March 7
What I Learned From The History of Rock Music (Part 1)
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Upon graduating Northeastern in August of 2007 with a degree in Music Industry, I jumped right in. I had quit my job at Starbucks back in April, and through a combination of street performing and touring colleges in the Northeast, I was able to carve out a living playing music right out of school and was able to afford to live in Cambridge with some music friends of mine. I was offered a position at Northeastern in November as a Teacher’s Assistant in the Music Department for the class “History of Rock Music”. I decided to take it, not because I needed the money (though the consistency has been nice) but because it seemed like a great opportunity to learn more about the history of the music of many of my influences and predecessors—not to mention the fact that it paid well and I could do the majority of the correcting from home.
The first lesson that I learned early on was a serious one that I have been able to apply. There are 2 discussion board online that people have to post to (it’s a big class, 580 students in an auditorium) and one of the first questions asked whether people liked music or lyrics better. As a songwriter, I have always considered lyrics to be more essential but was surprised to find that 85% of the students (or more even) favored music over lyrics and more than a handful of people admitted that they ignore lyrics entirely—unless the song really pulls them in. I was definitely distraught from this information but it has provided a sea change in my recent compositions during the last couple months. No, I’m not disregarding lyrics now but I find myself more discriminating about the melodies that are behind the lyrics and rhythmically, I try and make my songs a little more interesting. It’s been an interesting development that I’ve always sort of suspected but haven’t really fallen through with.
The ironic thing is that my first entry for First Tracks, “Anna” is not one of my elite songs as far as lyrics are concerned but the sentiment that is produced musically and melodically I think is definitely the strong point of the song…So there you go.
I’ve also learned a bunch in the class as to how poorly some of my students grasp the English language. Each week during correcting I have been setting aside some of the asinine and curious things as well as humorous entries that people have. I will save that for another entry but for now, chew on this.
Ok, so…Jeff got me thinking about this. I’ve always said lyrics are for sure the stronger point for me. But then I thought well…if the music doesn’t catch my attention in the first few seconds of it I change it. But the lyrics is what keeps me hanging on to it. I find myself leaning more towards raw/acoustic songs to hear the lyrics better. But don’t get me wrong I do enjoy jammin out to some good catchy music. But all in all…lyrics are my music. The tone, the pitch, the rhythm of the words are the music. It took me a while to come to this, but now, I’m sticking with the lyrics. You mentioned your song “anna” I just listened to it, while writing, and as cool as the music is I love the lyrics. Thanks for making me think really hard on what it it that makes me love music. I just rambled on…hope it makes sense.