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Document Type

Article

Abstract

Below is an original song written for mezzo-soprano voice and accompaniment. The purpose of this article is to provide information on the songwriting process that I used by discussing the melody, harmony, and lyrics and showing how they were developed and completed.

This article discusses and defines musical terms for musicians and non-musicians alike to show why certain decisions were made. I begin by discussing the lyrics of the song and their meaning. I will reference methods included in J. Perricone’s book Great Songwriting Techniques to discuss how the chords and melodies relate to the lyrics.

The song is notated below in the form of a lead sheet so that it could be performed accurately without an overabundance of detail. Normally, a lead sheet such as this provides only melodic and harmonic information with very little background provided. Though I do provide information on how the song is to be performed, the lead sheet does not have this information. This means the performer must use context to effectively convey the song to the listener. The performer must use the lyrics to reference what the song is about, as well as the chords and melody to identify the overall tonality of the song. The instrumentation is then left for the performer to decide based on their ability and the ideas and emotion they want to convey.

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