Song/Lyric Project

English 2-Final Project Jun Lee

As I was pondering about the project and surveying through the different previous iterations of the previous projects, I tried to imagine what might be a challenge, something interesting and ambitious, yet something I could manage to put together realistically and practically. Naturally, there are millions of things that I have never made before but I wanted it to be something I was drawn to, but remote from anything I had endeavored to create or be involved in before. Since I was a child, I loved music, but I never learned how to sing, or write a song, or play an instrument for that matter. Ergo, the object that I have chosen to create for the final project is a song.

Because I don’t have an unlimited amount of time, nor do I have access to something like “Pro Tools” or an orchestra or a band to play with, I have decided to create a folk/blues type song with the bare essentials (a lyric that is sung and some kind of music played on a guitar). Mind you, I do not know even the slightest bit about playing guitar, writing lyrics or a melody, or singing. Thus, the first part of my project will involve me listening to a huge amount of blues and folk music to get my ear and my mind acquainted with the genre and the tradition. So far, I have been especially drawn to the likes of Hank Williams, Leadbelly, Johnny Cash, Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Patsy Cline, Wanda Jackson, and Mississippi Fred McDowell, but there are many other wonderful examples.

This week, I am meeting with a family friend who is going to begin to teach me the basic chords on a guitar. I am also going to study guitar tablature and notation online. Moreover, I have downloaded countless pages of blues/folk lyrics online to study the themes, tropes, narratives, and structures of the songs. After learning the basic chords and notes on the guitar, my family friend is going to introduce me to some basic blues melodies, chords, and scales on the guitar. In terms of singing, I have taken to recently singing along with the abovementioned artists (and many others), and I hope that I can slowly absorb the tone and the pitch of their singing. 

As far as the lyrics are concerned, I am starting to jot down rough ideas and jot points that I might perhaps be able to transform in the future into fully-formed song lyrics. I also am fascinated by how in the folk and blues traditions songs and lyrics and borrowed and shared. In fact, the whole folk/blues tradition/genre is much like a proverbial patchwork quilt; lines, melodies, and pieces of songs are routinely used and borrowed as new songs are made, played, and performed. The processes of assimilation and secretion are crucial in the form. I might, with this in mind, use a word, a line maybe, or a fragment of a simple melody in my own song.

The idea of creating a song as impressive or as beautiful and awe-inspiring as a song by Howlin’ Wolf or Wanda Jackson seems virtually impossible, but I am tenacious and I am thrilled by the idea of endeavoring to do something that is so completely out of my wheelhouse, comfort zone, and my area of expertise that I am committed to seeing this project, no matter how impossible it seems now, into fruition.

The three iterations of the project will consist of researching the forms (listening to large amounts of folk/blues music, reading lyrics, and studying the musical chord/melody/notes that constitute these songs and the genres of folk and blues music), the learning phase with regards to the guitar playing, writing lyrics, and singing, and, ultimately, recording a version of my originally composed song in the folk/blues strain of music.

As I have listened to, studied, and tried to assimilate the various facets of folk/blues music, I have noticed certain patterns; for example, Picasso’s famous line that “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal” is perfectly applied to the tradition of folk/blues music. Artists steal melodies, riffs, lines of lyrics, and make it their own. For my proposed song, I have decided to steal a line from a famous, traditional folk song about a railroad worker turned murderer from West Virginia. “John Hardy” has been covered, produced, and released by hundreds, if not thousands, of different artists (the first known rendition of it dates back to the early 1920s).

“Railroad workers have been given quite the life in song. Take the case of John Hardy – often mixed up with John Henry who was a lovely fellow  - Hardy was a rail worker in West Virginia who killed a man during a craps game and was found guilty of murder and was ultimately hanged. Such is the stuff of the classic murder ballad.

It seems everyone with an ability to vocalize has had a crack at this one. Leadbelly, the Carter Family, Dylan, Woody Guthrie, The Kingston Trio and Doc Bogs have all told the tale in a song that has been going around since at least 1924.”

(http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-murder-ballads-based-on-real-events.php)