Week 6, SAC Songwriting Challenge 2014
(Compose 6 songs in 6 weeks)
Overview of this week's blog:
3. Reflections/Epiphanies on the songwriting process
4. The assignment for week #6
4. The assignment for week #6
LISTEN to my song:
"Cosmic Rays"
on Soundcloud
(Click on the song title, above)
Lyrics:
Cosmic Rays
© Copyright March 30, 2014,
words and lyrics by Shira Katz,
Music by: Martin Clarke
Singer: Shera Shakera
Singer: Shera Shakera
Bleeding
heart, there’s a spaceship
Fly with me
like a rocket
We’ll float
around like stars orbiting Mars
And all the
planets
All night
Laser blast
wars like the Martians
Not knowing
what next will happen
Blasting
fears with time
(e)’clipsing
moonshine
Make cosmic
rays
Exploding
hurts like a rocket
Bleeding
heart, there’s a spaceship
Fear, pain,
and grief
Blasted
like meteors
In the sky
Stars
dressed like magic
Flash
dreams,
Rays cosmic
Twilight,
dreams we’ll generate
Stars
sparkle, make tears buckle, have faith
I’ll dry
your tears,
Smash your
fears into a space
Put your
heart in my spaceship
The
universe has large
Cosmic Rays
If I had
three wishes
I’d put
them into my spaceship
Faith, your
hopes and dreams
Launched
like galaxies
In the sky
Bleeding
heart, there’s a spaceship
Stars
dressed like magic
Flash
dreams,
Rays cosmic
Twilight,
dreams we’ll generate
Stars
sparkle, make tears buckle, have faith
I’ll dry
your tears,
Shine some
faith into that space
Listening
to hopes, and all the words that you say
Mean so
much
If I had
three wishes
I’d put
them into my spaceship
Faith, your
hopes and dreams
Launched
like galaxies
Into the
sky
If I had
three wishes
I’d put
them into my spaceship
Flash faith
Then shine
Hopes
Make dreams
Cosmic rays
Enjoy the
song & feedback and reposting on soundcloud is always appreciated!
Peace/luv from: Shera Shakera
Reflections/Epiphanies on the songwriting process
Week #6 –
SAC Challenge 2014
© Written
by Shira Katz
Wow, I
can’t believe the six weeks is over, it went so fast, but I am forever grateful
to Ms. Lily Cheng from SAC and Mr. Christopher Ward (co-songwriter of the song
“Black Velvet by Alannah Myles) for giving us this opportunity to write six
songs in six weeks and blog about our experiences! Thank you!
I can
definitely say that week 6 was the biggest challenge. We were only given a
week’s notice to find out what the challenge was, and it was to collaborate
with someone on a song. It was up to us to decide who to collaborate with, how
to organize it, and what to write about.
Initially, an SAC member that I have never
met (Mr. Kevin Roach) so kindly offered for me to send him my original song
lyrics on any topic. The plan was for him to create a musical composition to
accompany my words, so I took about a half a week to write a song. It was too
hard for me to “just write lyrics” so I created my own music to go with my
words, so that the phrasing and lyrics would sound very musical, but then the
plan was to send only the lyrics, thereby not letting the music influence his
ideas on how he would perceive the creating background music. Due to some
technical glitches with email, and timing problems, we decided to drop our
collaboration for now, and focus our energies instead on finishing our other
collaborations, as we both already knew that we were each involved with other,
separate song collaborations for week #6.
At this
point I decided to just put all my time, focus and energy into my main
collaboration that I was working on, which turned out to be fantastic!
I contacted
a local musician, Mr. Martin Clarke, in week #5, as soon as we had been given
this challenge. He had organized an SAC meeting last year, where I’d had the
privilege of meeting our very talented and wonderful SAC member, Ms. Angela Saini. I had discussed doing a future collaboration with Martin, but had
yet to follow up on it.
This
challenge gave us a perfect excuse to collaborate, and on such a short notice!
We met up, and the collaboration was amazing! I listened to some of his
previous compositions, where he had ideas of themes and stories to accompany
most of his brilliant musical compositions. I was not used to the idea of
fitting lyrics into someone else’s completed composition, especially those that
were written with a theme and background stories in mind.
I was used
to writing lyrics and improvising words with music, then editing and
collaborating on improvement of the words and phrasing to match the music, as
in my previous collaboration with another SAC member (Mr. Jimmy Alloul, also a
very talented and phenomenal songwriter and musician).
For this
week #6’s collaborating challenge, I had a song idea about comparing different
generations as if each one feels the other is from outer space. I had recently
written about this topic during our brainstorming & stream-of-consciousness
writing challenge in week #5. I challenged Martin to compose music that matched
my theme and ideas, and I came up with a song title, “Generation Alien,” but I
later changed that title to “Cosmic Rays.”
He
challenged me to use the software called “prezi”, to brainstorm words related
to generations and aliens and outer space. Then, he let his fingers do the
talking, creating a piano composition that in his perception, sounded like
being in the clouds. He recommended painting a description, and rhyming, and
getting inspiration from songwriter Bernie Taupin.
I started
to improvise some lyrics and voice arrangements to go with the sounds,
arranging my voice in ways that sounded nice to accompany his piano
arrangements, and trying to come up with good lyrics was a difficult challenge.
Thinking
about week#3 in our songwriting challenge, where we had to “think outside the
box” by writing in a way that deviates from our normal patterns of songwriting,
I suggested that he change up some sounds in order to add an element of
surprise, so he agreed and added a “space” sound effect, which sounded like the
twilight zone, and it totally worked and gave the music more of a feeling about
being in another galaxy!
This was
absolutely wonderful, and I improvised by singing some words, phrasing and
voicing them to go with the music, but I needed more time to work on it. I also
suggested for him to copy and paste parts of the music that I really liked, in
order to extend the song.
Time went
fast, and after about three hours I knew from experience that it was time for
us to stop, even though the lyrics were not set and the song was not complete.
In my own experience, sleeping on an idea will bring new life and improvements
to it the following day. I wanted to let it sink in so that I could get a feel
of possible lyrics, phrasing and voice arrangements to accompany Martin’s piano
arrangements.
Martin sent
me the music track via email and I finished a full draft of lyrics, sang them
and created a voice tune to go with his music. I had to listen to the music
many times, including my own recordings, taking notes on lines that I created
that I felt I could improve on, by painting more of a descriptive picture,
coming up with more memorable words and better phrasings.
After
sleeping on it again, I listened to the instrumental composition a few more
times, and started improvising more words, by singing and arranging my voice
with my original lyrics to accompany the composition. I found it very difficult
to find the appropriate phrasing. I had to record myself several times, but it
felt as if my lyrics were improving with each improvised recording, and I was
also taking notes, listening to my recordings, reviewing them, improving them,
and researching topics, to come up with more appropriate words to match the
theme of the song with regards to aliens in outer space.
I slept on
it again, and then thought about the lyrics in every spare moment of my “free”
time the next day (while eating,
showering, waiting in a lineup, and during transportation time), and then
tweaked the words again at the end of each day.
I finished
writing the song, and then he sent me a more complete version of the background
music, which sounded fantastic!
I decided
to start from scratch all over again because the full background composition
gave me more ideas, and I listened to it many more times.
I
researched the Internet to come up with words and ideas related to being in
outer space, galaxies, etc. For example, in researching words related to the
galaxy and outer space, I saw the word “cosmic” and “solar rays” and then I
thought, to change it around, as we learned to do in week #4 (changing
clichés), I thought of the term “cosmic rays” and then, when I sang it, the
word “rays” has a “zzz” sound at the end, as if going into outer space, and
matching the sound effect that was created by Martin! Genius song moment!
I also
dropped the idea about generations, and decided to write about dreams, hopes,
and faith, because the background music reminded me of the cliché “when you
wish upon a star” and it sounded dreamy, a bit like a Disney song, and had a
similar style of music to “Circle of Life” (Elton John) because of the primary
instrument, the piano, that was used for the composition.
I revised
my first draft and wrote a brand new draft of the song, paying careful
attention to phrasing, and carefully inserting words related to the space theme
and ideas about hopes, dreams, fears, tears and faith. I was also thinking
personally about someone who recently had a health scare, and how I wish I
could send out a message of faith to the stars to help my friend get through
this difficult time, so this is where my emotion comes into the song.
I decided
to combine the idea of hopes and fears with sending them into outer space,
carrying emotions in a spaceship, blasting fears, letting hope shine with the
stars, and using those analogies and images, I had found better words and
better vocal arrangements, all on my own, to suit the music. I collaborated
with myself, as an editor of my own lyrics, phrasings and vocal arrangements,
by listening and re-recording and rewriting the song several times, until time
ran out and I had to finalize it.
The most
difficult part was finalizing the lyrics, because I still have many ideas on
how each line could potentially be tweaked or changed. One can take the same
musical composition and write ten different sets of lyrics and themes to match
the same composition! So it’s amazing how quickly humans can become so attached
to certain words to accompany a musical composition, rarely or never thinking
to change up those words! Can you imagine what The Beatles “She Loves You,
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah” would sound like if those words were replaced by “Don’t Give
Up, No, No, No” (Instead of: “She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah”?
Extra
Notes: Here are some lyric ideas I played around with while writing the song:
I had a
bunch of ideas for writing lyrics, and played around with potential opening
lines, and had to make a decision. I decided that the words “twilight dreams”
is the most memorable in my brain compared to other potential lines that could
work, as I was brainstorming ideas for lyrics.
Final
version:
Twilight,
dreams will generate (Initially, it was “Twilight, dreams can escape”)
Stars
sparkle, make tears buckle, have faith
Here is
another idea I had for interchanging those two lines:
Life’s hard, lone star have faith
Dream’s
gone, don’t lose your rays
And
another idea of mine for those two lines:
One
heart, star lost its ray
I believe in you star, have faith
Another idea of mine for those two lines:
Lone star, you’ve lost your ray
Dream’s
gone, find another day
And on and
on it goes, as the potential to change the lyrics is a never-ending process!
I settled
for the most unusual sounding, obscure words because when I looked away from my
lyrics, the phrase “Twilight dreams” was the most memorable in my mind, I found
that the sparkle/buckle line sounds catchy.
Thank you
very much, again, to Lily Cheng, Christopher Ward, everyone at SAC for making
this happen, my collaborator on week #6, Martin Clarke, and all the members of
SAC that participated in this challenge, supporting me with your wonderful
comments and encouragement!
Lovely
people, I hope to meet you all some day!
Until then,
may your dreams shine like: Cosmic Rays!
Best
wishes/love from:
The Challenge – Week 6 – Collaboration
March 18, 2014
Congratulations you’ve made it to the sixth challenge. Most of you know that no songwriter is an island. Collaboration is not just a buzzword. You would have a hard time finding any top 10 songs with only one songwriter. In fact, some songs have over 10 names attached to its creation. Furthermore, collaborating is also an important part of building your network.
This week’s challenge:
By now you’ve gotten the opportunity to listen to songs from the other participants in the challenge. Connect with those whom you feel compliment your skills and style. In groups of 2 or more, collaborate on a song. You can decide if you will do it in real time via Skype or by sending tracks and lyrics to each other via email. Please blog about your experience, the highlights and the challenges.
Deadline: April 1st
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