I don’t know about you but the first word I heard as a newborn baby was probably the word “NO!” Well, maybe it was “mom” or “dad”, but “NO!” was probably very high on the list of first-heard words.
My first physical experience was probably the doctor-administered “rear-end spank” that was customarily given to newborns. Do they still do that today? That spank hurt and it made me cry, and henceforth, my connection to “blues” music was immediately solidified! (Just kidding!)
Seriously though, I chose “Speak Like a Child” to be a part this post’s title because, for me, the phrase has a special figurative significance.
When a child learns to speak English or any other spoken language, a big part of the process is spending lots of time listening to and imitating the words, phrases, and sentences being spoken by the people around them–family members in most instances. The key words here are listening and imitating.
Likewise, one of the best ways for people to learn the language of jazz is to spend lots of time listening to and imitating and even transcribing the sounds of musical ideas and phrases being played in the music you hear or by the musicians around you. The key words here are also listening and imitating.
All of the world’s best orators started off as kids learning the intricacies of speech by listening and echoing single words, short phrases, longer phrases, and sentences, etc. until eventually, the ability to compose and express their own thoughts finally took hold. The language of jazz has the same dynamic! That is to say, all of the world’s best instrumentalists and improvisers started off as beginners who could barely make a sound on their respective instrument(s). But through the long process of listening, imitating, and learning to read in many cases, the art of self-expression finally developed and they became great players.
So if you’re not already doing it, I want to encourage you to “Speak Like a Child” and add this type of listen-and-imitate approach to your practice routine. Get in there and get started by learning to imitate some short phrases first before moving on to medium length and longer phrases. Melodies and fragments of melodies are good too! I’m going to ask a couple of my students to let me post some of their work along these lines on their student page in the near future. It really is a very effective way to learn the syntax of jazz language and to build a lexicon of phrases and vocabulary. Stay tuned.
In this post, I’ll show you a brief video of one way I make my own bed then play on it.
20 push-ups right now private!
Now I’m not talking about an Army bunk kind of bed where a mean looking drill sergeant might demand twenty forearm push-ups if he or she is not able bounce a quarter off of your bed or discovers that your sheets and blankets are not “cornered” according to Army regulation specifications.
In my office right now private!
The sergeant on the right might send you to solitary confinement if she ever caught you playing on a bed while under her command!
Beds that don’t meet code and playing on beds are bad in the Army.
So don’t play on Army beds! I’m talking about music beds!
No! I’m not talking about beds that play music like either of these!
I’m borrowing the term as it’s used in that context and applying it to the practice room where you would either play or sing your part over the background music. Think of karaoke or the music-minus-one records of decades past.
Although there are literally hundreds of sources on the Internet where you can find free and commercially available pre-made music beds, many times I find it easier, less time consuming, and very often necessary–not to mention more fun– to make my own.
There are several ways to make these types of beds and I believe that one of the easiest ways is to use MIDI technology to sequence your tracks. Then it’s time to play on your homemade bed!
For this video, I’ll use a couple of phrases from my Improv 101 class to illustrate how I have my students take a phrase and conjugate it and use it in musical sentences. This music bed is titled, “Take The I-Train“. The “Improvisation Train” is about to leave the station. Climb on board!
That’s it! If you want to see a slightly longer version of the same video, click here. However, the short clip just above effectively and quickly summarizes the process of how I start making many of my basic music beds before I move them into other programs to enhance and fine-tune.
Although Army drill sergeants won’t encourage you to play on Army beds, I highly encourage you to play on music beds in my classes and at home because it’s an effective and fun way to practice. It’s nice to make your own beds but I often make them for my students and I can make them for you too! Check out Jeff DeLangie playing on some beds I made for the Muzio Clementi Opus36 package from my “Fun with the Classics” series.
Full disclosure! I already had a decades-old opinion on this subject before writing this op-ed, but in the interest of being fair, open-minded, and objective, I set my opinion aside and went to work on this post with a mindset of being willing to change my opinion if convinced.
The first thing I did when I started thinking about this question was to itemize the parts of a song and put them on a list. I put a question mark beside each item so I’d be sure to consider each song part individually.
Looking over my list, my first thought was that all of the items are important but the question asks me to decide which item I feel is “most” important. So in the process of carefully considering each item, I systematically narrowed my list down to two items–lyrics and melody. From there, I very quickly came right back to my original answer. However, I wanted to see what other people thought so I did a little Google research.
After reading differing opinions on the question, I came away with a good understanding of the arguments that many people presented to support views, but nevertheless, I was not convinced to change my original opinion. l still feel that a song’s most important part is its melody.
Lyrics, when they’re present, are unquestionably a very important part of a song because lyrics express in words what a song is all about. A song’s lyrics are poetry that has been coupled with melody to tell the song’s story in a musical environment. A song’s lyrics when coupled with melody can make you feel very happy in a real way. The combination of lyrics coupled with melody can also make you feel very sad and have you crying real tears! Sometimes melodies are written first, then lyrics are added later. Conversely, lyrics may be written first and melodies added later. In either case, melody and lyrics are both very powerful entities that are very closely related and very important parts of a song. However, I feel that most song lyrics are melody-dependent in that, if you strip the melody away from the lyric, you no longer have a song; you have poetry with some type of beat perhaps. The melodies of most songs can stand on their own without lyrics. But again, lyrics performed with out any melodic coupling will result in poetry being recited–not a song being sung.
Here is a song with lyrics that first existed as a very well-known poem by Joyce Kilmer. The melody was composed years later by Oscar Rasbach. To demonstrate the effect and power of melody, please follow this 3-step process:
First: Read the through 12-line, 8-syllable, iambic tetrameter poem. Sans melody, you are reciting some beautiful poetry! Second: Mouseover the tree to hear a vocal version. Avec melody, the poetry has been transformed into a beautiful song! Third: Mouseover or click the grand piano to hear me play an instrumental version. Does the song stand alone sans lyrics? Do you recogni,e the song without its lyrics? I do! What say you?
I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day; And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair. Upon whose bosom snow has lain, Who intimately lives with rain; Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree. –Joyce Kilmer
Summary / Synopsis
By definition, the word “song” implies singing. One music dictionary defines “song” as a piece for voice. Whenever voice and singing are involved, chances are, lyrics are going to be somewhere in the mix playing a very important role. But as I considered the overall question further, I asked my self some key questions. Can a song be performed without its lyrics as an instrumental? Obviously the answer is yes! What allows you to easily and instantaneously recognize a song when it is played sans lyrics? The answer is the song’s M-E-L-O-D-Y! Can a song be sung without its melody? No, because singing lyrics without a melody is reciting poetry. To transform poetry into song, a melody needs to be added to the mix. So, song lyrics are melody-dependent because without melody, you’re reciting poetry. Now as beautiful as reciting poetry may be, it is not song singing. Therefore I submit that melody is the most important part of a song.
Here is an example of a singer who completely forgot the lyrics to a significant part of a song during her performance. However, because she was able to stay with the melody, she rode her “melodic ship” out of those troubled waters and straight into a rousing round of applause for her spontaneous and successful song performance and eventually on to a couple of Grammy awards.
Last Word
Lyrics are very important but lyrics need melody. So for me, melody sits alone at the top of the song part pyramid. Learn and memorize as many melodies as you can! Melodies rule!