Accompanied Lyrical Impact Stuff
Earlier today I was in church, singing Christian worship and hymns, trying to remain "worshipful" and focus on praising God. It was hard. The music was good, the lyrics related to me well, but I ended up kind of bleared up. (yes, I made up that word)
Then this one song started and my vocal cords refused to make a noise. At least not any coherent noise recognizable as singing. At the time, the music wasn't important. I opened and closed my mouth sub-consciously with the song, but all I managed was reading the lyrics that reflected and answered what I'd been thinking about lately. Sadly though, the words have faded away from me, and even just halfway through the song I was feeling kind of blah again. Why?
I didn't want to forget those words. Why didn't that impact stick around?
Here's something interesting to try. As a song is playing, read the words. But read them out of rhythm like reading a book. Cripey, it's almost like dissecting the song. Because the words and music are out of rhythm with each other, how well they go together becomes a lot easier to realize. It's fun and cool finding impacting music and lyrics interchangeably and together.
I've been thinking about impact. More accurately, music that impacts me, and why it does.
Two reasons, either the accompaniment, (the music) the lyrics, or both effect me.
What's interesting to me now, is how the accompaniment and the lyrics effect how much impact each evokes. Like when the music is really good, maybe inspiring, hopeful, epic, depressing, or whatever. Then you take that music, that sounds so good in a particular way, and put these lyrics to it, and the song loses impact, because the words are not what the music implies. The lyrics destroy this feeling I'm getting from the music, because they aren't of the same subject.
Then there's the songs with these lyrics that just strike at my heart. But this music gets put to them that trashes it all, because it's not worth listening to this music trying to say something else than the words, or music that's poorly done, or simply wrung out to make a full length song because there's not enough lyrics for it all. This last reason is particularly obvious in the song "We Sing" by Vedera, a band that I like quite a lot; however the song has few lyrics, and so it's just stretched out to make it full length, and ends up losing so much impact because of that.
Then finally, along comes a song with music and lyrics in tandem, both saying the same things. Lyrics that say just what you want, or didn't know you wanted, and music that laughs, groans, hopes, cries, rejoices or anything else, right with the lyrics. And the song becomes on your top 25 played soon after.
I ended up thinking about my favorite songs and why the were my favorites, realizing that they were my favorites simply because the lyrics and the words went together.
It all gives me a new appreciation for how hard it really is to make a really good, impacting song. I can think of pretty melodies, catchy beats, sweet sounds and whatnot, to the point of diddlying them out on the piano or guitar. Even though I'm inexperienced and bad at writing songs, I can still write some lyrics that have impact. My songs may be in pieces waiting to be put together worthily, but given time they'll shape up.
Putting those melodies and words together to say the same things though, now that's harder. I certainly can't do it, not yet anyway. That won't stop me from trying though, and you better not let it stop you either, because you can never put together even one impacting song if you don't try at all.
That's all for today. Go enjoy one of your favorite songs :-)
Then this one song started and my vocal cords refused to make a noise. At least not any coherent noise recognizable as singing. At the time, the music wasn't important. I opened and closed my mouth sub-consciously with the song, but all I managed was reading the lyrics that reflected and answered what I'd been thinking about lately. Sadly though, the words have faded away from me, and even just halfway through the song I was feeling kind of blah again. Why?
I didn't want to forget those words. Why didn't that impact stick around?
Here's something interesting to try. As a song is playing, read the words. But read them out of rhythm like reading a book. Cripey, it's almost like dissecting the song. Because the words and music are out of rhythm with each other, how well they go together becomes a lot easier to realize. It's fun and cool finding impacting music and lyrics interchangeably and together.
I've been thinking about impact. More accurately, music that impacts me, and why it does.
Two reasons, either the accompaniment, (the music) the lyrics, or both effect me.
What's interesting to me now, is how the accompaniment and the lyrics effect how much impact each evokes. Like when the music is really good, maybe inspiring, hopeful, epic, depressing, or whatever. Then you take that music, that sounds so good in a particular way, and put these lyrics to it, and the song loses impact, because the words are not what the music implies. The lyrics destroy this feeling I'm getting from the music, because they aren't of the same subject.
Then there's the songs with these lyrics that just strike at my heart. But this music gets put to them that trashes it all, because it's not worth listening to this music trying to say something else than the words, or music that's poorly done, or simply wrung out to make a full length song because there's not enough lyrics for it all. This last reason is particularly obvious in the song "We Sing" by Vedera, a band that I like quite a lot; however the song has few lyrics, and so it's just stretched out to make it full length, and ends up losing so much impact because of that.
Then finally, along comes a song with music and lyrics in tandem, both saying the same things. Lyrics that say just what you want, or didn't know you wanted, and music that laughs, groans, hopes, cries, rejoices or anything else, right with the lyrics. And the song becomes on your top 25 played soon after.
I ended up thinking about my favorite songs and why the were my favorites, realizing that they were my favorites simply because the lyrics and the words went together.
It all gives me a new appreciation for how hard it really is to make a really good, impacting song. I can think of pretty melodies, catchy beats, sweet sounds and whatnot, to the point of diddlying them out on the piano or guitar. Even though I'm inexperienced and bad at writing songs, I can still write some lyrics that have impact. My songs may be in pieces waiting to be put together worthily, but given time they'll shape up.
Putting those melodies and words together to say the same things though, now that's harder. I certainly can't do it, not yet anyway. That won't stop me from trying though, and you better not let it stop you either, because you can never put together even one impacting song if you don't try at all.
That's all for today. Go enjoy one of your favorite songs :-)
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