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.