The Song Fight Bulletin Board

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I teach elementary school music. Anyway, our county did a project with BMI several years ago, where some 5th grade kids worked with a composer in New York via teleconference, and learned how to write their own song, which was then recorded in a pro studio.

It was such a success, some of the participating teachers and our county supervisor decided to seek grant funding to continue it. I decided to participate this year with a couple of my students. We worked with a writing specialist (who also happens to be an ex-music teacher) on how to get the ideas flowing, different literary devices, personification, metaphor, etc. On my own I worked with them, listening to different songs, studying form etc.

Here's how the process worked, after they came up with lyrics, the other music teacher and I just had them sing the lyrics however they wanted into a recorder. We went back, figured out the melody, then came up with different chords that would work. We played the chords, had them sing, and let them choose whichever options they wanted. So they created the lyrics melody, and chose the accomp. they liked. They told us what instrumentation they wanted and we came up with a lead sheet. So, the instrument teachers involved rehearsed the songs with the kids today, (your basic pop ensemble) in anticipation of going into the studio on Thursday. We have a big concert Saturday, where they perform for their friends and family, and then everybody gets a CD

So here's a rough practice mix I made for one of our students, I just played it with a crappy school guitar and added a few midi drums etc. Basically this is a practice track, so she can go into the studio and be prepared. These are 11-12 year olds for the record.

My Dads the Best

Feel free to ask any questions I didn't answer

Cool. Great to see kids making music. It's a good listen. One note, I might add some backing vox on the chorus.
-bill

That's awesome. Great project!

That's cool. I really like the idea behind a project like this. I think a huge problem with traditional kids' music (not that you're necessarily setting out to create "kids" music) is that it's generally written by adults who don't really entirely understand what kids want to hear songs about. When I wrote my kids' album this past spring, I made sure to ask my own sons what they thought the songs should be about.

The performance of your singer is good and honest, too. Nice work. I look forward to hearing the finished product.

HeuristicsInc, you're right, it could use some harmony in the chorus, and we even talked about that, but the recording session is basically going to be a live performance, and we've got about 3 hours of studio time for 20 kids. The guy that owns the studio donates his time and the studio, (he probably gets some pittance) so we don't really have a lot of overdub time, it is what it is.

I also tried to stay as hands off as I could and let the kids make as many musical decisions as possible. This particular girl got together with another girl in the project and they learned to sing it together in unison, so in her mind, thats all she needed, so I respected that.

We'll have a CD of about 20 songs, I don't really know if I'll have room to host them all, and there's also some legalities to us releasing the whole project online, but at least I can post my students songs.

What's great is the kids are writing other songs on their own, I just wish I had time to record them all. It takes a lot of one on one time, and you just don't have a lot of that in a public school situation. As a side not I've signed up to do Little Kids Rock, a guitar program for elementary school students. The two projects fit together perfectly, it's just organizing for a group setting that's the problem.

Smalltown Mike, you're right about kids music, that's why I tried to let the kids go their own way as much as possible. What's interesting, (and reassuring) is that none of the songs came out as uptempo dance pop. A lot of them had very reflective lyrics, and there weren't as many uptempo rockers as I'd imagined there would be. There were some gospel/funk inflected pieces and several slow ballads. One of our other students had this slow, almost jazz ballad piece with a very chromatic melody, that was very nice. The girl on the recording although not a whiz with catchy lyrics has the best voice. The ideal childs voice should be a light head voice with a pure tone and this girl is a perfect example.

that is awesome.