VOICE NOTES: A FOLK DIVA’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY Number 18
Accessorize Your Song!
Number 18, for January 1, 2022
Happy New Year!
Topic This Week: Accessorize Your Song!
The concept of “accessorizing” with a song is a new and interesting way of thinking about arrangements. Typically, arrangements of songs consist of choices made about tempos, keys, time signatures, orchestrations, structures of verses, choruses, bridges, instrumental sections and feels (genre treatments). Those are a lot of choices that can be made to create your own unique and individual expression of a song. What else can we do once we’ve decided on all of those things?
As we accessorize our dressing choices, we can “accessorize” a song with further choices that augment the basic structures mentioned above. If you are an instrument player, there are options to play single note phrases in an instrumental section, outlining the melody or harmonizing with that same melody. That means you step away from chords during that phrasing. These can be an accessory to the main structure. Similarly, you can vocalize during an instrumental break, harmonizing with a single note phrase played on the instrument or harmonizing with it. Another choice is to vocalize while playing chords, and then play only during single note, melodic sections. This is a way to cleanly and interestingly augment an instrumental section.
Similarly, vocalizing during played intros and especially outros will extend the emotional life of the characters and stories in your songs. In the case of an intro, the sung notes will prepare the listener for the emotional ride coming up and set the mood, and then in the case of the outro, it will keep up the mood you have set during the song itself.
And don’t forget to take chances with melody during a repeated section. Melody shifts and changes for a line that repeats will create texture and interest. Have fun with finding new ways to sing something that is repeated during the song, such as choruses and other sections that repeat.
These are wonderful accessories to add to the structure of songs, just as you would add to a dress or suit a piece of jewelry, hat or shoes. What will make it fuller and richer for you? Find ways to dress it up!
The Value of Story to Teach
In a wonderful article from the New York Times on Christmas Day, author Peter Wehner wrote a guest essay titled “Jesus Never Stopped Asking Questions.” In discussing how Jesus spoke in parables, there was a wonderful bit of insight that caught me, as I believe it applies to storytelling on all platforms, and I want to share it with you.
I often speak of storytelling to all of my students, and mention how powerful it is, how essential it is to the craft of singing and imparting songs. Storytelling and human connection is what keeps us attracted to music along with its beauty. In this article, there is even more to it than that.
In the article, Wehner writes:
“Jesus, when asked by his disciples in Matthew 13 why he spoke in parables, indicated that it was to reveal the truth to some and to hide the truth from others. He was willing to disclose the truth to those who were sincere but wanted to conceal it from people not willing to honestly wrestle with its meaning. Jesus also clearly understood the power of stories to make his words more memorable by making them more personal. ‘Arguments may form our opinions, but stories form our loves,’ Cherie Harder, the president of the Trinity Forum, told me. She added, ‘Stories ask us to enter another world – which usually has the result of broadening or disrupting our own.’”
When you go to sing, consider the power behind the storytelling, and commit to going into “another world” with it as you sing and practice.
Read the entire guest essay here: Read the Article HERE
Video of the Week: Nancy Griffith Sings “Love at the Five and Dime”
Here is a wonderful expression of storytelling from the late great Nancy Griffith in her song “Love at the Five and Dime.” Notice especially her storytelling in spoken word before the song itself even begins. She is completely and perfectly leading you lovingly into her “other world.”
Blessings to each of you for a happy, healthy, safe and music-filled New Year!
Susie
________________________________________________
Award-winning recording artist, Broadway singer, journalist, educator and critically-acclaimed powerhouse vocalist, Susie Glaze has been called “one of the most beautiful voices in bluegrass and folk music today” by Roz Larman of KPFK’s Folk Scene. LA Weekly voted her ensemble Best New Folk in their Best of LA Weekly for 2019, calling Susie “an incomparable vocalist.” “A flat out superb vocalist… Glaze delivers warm, amber-toned vocals that explore the psychic depth of a lyric with deft acuity and technical perfection.” As an educator, Susie has lectured at USC Thornton School of Music and Cal State Northridge on “Balladry to Bluegrass,” illuminating the historical path of ancient folk forms in the United Kingdom to the United States via immigration into the mountains of Appalachia. Susie has taught workshops since 2018 at California music camps RiverTunes and Vocáli Voice Camp. She is a current specialist in performance and historian on the work of American folk music icon, Jean Ritchie. Susie now offers private voice coaching online via the Zoom platform. www.susieglaze.com
VOICE NOTES: A FOLK DIVA’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY Number 18
Accessorize Your Song!