Although the bulk of this session was self explanatory. We began it working & fine tuning on our Prosody pieces in groups. We were briefly reviewed and worked on them to fit the meaning behind the lyrics sonically. The feedback we received for our first draft of the Prosody song mainly focused on the theme we were basing our song around & how it would be hard to sonically represent it consistently for the duration of a two minute song. Now with Theo joining our group on Synth, we spent the session shifting the theme & deciding what would work better.
Prior to this session Theo had a traumatic experience driving home from Uni where he had collided with a deer that jumped in front of his car & severely shook him up. With this heavy on his mind he suggested it and the ideas began to generate faster & more frequently. We focused on the momentum of the song, following a sombre, tired drive home then a drastic sonic change in the BPM, chord progression & atmosphere of the song to represent the hit and how it emotionally effected him.
I feel like this draft of our song was the more effective & efficient way to portray prosody as the subject was a lot easier to represent and work with. I am happy with the song & even though I was unsure that the subject would be suitable for what we were trying to achieve, I believe it turned out to be successful overall.
The second half of the session was split into two sections – the first being a group discussion on songwriting methods, how we write currently and methods to help us do so in the future. The second section consisted of exercises & experiments involving lyric writing, the first involved writing as freely as possible for 2 minutes, then swapping with the person sat next to you & reading through theirs, picking out your favourite phrases.
We repeated this again, however we used the phrases we liked the most from the other persons lyrics to create a set of lyrics of our own. This was great as it took all the pressure off of rhythmic structure, melody & tempo to focus purely on the words & context which made it extremely liberating & easy to conjure up themes and imagery.
The second exercise consisted of writing haikus; a Japanese Poem that focuses on a set syllabic structure. The first line 5 syllables, the second 7 & the third 5 again (5 – 7 – 5). This also allowed me to look at writing lyrics a completely different way and think about the words & message more than other sonic elements of what is being said.
HAYDN ALIM - PROGRESSFOLIO 