There’s a songwriter lurking somewhere inside you, peeking around corners, wondering if it’s safe to come out. Now it is. This course is an invitation to let your inner songwriter step into the sunlight. All it takes is a simple “yes” and you’ll be climbing that windy hill, marveling at the view. If you haven’t written any or many songs, this course will show you an efficient, effective process for tailoring songs to express your ideas and emotions. If you have, you’ll look at your process differently, taking control of aspects of the process you may have not noticed. The course will start by examining the tools available to you, all revolving around the essential concept of prosody. You’ll learn to use your tools to enhance your message—to work compositionally at the same time you’re developing your ideas. You’ll be working both lyrically and musically, though musically it’s not necessary that you either read music or play an instrument. If you play, great, and you’ll be encouraged to play and record your musical responses to the assignments. If you don’t play, the course offers you a number of musical loops to work with. All you’ll have to do is sing your melodies over the loops. Assignments will ask you to post something for peer review—sometimes lyric lines or sections, sometimes melodies, sometimes both. None of it has to be polished. The course is about writing, not performing. Most important, you’ll have a lot of fun.
Point of View
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Del curso dictado por Berklee College of Music
Songwriting: Writing the Lyrics
338 calificaciones
De la lección
The Journey of the Song
By the end of this lesson, you will see how to develop your song idea so it creates an interesting journey from start to finish. You’ll understand your options developing the point of view of your song and will be introduced to the songwriter’s six best friends.
Conoce a los instructores
Pat PattisonProfessor
Point of view. And that's what we're talking about here is point of view,
that which defines the relationship between the singer and the audience.
So, here, he loved her so much.
You and I do not have a relationship other than the fact that I'm telling you this story.
So, in your song,
you want to express an idea.
Where do these ideas come from?
Where do your song ideas come from?
And the answer is everywhere.
But there comes a point where you have to answer the question,
"Okay, what am I going to say?
What is this idea?"
And that's where things really start getting interesting.
So what is it that you want to talk about?
I mean, of course, it may be that you are
motivated to say something because something has happened in your life.
Maybe, of course, we all have this moment of because our hearts been broken,
and so we feel like we need to express something.
It may be actually that we're happy,
and we want to express something like we're happy and maybe something like,
I'm so grateful that you're in my life.
Or maybe something like,
I wish things were better between us. Something like that.
There's something that you have to say,
and the song will be a vehicle to express that feeling,
to express that idea.
What could this mean?
What kind of idea will this song be?
So that keeping a little list of songs,
and then you can start thinking about them.
What could this song be?
And who's talking, to who and why?
But just note that not everything has to be me talking to you.
So that's the who is talking because this whole thing of who is talking starts us
now on the path of what is the relationship of the singer to the audience?
And there could be four possible relationships that the singer has.
The singer could simply be a storyteller.
And so the idea would be something like,
he loved her so much,
and yet she failed to return his love.
She loved him so much,
and yet he failed to return her love., whichever way.
But note that the singer is now the storyteller and that I,
as the singer, saying he loved her so much,
and yet she did not return his love.
I am asking you to turn with me to observe him and her.
That is to say that we are the singer and you,
the audience, do not have an intimate relationship.
I'm simply the storyteller.
This is called third person narrative.
It's sort of a story kind of point of view.
So that we can call the most objective.
That sits out here with if we talk about cameras,
that sits out here as sort of the long range shot.
It takes in everything.
And the third person narrator is God.
The third person narrator has access to everybody's mind,
has access to the past,
the present, the future, knows everything, omniscient.
And so in the third person narrative,
we're taking the long distance view. It's not very intimate.
And there are many ideas that will work really well in third person narrative.
We bring the camera in closer to what's called first person narrative.
Then we're saying, I loved her so much and yet she never returned my love.
Now, you and I, the singer and the audience,
we have a relationship.
We have some intimacy.
I'm telling you something about me.
But yet she remains at a distance so that this first person narrative is a great format,
a great point of view for me expressing something about how I feel.
We have now an intimate relationship.
I could, by the way,
be telling you a story about something that happened to me,
and so I am still a narrator,
but I will be talking about me and her,
or me and him,
or me and them.
And the point of the story,
the why of the story will be something that I have
learned usually in this first person narrative.
So there's some intimacy involved in there in that first person narrative.
There's also something called second person narrative,
where the camera actually comes in a little bit closer.
And that would be you loved her so much,
and yet she did not return your love.
You loved her so much and yet she did not return your love.
And so, now, there is this kind of sense of intimacy,
although the word I,
or me, or us, or we,
or any of the first person pronouns are never going to be stated.
It's only you and she.
You can take a look at Dylan's Like
a Rolling Stone for that one or The Beatles' For No One,
really good examples of second person narrative.
Or on the Eagles' latest album,
a song called Somebody,
really good examples of second person narrative.
But the thing about that is is that at any second it seems
like the singer is going to peek around the corner and say I,
then open the curtain and say I so that there's the sense of connection,
the sense of intimacy that really isn't going to be fulfilled.
So it would be you loved her so much,
and yet she would not return your love.
And then, finally, the most intimate point of view—direct address.
I loved you so much,
and yet you would not return my love.
I loved you so much,
and yet you would not return my love.
Now, I want to say right up front that there are no rules in songwriting, only tools.
Well there is one rule,
and we'll talk about that later,
but there are only tools.
And so you should try,
when you have a song idea,
to deal with it from all four points of view and see which way
it feels the most genuine and see which way it feels the most real.
And then you can start working to build your song and create a journey for the listener,
create that relationship to the listener.
What am I to you?
What am I, the singer,
to you, the audience?
Am I the narrator talking he and she?
Am I a first person narrator talking I and she,
a second person narrator talking you and she,
or am I talking I and you?
And that's a point of view.
That's to deal with the question,
who is talking and to whom?
Who is talking and to whom?
The first two questions of the three questions that every song must answer.
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