This week was all about perfecting and finishing our second song. When we came into the lesson on Tuesday we had completed the introduction, first verse and chorus of the song, but needed to complete a second verse and decide how to finish the song.
We started by singing through what we had and discussing how the story should be continued. This was harder this week due to the fact that all 4 of us were suffering with a lack of creativity, this is the one thing we have struggled with when writing together. However, we knew we needed to finish the song, so we each brought forward ideas and workshopped these ideas by playing them through. Daisy was keen to not repeat the melody of the first verse exactly in order to make the song less repetitive and therefore, put forward an extended melody which Bekah and Daisy then put lyrics to. I then suggested that the second verse needed to lead into a loud dramatic chorus and therefore felt the melody of the 2nd part of the verse should be completely different and rise in pitch, we all then shouted out lyric ideas and chose the ones we agreed on. We find that this method of songwriting really works for us although it is slower than having one lead songwriter.
The second verse ended up looking like this:
You broke me
I thought I could be strong
The sun has set and gone, I held on for far too long (Daisy's extended melody)
You stole my claim to freedom
You rained on every season
I hate the way I can't move on
(Change of melody to lead into chorus - rise of tension).
We ran out of time in this Tuesday session to work on the ending, but we planned to meet on Thursday for an extra rehearshal, in this extra practice we focused on polishing the song by paying close attention to dynamics, texture and the ending.
We felt that that beginning of the song should be simple and at a low dynamic, therefore instead of having two guitars strumming we chose to have me playing a simple finger picked pattern and Lucy then kept her strumming rhythm. We also really liked the idea of having a pause at the end of the first verse when we sing 'now' before the chorus to create a sense of loss but also to create tension. However, with this pause we had to spend a while practising the re-entry into the chorus to get it exactly in time, but we worked it out in the end. We felt that the 2nd half of the second needed to build in order to match the frustration of the lyrics and so both guitars strum at this point and I play a driving strumming pattern to give the accompaniment some depth.
We then discussed the ending, I suggested we repeat the second part of the second verse but in a more vulnerable way I felt that was very emotive and the girls agreed, however what to do next took more discussion, at first we though we should just repeat the chorus quietly and finish, but we all thought that made the song feel like it finished too soon. In the end we decided to have another (larger) build up. So we tried repeating the chorus and building it up dynamically so that the 2nd half of the chorus was at full volume and we loved it, Lucy then suggested that we finished the whole song with a single voice singing a repeat of the first verse and it sounded beautiful so the song was finally finished.
On performance day (Friday) we ran through the song with Charile Pike and we really loved what the drums brought to the song, but we do appreciate that there needs to be more drums in the louder parts of the songs to match the lyrics. I felt that our performance went really well, but we all agreed with Charlotte's comment about our harmonies. We do struggle with harmonies at time because of the fact that all 4 of us have very different tones and styles of intonation. In the future, we are going to perfect our harmonies by singing them without any accompaniment, we need to learn to listen to eachother and blend our voices more efficiently, but I am confident we will be able to do so and I am really enjoying the way 'the girl band' is working together to create great songs!
Until next week!
Bethan :)
We started by singing through what we had and discussing how the story should be continued. This was harder this week due to the fact that all 4 of us were suffering with a lack of creativity, this is the one thing we have struggled with when writing together. However, we knew we needed to finish the song, so we each brought forward ideas and workshopped these ideas by playing them through. Daisy was keen to not repeat the melody of the first verse exactly in order to make the song less repetitive and therefore, put forward an extended melody which Bekah and Daisy then put lyrics to. I then suggested that the second verse needed to lead into a loud dramatic chorus and therefore felt the melody of the 2nd part of the verse should be completely different and rise in pitch, we all then shouted out lyric ideas and chose the ones we agreed on. We find that this method of songwriting really works for us although it is slower than having one lead songwriter.
The second verse ended up looking like this:
You broke me
I thought I could be strong
The sun has set and gone, I held on for far too long (Daisy's extended melody)
You stole my claim to freedom
You rained on every season
I hate the way I can't move on
(Change of melody to lead into chorus - rise of tension).
We ran out of time in this Tuesday session to work on the ending, but we planned to meet on Thursday for an extra rehearshal, in this extra practice we focused on polishing the song by paying close attention to dynamics, texture and the ending.
We felt that that beginning of the song should be simple and at a low dynamic, therefore instead of having two guitars strumming we chose to have me playing a simple finger picked pattern and Lucy then kept her strumming rhythm. We also really liked the idea of having a pause at the end of the first verse when we sing 'now' before the chorus to create a sense of loss but also to create tension. However, with this pause we had to spend a while practising the re-entry into the chorus to get it exactly in time, but we worked it out in the end. We felt that the 2nd half of the second needed to build in order to match the frustration of the lyrics and so both guitars strum at this point and I play a driving strumming pattern to give the accompaniment some depth.
We then discussed the ending, I suggested we repeat the second part of the second verse but in a more vulnerable way I felt that was very emotive and the girls agreed, however what to do next took more discussion, at first we though we should just repeat the chorus quietly and finish, but we all thought that made the song feel like it finished too soon. In the end we decided to have another (larger) build up. So we tried repeating the chorus and building it up dynamically so that the 2nd half of the chorus was at full volume and we loved it, Lucy then suggested that we finished the whole song with a single voice singing a repeat of the first verse and it sounded beautiful so the song was finally finished.
On performance day (Friday) we ran through the song with Charile Pike and we really loved what the drums brought to the song, but we do appreciate that there needs to be more drums in the louder parts of the songs to match the lyrics. I felt that our performance went really well, but we all agreed with Charlotte's comment about our harmonies. We do struggle with harmonies at time because of the fact that all 4 of us have very different tones and styles of intonation. In the future, we are going to perfect our harmonies by singing them without any accompaniment, we need to learn to listen to eachother and blend our voices more efficiently, but I am confident we will be able to do so and I am really enjoying the way 'the girl band' is working together to create great songs!
Until next week!
Bethan :)