Josh Brooks Music

Our first songwriting effort, inspired by our study of Halloween and Mexico's Day of the Dead.  We also used our first songwriting experience as a way to work on rhyme.  Some of the rhymes are pretty sophisticated for a first effort, particularly in a large group!

And part II!

We went back to the well for this one.  Writing new lyrics to familiar songs is a great way to break the ice... sorry, no pun intended!

'Koala Fight' has its origins in an earlier Writer's Workshop session.  We had read 'My Coat of Many Colors' and talked about how songs can tell a story, and then listened to Dolly Parton's recorded version of her hit song.  My assignment for our writers that day was to write about a story they might like to turn into a song.  Ow. F. skipped the story part altogether and went right to the song, sketching out his idea for a koala fight and then dictating some words.  He also had a melody in mind (along with the 'oh oh oh's, and we used the cell phone recording we made that day when we fleshed out the completed version. Ow. F. was clear about how he wanted the song to be structured, right down to the frequently repeating chorus and the doubling of the 1st verse at the end.

While Ow. F and I were hard at work in the hallway writing 'Koala,' L.C. was hard at work with Ms. Karen dictating "ideas" for her own song.  When she finally got her turn to write, she turned to these "ideas" to come up with lyrics.  The melody was a little harder to come by, but after some improvising ("tune doodling" as one author puts it), the song started to come together.  L.C. was very specific about which parts were verses and which part was the refrain, and even improvised a third part that adds a little melodic magic to this song about magic ponies.

Another song that popped up whole from our 'Coat of Many Color's Writer's Workshop session!  J.A. might have found inspiration for this song about a shirt that won't be contained from a song written by a long-ago preschooler that we sing sometimes called 'The Shirt That Burped.'  Both songs have two things in common: a great bit of absurdist storytelling (intermingled with the real-life concerns of the average kindergartener), with a chorus you can't help but sing along to.  J.A. dictated all of the lyrics to Ms. Karen, and also came up with the melody and song structure.  All I have to say is, check your shirt drawer!

While A.E.'s song also emerged from the same Writer's Workshop session, hers is a bit different in that she didn't dictate it, but instead sounded out the words herself.  We used the original piece as a springboard for the finished song.  When A.E. said she wanted her song to consist of the one verse she had written, we looked for other examples of one verse songs, and came up with 'Old Lady Leary' (think, 'late one night while we were all in bed... FIRE FIRE FIRE!').  We looked at the way 'Old Lady Leary' is structured, and A.E. decided she wanted her one-verse song to be similarly structured, with a rambunctious chorus between each verse and each verse getting quieter and quieter.  Again, the melodic structure of the song was modeled by A.E.; I just suggested chords and rhythmic phrasing.

As the opening riff makes clear, D.H.R. drew inspiration from Pat Benatar's 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot.'  Referencing familiar pop tunes is a great way to kick start songwriting, and harkens back to the folk process, in which new or revised lyrics were put to existing melodies.  The name 'Cookie Love' will be familiar to most denizens of Ferrisburgh!  The verses in D.H.R.'s song serve to explain his thinking about what 'hit me with your best shot' is about.  As with all the songs thus far, D.H.R.'s melody is based upon some 'tune doodling' we did before putting pen to paper.  He also carried this song around for a few days, singing snippets into the tape recorder so we would have pieces to work with when it came time to write.

Like the previous song, W.A.'s song is inspired by pop culture- in this case, a favorite Hot Wheels movie.  W.A.'s original idea was to re-write a song from the movie.  We wrote down the words to the song, and then looked at ways we could change the lyrics to make them his own.  This meant changing some characters and coming up with original verses.  W.A. modeled the guitar part he wanted, and I did my best to replicate it.  After a couple of unsuccesful attempts, W.A. explained "I want it to sound like J.A.'s (The Jumping Shirt).  Although it seems early, this is something that happens every year; children start using each other's songs as templates for their own.  Can't wait to see what next week's songwriters bring to the table!

A few weeks ago, I was talking with a fellow parent about our daughters' shared love of historical fiction- think the 'American Girl' books series.  I suggested a PBS series that had been on a few years ago, 'Liberty Kids,' which is about the Revolutionary War.  Recently, her younger daughter and a classmate started introducing themes and characters from 'Liberty Kids' during play at recess, turning Hero Factory and ninjas into British and colonial soldiers.  We were talking about the growing interest in the Revolutionary War at meeting this week, and I told the children the story of the dugout from Otter Creek to Hawkins Bay that a group of Americans dug to escape a British blockade.  Fast forward to today's songwriting session.  C.G. said he wanted to write a song "about history... the Civil War and other wars that happened."  When he started ad libblng lyrics about the British army (with a slight accent!) I wasn't surprised, but soon a thread emerged that sounded a lot like the story of the dugout.  I pointed this out to C.G., and he decided to turn his song into a story about this historical event.  We transcribed the spontaneous lyrics, and then started to pare them down, making changes and additions to help the story come out.  Sounds a little like an old English ballad to me, melody courtesy of C.G.

N.J. came into school this week with an entire set of lyrics for her song written in book form (transcribed by her big sister).  The lyrics were beautifully descriptive and didn't seem like they would need much work.  When we sat down to talk about putting her lyrics to music, I asked N.J. if she had any ideas about how they should sound.  Rather than hum a tune, N.J. surprised me by immediately reaching for my guitar.  She plucked at the high strings and said "I want it to go a little like this."  I started to pick out a few different patterns, and soon we had settled on one.  We used the guitar part to work out a melody and phrasing, and after deciding on a "second part" to break up the lyrics a little, N.J.'s beautiful song about the first day of summer had its accompaniment.