Last Wednesday we got to have the rehearsal space at Munster South Shore Arts. Oh, what a difference a piano makes-- not that Rich is a slouch on the guitar or anything, but when demonstrating the full tonal range of an E-flat minor 9 chord, 88 keys will always trump 6 strings. It's back to the Board Room next week.
This week we began to tackle the question of putting music to lyrics, so this makes it the second time in a week that we've touched on the Circle of Fifths (we talked about it here for those of you in our Monday night's White Ripple Community Band class).
Here's the Circle of Fifths in all its glory:
If you have lyrics and are unsure how to add music to them, a good place to start is with the Circle of Fifths. Let's say we want to put our song in the key of C, at the top of the circle. Look left, look right, look underneath, and you have F, G, and Am. There are so many songs that use those four chords. As Rich pointed out in class last week, nearly every song from the 1950s uses C, Am, F, and G-- Sherry Baby, Stand By Me, and Teenager in Love are just three examples. They all share the same bones. It's the skin-- the lyrics, how we arrange those chords together, that makes the song your own.
Another source of music inspiration is to move counter-clockwise around the circle. Say we start with our key of C again. Going counter-clockwise around the circle gives us C, F, and B-flat.
B-flat + F + C = With a Little Help from My Friends
C + B-flat + F = Taking Care of Business
A good way to find music for your song is to sing to the lyrics you write. Or, if lyrics give you trouble, sing the melody before you have the words. Searching for words? Keep your ears open, especially for conversations. It's hard (not impossible, because nothing is impossible) to rhyme irreconcilable differences, and so much easier to sing it just didn't work out. That's the way people usually talk.
See you next week! Mark and Sherry, hope you're both feeling better.
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