Posting Original Songs

[III]

We encourage members to post their song ideas in this forum, regardless of how polished or raw they might be. We also encourage the other members to give honest, respectful feedback on those songs.

The “song idea” must contain musical content, whether in the form of articulated musical ideas (chord progression, time signature, etc.) or links to the actual musical production. Lyrics with no musical content more appropriately belong in the Poetry (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=85) forum (password: citrus) where they can be evaluated based on their poetic content. If you do choose to post lyrics in the poetry forum, please specify that they're intended as lyrics.

Please post your work in the Music Lab (http://absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=170). Password is andante.

[III]

Woo hoo! We've got a new password protected room for our Music Lab (http://absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=170)! Thanks Mac! This gives us a greater degree of privacy to share our work without webcrawlers seeing it. The password is andante.

ETA: I've moved some of our more current original song threads into the Lab, if you're looking for them. Your subscriptions should take you directly there.

[JRH]

Song Lyrics and Poetry are related, but they are very different in many respects. Few serious poems (as opposed to Verse) can be successfully set to music and fewer Song Lyrics can be taken seriously as Poetry when stripped of their Music (Despite examples like Dylan, Cohen, Simon amd Billy Joel, whose lyrics, are considered primarily as "Verse" or "Minor" Poetry, when compared to that of Masters like Yeats, Frost and Eliot) or any Major Poets of Classical Antiquity.

To begin with they have different purposes. Poems are meant to take all forms of experience (both internal and external) and put them in an organized form that will communicate with a reader on a multiple levels, by recreating universal experience so that it might provoke thought or emotion or understanding on multiple levels.

Although Poems can can draw from "Personal" experience, they are more properly suited to dealing with classical questions of Life, Death, History, Conflict, Philosphy, Social Criticism and various moral and ethical issues, and all are most effective if they are presented on a universal level.

The forms that Poems can take are almost unlimited as long as the Basic elements of craftsmanship are employed encompassing Purpose, (whether it be description, analysis , or expression of an emotional or intellectual response to experience, Focus which centers on a single subject and be bounded by Unities of Expression, Thought, and Image which must end in a Denouement or Outcome that Unites the whole.

They can encompass such complexity because they may be examined at leisure and returned to over and over again to capture subtleties of meaning.

Song Lyrics are much more limited as their "primary purpose" is to provide Entertainment and Pleasure by provoking emotional response through describing Personal Interactions, providing Social Criticism, or communicating Feeling.

This may sound roughly similar to the goals of poetry, but "Lyrics", because they must be grasped and absorbed at a rapid pace, are generally limited to a single theme that can be responded to on an emotional or direct level without requiring (or encouraging) thought beyond the basic message, although other levels and any subliminal messages may be generated or otherwise carried by the music itself.

Moreover "Traditional Lyrics' were and are generally encumbered by the necessity of regular Rhythms, Rhyme and a fairly standard over all structure of Verse-Chorus- Bridge-Chorus-Verse-Chorus or variations thereof, which would generally NOT be considered appropriate to Poetry

Some modern lyrics, (particularly HipHop and Rap) are more free form but still subject to basic Rhythms and constrained by the need for multiple internal Rhymes which are often extremely repetitious and even more limited than "Traditional Lyrics" in the subject matter they can effectively express, and even less inclined to multiple levels of meaning.

I write both Songs and Poetry and find that they not only require differences in approach and intent (aside from my own commitment to elements of craftsmanship) but that they seldom can crossover easily from one form to the other, (although I have in fact done so at least a few times in both directions, and found that, except in a couple of cases it took radical revisions in form to do so).

Hope this gives some insight.

JRH

[anne_marie]

Hello I am new here and would like to ask a few questions :)

I have some recordings of myself singing that I would like to post but would like to clarify what the definition of Original songs is

Also, what kinds of links are allowed? For instance, am I allowed to post a link to a download on 4shared.com or does it have to be a web page where the song can be listened to?

Thanks
Anne Marie

[III]

Hello I am new here and would like to ask a few questions :)


Hi Anne Marie and welcome to the Cooler!


I have some recordings of myself singing that I would like to post but would like to clarify what the definition of Original songs is


In this forum, since nobody is paying to download songs, "original" songs can be songs you've written or your interpretation of a song. They can be recordings of a cover or parody of lyrics. Basically anything musical that you're working on that you'd like to get feedback and criticisim on.


Also, what kinds of links are allowed? For instance, am I allowed to post a link to a download on 4shared.com or does it have to be a web page where the song can be listened to?


You can post a link directly to your file or to the page where your file is found, as long as it's a "safe" website that doesn't do anything detrimental to the user's computer.

Thanks and I look forward to hearing your music.

[anne_marie]

Hi Anne Marie and welcome to the Cooler!
>>>In this forum, since nobody is paying to download songs, "original" songs can be songs you've written or your interpretation of a song.

Good to know. I just wanted to clarify before postign and finding out that it legally isn't "original"

>>>You can post a link directly to your file or to the page where your file is found, as long as it's a "safe" website that doesn't do anything detrimental to the user's computer.

I am in the process of archiving them on an old website that I had set up a while back but did not do anything with them.

[comradec]

Poems are meant to take all forms of experience (both internal and external) and put them in an organized form that will communicate with a reader on a multiple levels, by recreating universal experience so that it might provoke thought or emotion or understanding on multiple levels.


Er ... where'd you get that from?

Who says that poems are 'meant' to do that and who says that songs are not?

[JRH]

Hi Comradec,

I got it from a BA in English from the University of Puget Sound in 1965 specializing in Literature and Criticism, a year and 1/2 working towards a Masters in Twenty Century Poetry at Washington State University in the early 1970s, 2 years of Music Theory at Tacoma Community College in the 1980s and 50 years of experience in writing Poetry, (including 30 years in writing Song Lyrics from about 1980 on).

Please note the distinctions I make between Song Lyrics and Poetry in my previous post and how they relate to my own "personal" experience in writing both.

My Poetry can be found all over the Poetry forum under JRH and my Lyrics/Songs can be found in this Forum under JRH and on www.acidplanet.com by searching for J.R. Hoye or following this link: http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?PID=321475&t=4888

Hope that answers your question.

JRH

[comradec]

Hope that answers your question.

JRH


About nine months after I asked it, yes.

But, with all that academic training, I would have expected that you might have learned to tell the difference between personal opinions and objective facts (and the grey areas in-between the two).

I wouldn't necessarily take issue with your analysis of the difference between poems and songs if you had described those differences as tendencies or something along those lines.

However, you have attempted to prescribe what poems and songs are 'meant' to do, which you're in no position to do.

You can, of course, describe what makes a song or a poem work for you personally, or even, on the basis of empirical evidence or your experience, what tends to make them work for the population at large or groups within it, but not in the absolute and prescriptive terms you've used here.

[JRH]

I admit to tending to generalize too readily from my own experience and what my studies have shown me about the elements that have made up successful Songs and Poems because I've spent my life consciously trying to answer these questions but it seems to me, that educated personal opinion is the best option we have particularly if it's based on valid critical and analytical values, and it seems natural to me to state such conclusions in "personal" terms.

The 9 month delay in answering your question is simple enough to answer, I haven't been around the forum for that period as nothing has been going on of interest to me.

I'd be very interested in seeing what you consider the "objective" facts to be and why you object so strongly to my generalizing what I have learned over the years. If your training and experience has lead to other conclusions, feel free to express them as I'm always willing to learn and expand my horizons.

JRH

[comradec]

I'd be very interested in seeing what you consider the "objective" facts to be and why you object so strongly to my generalizing what I have learned over the years. If your training and experience has lead to other conclusions, feel free to express them as I'm always willing to learn and expand my horizons.


I'm not saying there are any objective facts in this matter. One could no doubt come up with a few - eg, X percentage of songs reaching #1 in the US charts used a particular type of chord, X% had no chorus, and so on - but that would require research I haven't undertaken.

I just took issue with the notion that songs or poems in general are 'meant' to do a particular thing when they can only be meant to do what their authors intended (aside from the intentions of subsequent performers, broadcasters, listeners, etc). Whether they achieve what was intended by their authors is another issue, of course, and they might also have entirely unintended consequences.

Sometimes it's more important to qualify what is being said than to cite one's qualifications to say it - especially in the context of this thread where the post to which you were responding was seeking clarification of the concept of 'originality'.

[JRH]

I agree with you that it is as or more important to qualify what is being said than to cite one's qualifications and freely admit I tend to overgeneralize in that regard.

I was trying to convey the process utilized in "creating" a song, and particularly a lyric, relative to what the Author/Composer was trying to do. It was my impression that Anna Marie was more concerned with aspects of performance that would be acceptable as an "original" effort on this Forum.

Musically, I myself try to write my songs so that they can be performed in a variety of musical styles without distorting my basic purpose or intent and I agree wholeheartedly that performers, broadcasters and listeners interpretations will greatly color the ultimate effectiveness of any given song, and that's why so many good and different versions of quality songs can be effective over time.

In any case, your responses have been appreciated and clearly define some of the weaknesses in my presentation of what I'm trying to say.

Jim Hoye, (JRH)

[Vince524]

I wouldn't mind posting some stuff, but all I could post were lyrics. I can play my songs on guitar, but I don't know how to write music and I have no real way of recording the music. Can I post them here?

[Regypsy]

Hi,
I'm writing lyrics at the moment. Can i join in?

[JackNamesThePlanets]

Two songs by my pop-punk band.

Certainly not lyrically brilliant or anything but catchy :)

http://www.myspace.com/slowmotionmusic/music/songs/Dancin-Robots-69281213