It's been a while since I've said anything here! No worries, blogosphere, I continue to attempt art.
Recently I heard about an online service, Coursera, which lets you take free courses (or you can pay for an official certificate of completion). They have a great course on Songwriting from the Berklee College of Music. It's just wrapping up its last week, and it's been completely worth it.
The first few weeks go over writing verse (lyrics), talking about point of view, the in/stability of the story and how to express this through line lengths, rhyme schemes etc. -- super useful factors I'd never, uh, factored in to my songwriting. I've only ever written songs when something struck me, and it 'just goes from there'. While this is a fun way to do things, especially seeing as I'm an amateur and this is a hobby, this course taught me the extent lyrics can change when you play with number of lines and consonance rhymes and etc.
The last couple of weeks of the course look at melody, and how notes in relation to the base chord, coming in at the bar or on the downbeat, and so forth, can create a stable/unstable feel.
One important concept discussed several times is that of 'spotlighting'. Basically, if you want something to look awesome, one way to do this successfully is to diminish the things around it. If everyone has a spotlight everyone is important, and, you know, when everyone is special, no one is.
Taking the course is an inspiration because, yeah, I get to play with lyrics and melody and learning this stuff is awesome -- but also, there's a community. You can talk with people in the forums and learn how small a fish you really are, but they're all supportive, and some have awesome stuff for download on Soundcloud.
Soundcloud!
I've come across it before but never used it. Now I am. You can find me here:
https://soundcloud.com/emkayas
Check out my latest piece, Tower in the Fog. The melody kind of 'came to me' with a few sessions but the lyrics I had to work really hard at. I mean, 'invoke' and 'fog' can rhyme but it's actually hard to put verbs at the end of phrases. Unless you're Yoda.
I'm going to have to shut musical me in a box for a while as I concentrate on my writing (so much time and so little to do -- wait, stop, reverse that). But this beast will not be contained long! Muahahah!
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