thetau

Why I like the Beatles The Beatles were CLASSIC in nearly every song they wrote. The Beatles were song writers first, and to them the song itself was the important thing. They were intuitive, innovative, and inspirational. They were songwriters first and that's what made them great. OH yes! They were also excellent performers and crowd please rs. The women loved them, screaming and fainting. Heck! some of them even "climbed in through the bathroom window" just to be near them. But that's all just the show, the performance, the hook, even the bait. You can see that in any great preformer from "Houdini" to "Kiss." But just like Houdini's magic, there was an underlying secret for the Beatles. That secret was their incredible skill for writing songs. They are "Classics," not just because they could easily define life itself with simple phrases like "All you need is Love" or define our own lives with "All my loving," or how you should improve your life Mister "Nowhere man," but also because they knew what was great, and they reached out to improved on that greatness by never being satisfied with just making money, or being popular. They wrote songs. They wrote songs from the heart, about love and hate and politics, about sadness and pleasure, about how the sun also rises in the morning for all those "little Darling" short people, about how we'd all love to take a long journey in our "Yellow Submarine," about evil men who hit people over the head with hammers, and even about just... "Something." But most of all they had excellent music behind it all, and it was music that we all love and we still love fifty years later. They wrote some of the worlds most classic of songs. Oh! they weren't classics when they wrote them. They probably weren't thinking "I think I shall write a classic song today," because a song doesn't become a classic for a good forty or fifty years. And yes, you get these Noob, "Johnny come lately" songwriters with their Acid Rock, their Disco, their heavy metal, garage, punk, funk, dunk, dub-step, RAP, but most of this is all just a passing fad, even that ridiculously popular "easy listening music" that is so popular in everybody's elevator today. Is any of this new stuff good? Yes.... some will even become classic, but not for forty or fifty years. The thing is most other song writers (with few exceptions) haven't written hundreds of very popular songs that turned out or will turn out to be classics. Will any of these new songwriters ever become classics. Well yes, some of them will. A few of them will, the ones that can do what it takes to make our hearts burn, and our intellect do a "second take," and most of all make us feel that emotion that will seal a memory in time or bring back a lost memory, whether sad or happy. How about YOU? I love the Beatles' music..... Oh! Next time "why I love Beethoven" Just kidding Russ

Any Music video would be worthless without a good song. You certainly got that here. The final video product, outside of the production quality would always be subjective. I'm the last one to ask about the production aspects of a video, but subjectively you caught my eye. And held me by my ears. I like it Russ

Don't look at me I've always had clean hands Russ

Let me know where I can hear some of your tracks. I can pretty much help you out with most of what you're looking for here and I could always use a male vocalist. Arrangments are a good part of what I do. Send me an email with some info regarding some of your tracks magicsongwriter@gmail.com Russ

We'll never see on the headstone of RocknRoll "The Day the Music Died," because good music never dies, and if you think that the best songs have already been written, then what are you doing here. Music is like Ally McBeal "always looking for love" It's all human emotion and response in a fun way Russ

Great dissertation on melodic rhythm techniques and exercises Mike. I see a lot of noob songwriters get hung-up in a rut with uninspired melodies, which maybe a result of trying to follow the lyrical pattern that they are starting with. I often find it lucrative to develop a melodic structure (often using rhythmic methods similar to those that Mike, just so well described), and then work out the final lyrical pattern to fit it. But its is usually a combination of working out melody and changing the lyrics to fit, while at the same time finding the ideal lyrical phrase and then making the melody conform to that. This is probably why it's an Art rather than a mechanical or mathematical science. It pays to know (or learn) these techniques and tricks, because they will help you get out of that "Rut" that you often find yourself in. But it often boils down to, "can you fit a square peg into a round hole and make it sound good?" Russ

Beautiful Voice Russ

It depends upon where you are in training and experience regarding music theory, harmony, counter point etc. If you are a noob (so to speak), ie. maybe just a piano player that reads music, then I suggest that you take an entirely different road, as orchestration is not the best first step, and it would be more complex a task and too great a learning curve. For example the clarinet is not even written in the same key as the other instruments, and it doesn't play the same way as a horn or a piano plays. It has a different set of riffs. Some things on a piano could not be played on a clarinet or a horn and visa versa So for the less experienced there is a lot of sub-strata that needs to be clairified in your own mind. My suggestion in this case would be to learn the arrangement techniques and styles of todays (the last 100 years) music which has fewer parts and makes for an easier learning curve. By this I mean a small band or music group, which includes the most basic orchestrational parts or sections in their simplest form (no matter how complicated the song). You have the Percussion section (Drums one instrument usually), the rhythm section (one or two instruments like guitar or piano), usually a bass (but not always), the melody either on an instrument or vocals (both of which can include the harmonies). Finally a solo part, which embelishes and brings life to the piece. This is only five parts compared to a hundred that you might find in a full orchstration. How ever if instead you are already experienced at these basics, then the obvious approach would be to study the orchestrations of others. It will Pay... to Study in depth the classics on the one hand, and and the movie and film soundtracks on the other. I'd suggest taking one at a time and ones that you believe to be similar to what you are trying to achieve. Get an audio copy and a written copy of the full orchestration. Pick it to pieces regarding instrumentation, voicing etc. then apply those principles to your own tune. Russ