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Songwriting Software Express, Issue # 96 - Music To Your Ears - Jai Josefs' Music Writing Audios January 30, 2012 |
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January 2012 Issue From
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Well happy belated new year! I hope your writing and any resolutions are off to a great start. I'm getting a late send out on this newsletter perhaps but since I've been reading In Praise Of Slowness by Carl Honore I've decided there doesn't always have to be a rush, right :-) And on a bit of a housekeeping note I've had to reformat this newsletter as the prior version with its cascading style sheets layout was more trouble that it was worth. Back to school on that one. Anyway, I hope this pared back simpler version works well for you. And, as this year rolls out I'm doing my best to be even more in an attitude of gratitude and felt that spirit bring me to a subject for this issues' topic on songwriting education. As such, I was thinking back on all the great songwriting experiences I've had with great teachers and coaches over the years and among the very best were my one on one series of sessions with Jai Josefs. I consider myself very, very fortunate to have been able to study with and get regular feedback from Jai personally through the mid 2000s when he was still residing in the LA area. And I was reminded again of not only his best selling book that he created for all songwriters to be able to share in his insights, Writing Music For Hit Songs, but also of the three audio courses he created to share and educate writers on of the three aspects of the music of a song. He's got more than that too but I'll touch on that at the end of today's article. At this juncture though I wanted to keep it simple and just get to his programs on melody, harmony and groove. Those are the principal elements of the musical side of a song and his audio programs bring what he writes in his book to life in a way that only audio can. After all, we're songwriters and we tend to like to hear things, right :-) So below it's my pleasure to put the spotlight on Jai and clue you in to his programs if you're not as yet familiar or maybe would like a second look.
Music To Your Ears - Jai Josefs' Music Writing Audios Over the past handful of years Jai Josefs has taken each of the elements of the musical side of a pop song (pop, rock, country, hip-hop, etc.) and recorded his live presentations on each into individual audio programs. Jai, well known for his own songwriting success and his authorship of the perennial keystone hit songwriting guide Writing Music For Hit Songs, decided to create individual programs based on the key music elements that go into creating a hit song. As such he drew from his live workshops to create three programs involving those three key elements, melody, harmony ("the chords") and rhythm ("the groove"). There's Some Magic In That Melody In what Jai notes that many songwriters often refer to as the other half of a song, the melody, Jai correctly points out is actually just one third of the musical side. And he gets into the emotional connection of melody and its technical side on Melody Magic. And notes even though it may just be one third it's as important as its two siblings, more on those later. He also makes a point of noting that as much as all of the technical items he points out about considering when you review your melody it's best to not think about any of it when your muse is visiting you with an inspired hook line. In other words in its original incarnation, melody, at least as it relates to modern songwriting, is an inspired phenomena that comes to you. It's a raw diamond that may only need to be cut with your technical tools when you've got your later editing hat on. The Science Of Chords Next Jai goes into the elements of making the most of your harmony accompaniment, the chords, in Chord Chemistry. In this set he focusses in on the most common types of chords seen throughout today's popular writings and how the emotional feel of different types of chords can add to or reinforce the message of your song. And he gets into often utilized tricks of the trade that bring an extra level of ear draw and impact to your compositions like in his discussion of the use of slash chords, also referred to in pop writing as inversions (not referring to the classical definition here). And he makes it all clear and simple to those who may have no music theory background by giving a concise explanation at the beginning of how chord scales are set up and function in the context of songwriting. Get Your Groove On Jai ties it all together with his Getting Into The Groove offering by bringing in a too often overlooked element of a song's musical construction. He drills down to the nuts and bolts of how the groove can really be a strong element of upping the impact of your song by showing various ways to incorporate its options in your writing. For example he discusses popular groove patterns and how you can even start writing a song based on the groove as your first element. It immediately sets a style for you and a pattern that your lyrical rhythm will follow setting a further foundation for your song. In another part of the program he shows how you can experiment with one of your songs by changing the groove pattern and showing how that affects the delivery and ultimately appealability of your song - perhaps to a place and feel you like much better. And There's Even More Before he created those three programs he'd already created a foundational PC and Mac program Secrets of Songwriting Success, a 2 cd-rom set, based on his ever popular seminar of the same name. In it he discusses in detail, with clear examples from hit songs of the day, the distinct aspects of what makes a hit song a hit. He notes it all boils down to prosody and contrast and goes into detail on just what that means and how that plays out and how you can apply it to your own writing. And subsequent to creating his series on melody, harmony and groove he's come up with a new program, Transforming the Tune, that takes all of the above and applies it to the task of taking a song that needs something more, into hit territory. All in a nice live workshop presentation format on dvd. Find all of these very useful educational materials on his site right here.
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