James Lyng High School’s music pro­gram draws on stu­dents’ musi­cal pre­fe­rences, inclu­ding hip-hop, EDM, punk, metal, rock, and pop. To pre­pare for our school’s end-of-year mix­tape, each student band writes and records an ori­gi­nal song. Depen­ding on stu­dents’ abi­li­ty levels, the wri­ting pro­cess is gui­ded and scaf­fol­ded to varying degrees, with the least expe­rien­ced stu­dents requi­ring the most sup­port. This pro­ject addresses group song­wri­ting by fea­tu­ring student pers­pec­tives and examples through short audio interviews.

When wor­king with my youn­gest groups at James Lyng, I most often start by having them iden­ti­fy a song they want to model their ori­gi­nal song after. It helps if they have alrea­dy lear­ned to play the song, as fami­lia­ri­ty with its notes and chords makes them more active par­ti­ci­pants in song­wri­ting. We begin by dis­cus­sing many of the song’s qua­li­ties, inclu­ding lyrics, feel, vocal phra­sing, key, and chords, as well as which qua­li­ties the stu­dents most want to emulate.

Crea­ting a Foundation

To start the crea­tion pro­cess, I will guide student groups to create either a chord pro­gres­sion or a riff as a foun­da­tion for their song. The group will decide which direc­tion to start in, infor­med by their cho­sen song.

• Crea­ting a Chord Pro­gres­sion : There are two prin­ci­pal ways that I have stu­dents come up with a chord progression.
  • The first is to encou­rage stu­dents to rear­range the chords of their cho­sen song into a new pro­gres­sion. I often have stu­dents plug head­phones into their ampli­fiers so they can hear only them­selves. A per­iod of expe­ri­men­ta­tion is fol­lo­wed by a per­iod of sharing.
  • In the second approach, I guide the chord-crea­tion pro­cess more acti­ve­ly. Using my gui­tar, I show the stu­dents the key cen­ter of their cho­sen song and demons­trate the key’s dia­to­nic chords, reci­ting the scale degrees asso­cia­ted with each chord as I play. I do not include the dimi­ni­shed chord of the key as an option (VII chord in major keys, II chord in minor keys). I recom­mend that the group start their chord pro­gres­sion on the tonic chord, as that is the conven­tion in pop music. I ask stu­dents to sug­gest a second chord. I will play the tran­si­tion bet­ween the tonic chord and their cho­sen chord. We will audi­tion seve­ral chords until the group chooses one. We will then audi­tion a third chord, and so on, until we decide on one or two 4- or 8‑bar progressions.
• Crea­ting a Riff 
  • In the past, I have had one or two moti­va­ted gui­tar players who have crea­ted riffs inde­pen­dent­ly and sha­red them with the group.
  • Alter­na­ti­ve­ly, I will teach the group the scale asso­cia­ted with their cho­sen song by rote. This will be fol­lo­wed by a per­iod of expe­ri­men­ta­tion with head­phones plug­ged into their amps, and then a per­iod of sharing.

Crea­ting a Mock-up Recording

After esta­bli­shing the song’s foun­da­tion, I will teach the group how to play the chord pro­gres­sion or riff. We will jam on the new ele­ment, often adap­ting strum­ming and drum pat­terns from their cho­sen song to the new context. Addi­tio­nal­ly, I will create a mock-up recor­ding in a DAW. I will pro­gram vir­tual drums in the DAW based on the new drum part and over­dub gui­tar and bass to match what the group is playing.

This living docu­ment will serve many pur­poses. It will allow stu­dents to deve­lop vocal melo­dies without the added bur­den of playing their ins­tru­ments. It will also serve as the basis for our class­room recor­ding. I find that many young drum­mers who have dif­fi­cul­ty playing to a click track will find it easier to play to a mock-up recording.

Crea­ting Lyrics and Vocal Melodies

The pro­cess of crea­ting lyrics and vocal melo­dies is often inter­t­wi­ned, and I try to have stu­dents guide the acti­vi­ties as much as pos­sible. I find the fol­lo­wing tech­niques reliable at this stage :

• Sin­ging over the mock-up recor­ding : I often have the stu­dents col­lec­ti­ve­ly create a single rhy­ming cou­plet to esta­blish vocal phra­sing. An intui­tive student sin­ger can try sin­ging the lyrics over the mock-up recor­ding. I will often record suc­cess­ful attempts so we can audi­tion them in the fol­lo­wing class.
• Impro­vi­sing melo­dies on the key­board : Most DAWs can trans­pose a VST ins­tru­ment, allo­wing stu­dents to play free­ly on the white keys regard­less of the song’s key cen­ter. I often have stu­dents take turns impro­vi­sing over the full song while recor­ding in MIDI. In the fol­lo­wing class, the group will lis­ten back to the recor­dings and iden­ti­fy the stron­gest melodies.
• If stu­dents are having dif­fi­cul­ty esta­bli­shing lyri­cal phra­sing, or if they are unsa­tis­fied with the phra­sing, have them sing or recite the lyrics to other songs they know, inclu­ding their cho­sen song, over the mock-up recor­ding. They can­not keep these lyrics, but the pro­cess may ins­pire phra­sing they are satis­fied with.
• I some­times guide stu­dents to create an inter­nal rhyme in their ini­tial rhy­ming cou­plet, which esta­blishes an ABAB rhyme scheme. This gives them the option to try the lyrics at half­time, for example, over 8 bars ins­tead of 4 bars.
• I often email my stu­dents a mix­down of the cur­rent mock-up track and ask them to write lyrics on a spe­ci­fied theme for home­work. Even if what they bring does not match the song’s ini­tial lyri­cal phra­sing, it can be adap­ted in class. Having a wealth of poten­tial content on a sha­red theme helps keep the pro­cess moving.

Grade 7

The song­wri­ting pro­cess with this year’s Grade 7 cohort fol­lo­wed these steps fair­ly consis­tent­ly. This group had pre­vious­ly cho­sen to learn “Swea­ter Wea­ther” by The Neigh­bo­rhood, and they chose to model their song after it. To help gene­rate ideas, we dis­cus­sed many aspects of “Swea­ter Wea­ther,” inclu­ding its lyrics, feel, vocal phra­sing, key, and chords. I pre­sen­ted the dia­to­nic chords of the song’s key on gui­tar while reci­ting their scale degrees. After audi­tio­ning seve­ral chord com­bi­na­tions, the group set­tled on two pos­sible progressions.

To pre­pare for the next class, I recor­ded both chord pro­gres­sions in a DAW. I had willing stu­dents take turns impro­vi­sing on the white keys of a trans­po­sed pia­no key­board while I recor­ded their ideas via MIDI. During the same class, we began dis­cus­sing lyri­cal themes that mat­ched the mood of the chord pro­gres­sion. Over seve­ral classes, we wor­ked to create lyrics. Stu­dents brought content they had crea­ted at home, and we wor­ked to mold it into consistent phrases that fit the song’s struc­ture. Once a consistent lyri­cal fra­me­work had been esta­bli­shed, we revi­si­ted the melo­dic frag­ments stu­dents had impro­vi­sed on the key­board, audi­tio­ning them with the new­ly writ­ten lyrics. While the stu­dents respon­ded posi­ti­ve­ly to seve­ral of these melo­dies, the sin­ger ulti­ma­te­ly gra­vi­ta­ted to ano­ther melo­dy that she deve­lo­ped intui­ti­ve­ly. The group felt that this melo­dy sui­ted the song and her voice, and it became the song’s vocal melody.

To com­plete the lyrics, we esta­bli­shed a small “lyric com­mit­tee” that met twice after school to finish the text. Throu­ghout the song­wri­ting pro­cess, we also took time to prac­tice the chord pro­gres­sion and deve­lop ins­tru­men­tal parts to sup­port the melo­dy and lyrics. These ins­tru­men­tal parts bor­ro­wed signi­fi­cant­ly from “Swea­ter Wea­ther,” espe­cial­ly in the verse.

Here is my conver­sa­tion with Grade 7 stu­dents Rock­lyn and Emi­liah about crea­ting their class song.

Grade 8

When wor­king with this year’s Grade 8 band, I used some of the same stra­te­gies but left more room for student auto­no­my. The band deci­ded to model their ori­gi­nal song after “Blink Gone” from the anime series “Alien Stage,” which they had pre­vious­ly played. Because the verse of “Blink Gone” is built around a gui­tar riff, I asked the stu­dents to plug head­phones into their ampli­fiers and com­pose their own riffs. Although I did not expli­cit­ly show them the song’s scale (Cm), we had just played it toge­ther, and almost all the stu­dents intui­ti­ve­ly gra­vi­ta­ted toward its tonal cen­ter. During the sha­ring ses­sion, I recor­ded each of their riffs and later trans­cri­bed them into tabla­ture so the band could learn and expe­riment with the ideas in the fol­lo­wing class.

Both the stu­dents and I were sur­pri­sed by how natu­ral­ly the riffs could be laye­red over one ano­ther, and the group qui­ck­ly for­med a loose song struc­ture. Two stu­dents in par­ti­cu­lar wan­ted to write lyrics and melo­dies, and they chose to do so ins­tead of ano­ther class­room assi­gn­ment. One student qui­ck­ly wrote lyrics and com­po­sed a vocal melo­dy. The other strug­gled to find words and melo­dies that met her expectations.

During our conver­sa­tions while we tried to esta­blish a vocal melo­dy, she men­tio­ned she wan­ted it to sound more like Mitski’s “Washing Machine Heart.” I encou­ra­ged her to sing the song over the mock-up recor­ding of our ori­gi­nal song. The first frag­ment of Mitski’s melo­dy fit very well, but in its new context it was almost unre­co­gni­zable. This felt like a break­through, lea­ding her to finish the melo­dy and lyrics.

In this audio excerpt, I speak with Grade 8 stu­dents Téar­rah and Gab about wri­ting their class song.

Grade 9

This song is from one of my Grade 9 bands. The group is real­ly just a duo that regu­lar­ly plays with me, or some­times with student musi­cians from other grade levels. Both mem­bers are excep­tio­nal impro­vi­sers, which is won­der­ful, but it also can present chal­lenges. It can be dif­fi­cult to get them to com­mit to an idea and deve­lop it into a song. To help focus their efforts, I insis­ted they write lyrics, as I felt doing so would anchor their musi­cal ideas. I scaf­fol­ded the lyric-wri­ting pro­cess using some of the steps des­cri­bed in this post. Although the results were mixed, I feel that these struc­tu­red lyric-wri­ting ses­sions led them to dis­co­ver their own alter­na­tives. After seve­ral weeks of strug­gling to deve­lop lyrics, a par­ti­cu­lar­ly pro­duc­tive ses­sion with the drum­mer yiel­ded a full set of lyrics and melo­dy for the verse and cho­rus, after which the rest of the song fell into place.

Here is my conver­sa­tion with Grade 9 stu­dents Logan and Quinn about their ori­gi­nal song.

Grade 10

This final song is from one of my Grade 10 bands. Two of its mem­bers are dedi­ca­ted musi­cians who regu­lar­ly spend their lunch hours in the school’s music stu­dio, and much of the song was writ­ten out­side class time. Both stu­dents brought musi­cal ideas they had deve­lo­ped at home to be inte­gra­ted into the class song. As a tea­cher, I pro­vi­ded very lit­tle gui­dance on crea­ting music, but I some­times hel­ped them find ways to bridge their musi­cal ideas. I also hel­ped them create the song’s ove­rar­ching struc­ture. I took a more active role in scaf­fol­ding the lyric-wri­ting pro­cess, dra­wing at times on some of the stra­te­gies des­cri­bed in this post. While the lyrics the group wrote through this struc­tu­red pro­cess had conven­tio­nal phra­sing, the band’s sin­ger sub­ver­ted that phra­sing when sin­ging them. He also added his own vocal melo­dies through improvisation.

This is my conver­sa­tion with Grade 10 stu­dents Dean and Jah­von about wri­ting their ori­gi­nal song.

The musi­cal examples in these recor­ded conver­sa­tions are rough mixes. To lis­ten to the com­plete songs by these and other James Lyng stu­dents, visit www.upnextrecordings.com.