ICMP Songwriting Tutors | BBC 6 Music | Musicology | Part 4

ICMP's Songwriting team joined DJ and broadcaster Huw Stephens' new BBC Radio 6 Music show as Musicologists earlier in the year. 

Since January 2024, members of the Songwriting faculty have been interviewed by Huw each week to discuss different aspects of the songwriting process. 

The slot has seen Professor Sophie Daniels, Daniel Green, Head of Academic Development, and tutor Anjali Perinparaja explore song structures, techniques and analyse contemporary tracks to learn more about how they are written and put together. 

You can check out the first, second and third blogs on the shows - and find out more about their latest insights with Huw below...

Sophie Daniels | Prosody 

Prosody is something that many songwriters are obsessed with and is used by many, whether consciously or not. 

It's a word some aren't familiar with but is used across all forms of art, particularly in creative writing. 

It means that everything in a song or piece of art works together and serves the purpose of the work of art. You can also think about this in terms of congruence. Everything goes together and works in harmony. Here are some musical examples:

Tom Waits | 'The Piano has been Drinking'

If you listen to the piano on this classic song by Tom Waits, then it's clearly drunk.  

Kate Bush | 'Running Up That Hill'

Kate Bush's song sounds like someone is literally running up that hill with its galloping drums. These are straightforward interpretations where the music/arrangement speaks about the purpose of the song. 

As a songwriting technique, it's been used for centuries. A songwriting teacher called Pat Pattison is probably the most famous Professor of Songwriting in the world. He defined it as: 

In songwriting, I believe that there are only tools, no rules. However, there is one exception to this, which is prosody."

In his book, 'Writing Better Lyrics', Pat talks about flow, balance and how different rhyme patterns create prosody. Simply put, if your song is about something unsettling, then your rhyme pattern could sound wonky. You will find an example of prosody in pretty much every song you hear. 

Mysterines | 'Stray'

This song is about dishonesty, breaking of rules, mistrust, and you can hear in the verse that there are different length lines, and no end rhymes. As the last sound of each line does not rhyme, this creates imbalance and tension for the listener. It underlines the discomfort and dishonesty to serve the purpose of the song, making you as the listener feel uncomfortable. 

Rappers are the master of prosody, because they are the masters of lyrical craft, Dave and Little Simz, everything they do has to fit within a concept, not just of a song but with their whole identity and vision.

Kneecap | 'Sick in the Head'

Kneecap swing between English and Irish in the language they use and it is prosody which gives you the feeling of swinging in and out of reality. It speaks to the subject matter of the song which is about mental health. 

It's also a comment on what they see around them, like music journalists revealing their truth. Line lengths and rhyme placements are constantly avoiding symmetry, so everything in this gives you this feeling of instability. They are brilliant at reflecting their reality. 

There are plenty of other great examples of prosody in songwriting in popular music too. 

10cc | ‘I'm not in Love'

This is a song about denial which is why it is recorded through layers and layers of vocals. It's almost like listening through rose-tinted glasses which echoes what the song is about. 

Tori Amos | 'Me and a Gun'

In this brilliant track, Amos is writing about her own lived experience of sexual assault. She acknowledges that this is hard to write about and listen to, she leans into that by removing the music as the song is acapella.

It is a comment about her singing the song and us listening to her, alongside people being empowered to write about their lived experience. She says she will write about it and will sing it live. It’s so powerful and well done that even the piano is listening to Amos when she sings. 

Anjali Perinparaja | Horns 

Horns refers to the brass and woodwind instruments such as saxophones, then other instruments including trumpets, trombones, and the tuba. 

What do we think of when we consider brass? It can be cultural - so from northern brass bands to New Orleans and brass bands marching through the streets in big processions. 

One of the biggest influences on horns is from the jazz big band era and this is why horns often feature in contemporary music due to their use during this period. Count Basie's big band really defined a sound and a time with their tune, 'Splanky'. 

What I love about this tune is the difference between wind and brass, there's a conversation going on between the trumpets, trombones and saxophones. There's a little back and forth going on there, and you can hear how the different sounds of these instruments feel over the rest of the music. 

The influence of jazz on horns

Jazz is full of improvisation, and really allowed instruments like saxophones to come to the front. The saxophone is a more modern instrument and after the jazz era, people realised they could access a really rich sound and range from using a combination of brass and wind instruments. 

Funk and soul really took inspiration from jazz during the sixties and seventies. Many artists and groups took this idea of horns having this punchy-ness to them and used them in arrangements to help lift a song. 

Sufjan Stevens | 'Come on feel the Illinoise'

In this song by Sufjan Stevens, you get these hits or stabs really punching out above everything else. 

One way in which horns really connect with people is in the way they were used in street parades and processions. You have the Latin American music, New Orleans, and what we call the second line where revellers join in behind the band. 

The Grammy-award winning artist John Batiste collaborated with the Hot 8 Brass Band who give homage to their roots in this song, 'Adulthood'. 

This song is such a free expression of unbridled joy. Improvisation is a big part of a lot of music from the last 100 years and there are many different mainstream pop songs that have brought horns into our musical consciousness, including those infamous sax solos you hear in the openings of 'Careless Whisper' and 'Baker Street'. 

In terms of that Latin American brass sound, many other styles emulate this. One example is:

Cake | 'Never There' 

I love how the trumpet solo features on 'Never There' at the start. 

There are also other horns that don’t get used as much. In 'National Anthem' by Radiohead you get to hear a trombone solo but also the baritone sax, which gives this punchy bassline, where you can really hear the difference in the textures.   

Radiohead | 'The National Anthem'

Hip hop has also used horns a lot with the use of samples allowing so many textures to work with spoken word. 

Dr Dre | 'What’s the Difference?'

This amazing horn sample is repeated throughout and is a really foundational part of the tune. 

Sophie Daniels | Ekphrasis

The word is from Ancient Greece and means art that describes art - verbal representations of visual representations. We use it across art forms to describe art that responds to art. 

When it comes to songwriting, we usually start with examples of songs that respond to visual art. One of the most famous examples is 'Vincent' by Don Mclean from 1971. 

Don Mclean | 'Vincent'

This song is inspired by Van Gogh's most famous painting, 'The Starry Night'. It's a great example of songs that respond to paintings as Don describes the textures and the colours, he talks about the painter, the relationship between the painting and art. This is probably the most famous example of a song that responds to a piece of art. 

Many different artists have dabbled in this too. Jay-Z's 'Most Kingz' from 2010 is inspired by Jean Michel Basquiat, 'Charles the First'. 

Jay-Z is an art collector and this piece, 'Charles the First', is a tribute to Charlie Parker, the jazz musician from the thirties and forties. Jay-Z is responding to this with his song, talking about fame, suicide, rising to the top of your profession, the lyrics are about cyphers and rap battles. 

Ekphrasis is a well known practice within songwriting and most songwriters with a long career will have had a go at it at some point.

David Bowie | 'Andy Warhol'

Bowie went on to play Warhol in a film called 'Basquiat' based on the life of Jean Michel Basquiat. 

Ekphrasis can be engaged across different forms of art. Another popular go-to is literature, plays and novels. There are many Kate Bush examples including 'Wuthering Heights'. 

'Cloudbusting' is also based on a book called 'A Book of Dreams'. 'This Sensual World' is based on a passage from a James Joyce novel. Literature is a great place to look for examples. 

Wolf Alice | 'Moaning Lisa Smile'

You'd think this song would be about Leonardo da Vinci's 'Mona Lisa', but this song is about Lisa Simpson from the Simpsons and the sixth episode of the Simpsons which is called 'Moaning Lisa'. 

The band have written a lot about the show and how Lisa is a big character in their lives. The band's name Wolf Alice is taken from an Angela Carter story called 'The Bloody Chamber' where she writes fairy tales. 

'Phenomenal Woman' by Laura Mvula is based on American poet Maya Angelou, taking the ideas of the poem and putting them into a song.

Anjali Perinparaja | Synths

Synths represent different types of artificial music makers and provide composers and musicians with the opportunity to make a variety of sounds and sonic textures. 

They were first really unveiled in the fifties, then found a wider audience during the sixties and seventies. As they were such a new innovation, many of the companies who developed them worked closely with composers/musicians to help bring them to a wider audience and into the mainstream industry alongside ensuring they were more useful to creatives. 

Wendy Carlos was a kind of musical physicist who was very much a proponent of the Moog synthesiser. In her album 'Switched on Bach', she featured a collection of Bach's classical compositions, all put through a synth-based sound world which was very groundbreaking at the time."

She then worked those synth sounds in further on her compositional work for films, notably with Stanley Kubrick on some of his iconic films including 'Clockwork Orange'. 

Wendy was very influential in getting the sound to the public and was one of a number of musicians and composers who have had an influence on how those synths were developed.  

The Fairlight is another synth with artists such as Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush helping to promote it. 

Peter Gabriel | 'San Jacinto'

Haunting synths and eastern pentatonic influence can be heard in this piece of music. At the same time, Ryuichi Sakamoto's Yellow Magic Orchestra brought their own Japanese influences into electronic music too which heralded what many see as a form of early synth-pop. 

Yellow Magic Orchestra | 'Firecracker'

Synths were used across many genres and these additional textures could help fully form songs. Giorgio Moroder was a very influential producer who used the Moog on the iconic 'I Feel Love' with Donna Summer.

In the eighties, music production could offer so much more than a live recording and bands such as Depeche Mode, the Human League, and New Order all utilised technology to enhance their music. You could curate how the vocals were delivered and sounded in ways that were very different to how recordings were made before. 

New Order | 'Blue Monday'

After the eighties, many pioneers fed into different genres. In the nineties, rave scene, there were many songs that brought the synth sound to the fore including: 

Robert Miles | 'Children'

As a writer, with a lot of songs, you get to curate how much emotion you put through the vocals. You can use a vocoder on a synth and this can still retain emotion, poignancy, and tell a great story. Imogen Heap does this very well - she retains the electronic vocal sound but keeps the poignancy. 

Imogen Heap | 'Hide and Seek'

Today, these sounds are so much more available and accessible, no matter at what stage in your career you are at. 

Radiohead with their album 'Kid A' took synths and fully embedded them into their sound. It marked a departure for the band from their previous guitar-based output and how they'd absorbed influences from the likes of Aphex Twin and many more.

Radiohead | 'Everything in Its Right Place'