Lyrics

[Kelteglow]

Hi All .Playing the Melody ,the chords and then sing remembering the words .I have just about got the first two worked out but I often still need to have the lyrics of the song nearby to refere to whilst performing .One of my fortunate problems is I have so many nice songs to sing .Now comeing back to the point of this blog.How do any of you learn your new song ?Do you have a formula? Or method of memorising the words. Bob

[michael sam wild]

Listen over and again, get the words down from ear manually, not from Mudcat- you can checklater. sing aloud and find best key for voice, then adapt for concertina but voice comes first don't squeeze into keys you can play in.

 

Then sing all week and sing in your head too Get it 100% then go onto concertina!

[SteveS]

My approach is:

 

- learn the song only - melody & lyrics - commit these to memory - sing it as much as possible, get the lyrics off pat, go over the words in my head

- decide what I want from an accompaniment depending on the song - could be smooth harmonic accompaniment or bouncey rhythmic

- work out and practice the fingering - chords and transitions, rhythm & harmony - hum the melody as I work this out and practice

- put the two together - tentatively start introducing the lyrics around humming the melody - after a while I start to increase the quatity of lyrics until I have them all in the song with accompaniment

- loads of practice

 

Hope this helps

 

Also listening to other peoples interpretations of songs and their accompaniments (not necessarily on concertina) can be a big help.

Edited February 2, 2011 by SteveS

[Anglo-Irishman]

Bob,

 

As I understand your posting, you don't have much trouble with tunes and chord progressions. It goes without saying that you have to have the melody fluent and the chord changes smooth before you acompany yourself singing. Your mind must be free to put the lyrics across, and if you do this with expression, the same expressiveness will rub off on the accompaniment, so the fingerwork can be "on automatic" without sounding mechanical. This applies to the concertina as much as any instrument.

In a song, the singing drives the accompaniment, not vice versa!

 

A few points about lyrics: a recording is definitely not the best source! In most recordings, some words are pronounced indistinctly, others get drowned out by the accompaniment, and even recording artists sometimes make mistakes. Find the song in a song-book, or print it out from the Internet. If there are several versions, take the one you like best.

 

Lyrics are in verse. Verse is the oldest form of literature in our culture, because reading is a fairly modern skill. Major works like the Odyssey or Beowulf were recited, not read. So the author had to make them easy to remember, and used verse for this purpose. Verse has to do with thythm and rhyme. A line of a song has a certain number of stressed syllables, and the unstressed ones are arranged round them in various patterns: iambic, dactylic, trochaic (remember English Literature at school?). A verse of a song has a certain rhyme scheme: consecutive lines ending with the same sound, or alternate lines ending the same.

 

The point is that the rhythm and rhyme scheme of a lyric narrow down the choice of word at any given point, so you haven't got many alternatives to choose from, so it's easier to find the right word.

 

Lyrics are also messages. A narrative ballad, like Whiskey in the Jar, tells a story; a sentimental love song conveys feelings that the poet wants to share.

 

So the first step in learning a lyric is to get familiar with the form - the rhythm and rhyme schemes - and the content - the story told or feelings expressed.

 

Then fill in the words!

Start line by line. If the words you think are there don't fit the rhythmic pattern of the line, they're wrong! Some lines are easier than others.

 

Then put the learnt lines together to form verses. Often, lines 2 and 4 of a four-line verse have a different rhythm from lines 1 and 3, so you'll notice if you get them in the wrong sequence. Also, the rhyme scheme helps you to put the right lines in the same verse.

 

When you've got all the verses off by heart, you now have to get them in the right sequence. This is where you need to know the content. In a ballad, the story has to unfold logically, so if you think about it, you have to sing THIS verse before THAT verse! Love lyrics or nature lyrics are less clear in this respect, but often, if you really anylyse the verses, you'll find some sort of progression in them. For example: Verse 1 says how beautiful she is; Verse 2 says how much you love her; and Verse 3 says what you'd do to win her.

Something that I do is to give a synopsis of the song - I sing in English for German-speaking audiences, so this helps to get the audience on board. But you can also use this as a learning tool, just for your own benefit. It's probably the best way to really internalise the content.

 

Song learnt!

 

As to performance: for me, the most difficult part is getting all the verses in the right sequencee, and not missing any out. I used to have the lyrics on a low music stand visible out of the corner of my eye, and just glanced at the first word of the next verse to keep me on track. But when I've done a song a few times, I don't need that.

Instead, I learn to associate the last line of a verse with the first line of the next verse. This glues everything together.

It also helps to make a mental note of how many verses the song has, so that you'll know that you've got them all.

 

If you're doing your own arrangements, it's not a bad idea to insert a short instrumental bridge between verses (as long as it doesn't interrupt the flow of the information). You can use the time to focus on the start of the next verse - and if you have a momentary "lyric blackout", you can repeat the bridge until you can pick it up again.

 

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

John

[michael sam wild]

John I still maintain learning from a singer not a sheet and putting in the mental effort at first . Am I alone in finding all those plastic file sheets on tables at sessions an intrusion on the oral tradition.

 

what type of concertina do people find best for accompaniment? Anglos can cost a lot so what key to buy?

[Chris Drinkwater]

A nice baritone EC, is what many people consider to be a good concertina to play to accompany the human voice; and because it is fully chromatic, you can play in any key, so that's not an issue, as it is with anglos.

 

Chris

[michael sam wild]

Steve Turner has such an EC and doesn't like Tenor Treble for acompaniment too much. John Kirkpatrick and Brian Peters, harry Scurfield and Andy Turner seem happy with TT Anglo in C/G and get a range of keys ( extra buttons)

 

Jon Boden sings with Maccann duet

[Anglo-Irishman]

John I still maintain learning from a singer not a sheet and putting in the mental effort at first . Am I alone in finding all those plastic file sheets on tables at sessions an intrusion on the oral tradition.

 

what type of concertina do people find best for accompaniment? Anglos can cost a lot so what key to buy?

 

 

Sam,

Nothing wrong with learning from a singer. What I was warning against was learning from a recording of a singer. With a real, live singer, you can ask him to speak any passages you didn't grasp from his singing. With a recording, you can't.

 

Lyrics sheets at sessions? On one hand, if you don't know a song, don't sing it. It's not paying the song its due respect. On the other hand, if you want people to sing along - and that's the idea behind sessions, isn't it? - you'll need sheets for them. Even, or especially with traditional material, because there are likely to be different versions of the lyrics in different people's heads, and chaos in always imminent!

 

"Oral tradition" doesn't have much to do with it. The majority of songs I sing are not traditional, but whether they're Schubert, Moore, anon. or my own, I don't sing them in public before I know them. BTW I do have my personal song-book, just to refresh my memory when practising for a gig. Any traditional lyrics in it are simply transcriptions of how I learned them, and the art songs are copied from the "best" source I can find. I try to avoid "folksy" versions of literary lyrics - they are seldom an improvement on the original.

 

Cheers,

John

 

Edited to add:

PS. I can sing most songs in C, and most of those I can't, I can sing in G. So a C/G Anglo suits me fine!

Edited February 6, 2011 by Anglo-Irishman

[Fiddlehead Fern]

There are some good ideas here, but I think the most important thing is to find a song-learning method that works for you. Some people find listening to lyrics over and over again easier, and others find reading them to be more effective. If you don't know what works best, try them both, and then try combination of them.

My personal way of learning songs usually goes something like

-hear song once, hum it a few times

-listen to it again to fill in gaps in my memory and procure recording if I can and listen to it over and over, singing along as I go

-once I'm fairly sure of the words, listen to and sing along with a verse, pause recording, sing it alone, repeat through through the end

-once I've got to the point that I can sing most of the way through without having to stop and relisten, just practice it.

-if it's still difficult, then write out the lyrics longhand, singing a verse and then writing it, sometimes line by line if I must.

By the end of that process it's generally pretty firmly lodged in my skull.

This is by no means the only way, if, for some reason, I can't find a recording I like, or the words are undecipherable or I like the way a performer sang a song, but not en's lyric choices, I find alternative lyrics to the ones I dislike and go with them, looking at them only to remind myself of how to start when I get stuck.

If I'm going to perform something I generally make sure that I can sing it on autopilot, while reading something else or concentrating on a different task. Recording devices are good if you want to be super-careful about this, do a quick recording of yourself singing the song in question while you do something else that takes at least some of your attention, then listen to it over to make sure you got all the words and in the right order.

When you've got something that automatic trying to play while you sing will be way easier. I'd still recommend just humming the first coupe times you try to put it all together though, as it generally makes my brain explode when I try to do it all at once.

 

As I said though, instead of squabbling over the best way to learn a song or lyrics for everyone, focus on the best way to learn a song or lyrics for you.

[Tootler]

Listen over and again, get the words down from ear manually, not from Mudcat- you can checklater...

 

All very well, but quite often a written source is what you have and there isn't a recording or a person who sings the song available. A written source does have the advantage that you have to develop your own arrangement without being influenced by someone else's arrangement.

 

John I still maintain learning from a singer not a sheet and putting in the mental effort at first . Am I alone in finding all those plastic file sheets on tables at sessions an intrusion on the oral tradition...

 

 

 

Sam,

Nothing wrong with learning from a singer. What I was warning against was learning from a recording of a singer. With a real, live singer, you can ask him to speak any passages you didn't grasp from his singing. With a recording, you can't.

 

Again, all very well, but a recording may well be all you have. In fact, I suspect most people learn from recordings even if they don't care to admit it.

 

The previous poster has it right. Everyone has to find a method that suits them. To which I would add that you have to make use of the sources you have available whatever they are.

 

I use a variety of sources. Sometimes from recordings (I make a CD of songs I want to learn and play them over and over in the car), sometimes from written sources - books or online and often from a combination sources.

 

If you go to folk clubs or open mike type events, it's worth taking a recording device with you so if you hear a song you like you can get a recording. Many singers will sing a song again during the break or afterwards for you to record so you can learn it. Of course it it's the guest on a guest night, you can always buy their CD