explained the names and structure of the various song forms (such as ), I was able to appreciate where certain forms would be appropriate – for example, using an AAA structure with a refrain to achieve a folk-y feel³. There was also a discussion emphasis on the effect of pre-choruses, so I attempted to write a track that I felt utilised the pre-chorus to launch into the chorus effectively. To achieve this, I kept the melody lower and less explosive than the chorus, and when the chorus arrived changed keys from Db major to Gb major, creating a feeling of upward movement.

3 Habel, Robyn. “Song Form”. Lecture presented at the course Song Writing and Performance 1A, University of Adelaide, March 18, 2019.

The class focus and ensuing discussion on the creative process caused me to consider my own creative process and how I formulated my music. I looked at the earlier drafts of some of my songs and reflected on how they had been constructed – I often started with a chord progression, and then developed lyrical ideas to go along with it, before finally adding a melody that fit the lyrics I had written over the top of the chords. It’s helpful to be aware of this moving forward, but even more important from my perspective was the concept of being able to write even when there’s no creative mood or inspiration that Robyn covered in her lecture¹. To me, that felt important to be conscious of going forward, as it is not a viable business practice to simply write whenever I feel like it (which I had definitely been doing) but rather have a methodical and direct approach to songwriting. The video² Robyn showed us on that topic codified that idea nicely by showing a practical example of Sia writing music using that methodology:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59nwMeoYCkQ       

1 Habel, Robyn. “Creative Process”. Lecture presented at the course Song Writing and Performance 1A, University of Adelaide, March 4, 2019.

2 Romero, Alexis. “How Sia and Her Songwriter Come up with New Single.” YouTube, YouTube, 3 Aug. 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=59nwMeoYCkQ.