American Idol 2013

[Tusk]

Many songwriters insert 'dummy' lyrics into songs while they work out the music/melody. The original title for the Beatles' "Yesterday" , was "Scrambled Eggs", "Hey Jude" was "Hey Jules" (written for John's son, Julian, by McCartney to comfort him as their parents were separating)

One time-honored method that songwriters use to begin putting words to a finished piece of music is to write a "dummy lyric." A dummy lyric is a temporary lyric (often silly, even nonsensical) that allows you to outline a song's lyrical structure — the rhythms, the rhyme scheme, etc. It's not really a first draft of the song because you're not bothering with what the words "say" yet, just with mapping out how the final lyric might be structured.

Many famous songs had such humble beginnings. Few songwriters haven't heard of Paul McCartney's well-known dummy lyric for "Yesterday," which began, "Scrambled eggs...." (and continued with a less-well-known second line having something to do with "like your legs").

Another example is Ira Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm" lyric. The finished song goes, "I got rhythm/I got music/I got my man/Who could ask for anything more?" But the dummy lyric went, "Roly-poly/eating solely/ravioli/better watch your diet or bust!"

http://www.richardmiddleton.com/insidemu...yrics.html

Bjorn Ulvaeus did the same thing with ABBA songs when he and Benny Andersson would work on and put down the music first (part of the reason is English being their second language") "Chiquitita"(The song they gifted to UNICEF) was originally called "In the Arms of Rosalitta". To break up the monotony, they would sometimes use Swear words (if they fit) as lyrical place holders.

As a matter of fact, listening to songs sung in languages that you don't understand is an excellent way to strengthen your ear for musical phonetics. Your right brain can enjoy all the beauty of the vocal sounds without your left brain latching onto what they mean. Each language has its own phonetic repertoire and characteristic sound, be it flowing or percussive, velvety or brittle, barrel-chested or nasal. Ride the contours of the singer's voice and follow the interplay of the phonetic themes and variations, the calls and responses, the ebb and flow that make a lyric sing well, that give each song its unique identity.

http://www.richardmiddleton.com/insidemu...yrics.html

They would use nonsensical words as place holders that fit the rhythm and phrasing of the song, until they finished the melody, then go back and re write the lyrics,

That's what McCarther's Park had always seemed to me. Someone worked on the music with dummy lyrics, then decided not to change them

[Tom22]

Many songwriters insert 'dummy' lyrics into songs while they work out the music/melody. The original title for the Beatles' "Yesterday" , was "Scrambled Eggs", "Hey Jude" was "Hey Jules" (written for John's son, Julian, by McCartney to comfort him as their parents were separating)

One time-honored method that songwriters use to begin putting words to a finished piece of music is to write a "dummy lyric." A dummy lyric is a temporary lyric (often silly, even nonsensical) that allows you to outline a song's lyrical structure — the rhythms, the rhyme scheme, etc. It's not really a first draft of the song because you're not bothering with what the words "say" yet, just with mapping out how the final lyric might be structured.

Many famous songs had such humble beginnings. Few songwriters haven't heard of Paul McCartney's well-known dummy lyric for "Yesterday," which began, "Scrambled eggs...." (and continued with a less-well-known second line having something to do with "like your legs").

Another example is Ira Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm" lyric. The finished song goes, "I got rhythm/I got music/I got my man/Who could ask for anything more?" But the dummy lyric went, "Roly-poly/eating solely/ravioli/better watch your diet or bust!"

http://www.richardmiddleton.com/insidemu...yrics.html

Bjorn Ulvaeus did the same thing with ABBA songs when he and Benny Andersson would work on and put down the music first (part of the reason is English being their second language") "Chiquitita"(The song they gifted to UNICEF) was originally called "In the Arms of Rosalitta". To break up the monotony, they would sometimes use Swear words (if they fit) as lyrical place holders.

As a matter of fact, listening to songs sung in languages that you don't understand is an excellent way to strengthen your ear for musical phonetics. Your right brain can enjoy all the beauty of the vocal sounds without your left brain latching onto what they mean. Each language has its own phonetic repertoire and characteristic sound, be it flowing or percussive, velvety or brittle, barrel-chested or nasal. Ride the contours of the singer's voice and follow the interplay of the phonetic themes and variations, the calls and responses, the ebb and flow that make a lyric sing well, that give each song its unique identity.

http://www.richardmiddleton.com/insidemu...yrics.html

They would use nonsensical words as place holders that fit the rhythm and phrasing of the song, until they finished the melody, then go back and re write the lyrics,

That's what McCarther's Park had always seemed to me. Someone worked on the music with dummy lyrics, then decided not to change them

I can go there !

I'm not enamored with the lyrics beyond thinking a few phases point to the general wonder "I'll never find that recipe again" points to a lot of things and feelings. Like I said, Someone leaving something in the rain and imaging a sundress mean something but I'm not going to try to chain all the words into some non-abstact flow. They mean more than scrambled eggs to me though...

... but.. more importantly.. what I get most from the song is the Tone of the voice as it rises and falls and changes their rhythms.

And all that info probably points to my musical background and so much exposure early to things like symphonies and concertos and later playing music myself on my saxophone ... that my mind is trained to hear the tones of the music as the core to the meaning and the words as secondary.. often by a very long distance. I do listen to the vocalist. .it is about SINGING but not about the lyrics themsevles. For me that is.

And of course, with all that said, even people hearing things from that perspective will be attracted to different messages the sounds tell... musical pieces to have messages about the world.. with or without lyrics.

Great stuff there tusk .. helps give me some "closure" on it . ; )

Thanks

[Tusk]

Much of the problem with McArthur's Park is it's lyrics (duh). They are so distracting that there is less emphasis in/notice to the melody, the singer, or the musician

Heck, even "Louie Louie" (Washington State's unofficial theme song ) has more lyrical resonance than MP.

It would actually be interesting if someone took the idea of the lyrics to McArthur's Park as being "dummy lyrics" and took the challenge to actually write 'proper' lyrics for it.

...Lyrically unify and/or focus the direction of the song

[Tom22]

I think with the increases in MRI related technology and studies they're moving less from the Left Brain right brain term and are noticing more specific aspects of how segments of the population use different parts of the brain for approaching different tasks. It will actually be charitable now in an empirical way whether you use a spacial or language cortex to (probably more complicated than that of course) to take on different task or take a test question etc.

For short hand, I'll still use the Left/brain right brain general term without pinning one half on a specific contestant

Look at this duet of Kree and Amber's



Now

1) I wasn't terribly impressed with the Duet.. mostly because the song if it has any merrit at all, is meant to be a studio mixed and remixed dance number.

2) Generally Kree had a nicer sound to her voice but also probably had more passages that actually allowed singing too.

Without passing much judgment because the pick was the producers and by hapenstance or hard work or whatever let Kree do a better sounding job on the mediocre over-all arrangement.

Kree was assigned passages that made more sense but to me were also rather generic lyrics. "She aint real" was as abstract as it got, but almost all was like what "She won't be able to love you like I will"

Amber was assigned more abstract thoughts and idioms ... some basic idioms like "We've got history together" and "He's got his head in the clouds" on the "he aint real" level but a lot more of them... per line sung by a long shot.

She also got the most abstract thoughts and the only ones that caught my attention at all : "Just that I said it don't mean that I meant it" .... that to me was the only decent part of the lyrics.. the only thing to chew on ... the only thing that MEANT something to me because it wasn't clear exactly what it meant even though it was something that might be a rough connection to the complexity of rumors.

I have to figure that when musicians sit down to work on who gets what lyric they think about making it even and which part favors each of their voices to make it sound good etc. But there is a bit of hand raising too I imagine in deciding "i like this one and you like that one.. that works" kinda way.

Ok.. so.. like... I find ~ the cake with green icing that someone left out in the rain ~ really quite meaningful -- something that means MULTIPLE things at once but to me most generally be
cake = something good -- with allusions to have my cake and eat it too also
green icing = like. wtf.. it must be an inside memory betwen lovers .. a cherished kind of quirky thing you had together.. like the Tiramasu i'd have 4 nights a week together with my ex wife when we were daiting in our 20's and meeting at a restaurant at 10 pm to later got to bed with each other after working late.

someone left out in the rain -

...the good things ended out of neglect. probably not me (someone) but a bit of doubt that I could have had a part and not just a "you" ...
.... and yeah, it got ruined YET being ruined by rain has connotations that it was neglect, not someone smashing it, and that nature took it's course when (love) was neglected.

So.. to my brain.. whether Left/right or xyz .. that sort of "cake with green icing left out in the rain" means a lot more poeticaly than a clearer "we had something special and you let it all slip away" .. which to me... is almost meaningless as it doesn't effect me viscerally.. its only words and a linear way of thinking.. not a conceptual way of "getting" something.

Did I put my thoughts to words about the cake as I did now? No.. that is what I felt before i put it to words.. although I'll also add when any song says "love" my mind widens it to any "aspiration" I have, not love of a man for a woman.. I don't really think of love in those terms and don't really think (maybe why I'm divorced) that beyond the headiness and passion of the first years together, that love for a women is much differnt from the fidelity and shared experience I have with my parents and children... they're all a part of me.

OK..well my thoughts asside..

I NEED allergorical descriptions for a song to be valuable to me... I can't think linearly through language like that.

So,

Its funny but Amber seems to pick more songs with broader abstractions. It appears that Keith in particular thinks in that more abstract way like I describe too.

Anyway... not really a strong point but an observation others might sort of look at too.

Tusk got me thinking. For that matter Haley's songs all have pretty abstact thoughts, but as Midnight also pointed out, the open ended abstractions also make sense in a more linear way by quick accepted definitions.

When I hear "have faith that the angels will sing" The deep theological interpretation of the word "faith" and the power of faith that even atheist authors I've read admit can become a sort of self fulfilling proficy that actually works empirically for those that (in their terms) fool themselves.

I think of "sing" as an action word, that she uses in a curious way... implying that Singing is a method for acting towards good....

.. and angels.. forces of good? god or good minded people.. etc (not to mention the can't see their halo's part).

So.... like Haley's songs seem to have the really abstract connotations I need in a song while still meaning something to linear people and not distracting them in the "green cake with icing" type of way.


TldR Haley is an artistic genious.

[My Alter Ego]

Tom22, while I appreciate you looking up the Ferguson arrangement, it's unfortunate that you didn't actually upload one of the real "Maynard" YouTube versions (yup, as an former trumpet player, I feel I have the right to refer to him that way).

I didn't last long enough to get to the seven minute mark. Wayne Bergeron's sloppy tonguing and combined sloppy fingering/tonguing in his initial entrance were cringe worthy and, then, when he went up an octave and was painfully under pitch, I. was. gone. -- I could listen no more.

Kaypea, I was (pleasantly) surprised to know that you were familiar with Ferguson's arrangement. I was more surprised that it was because of your dad. Is/was your dad a jazz musician?

Tusk, you raised the point of "dummy lyrics." I hadn't heard of this before, but it's an intriguing idea. I suspect, it also might work in reverse (i.e. the lyrics come quickly and a "dummy melody").

Many, many years ago, I saw a musical review about the partnership of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. As a trained musician, I thought "I knew it all" about Richard Rodgers -- which was his famous collaboration with Oscar Hammerstein. While watching this production of the review, I was stunned, absolutely stunned!, to discover a good share of the songs I'd been listening to in my youth (because I listened more to what my Mother listened to, rather than what was popular for my generation), were Rodgers and Hart songs.

And, while you guys may not know it, here's a selected list (because their list is huge and, while I don't mean to insult/offend anyone, but given my own background years ago, I suspect some of you may not be aware that many of these standards aren't from Cole Porter or the Gershwin brothers, but rather Richard Rodgers first song writing partner: Lorenz Hart. Here's a small sampling of their works: "You Took Advantage of Me"; "This Can't Be Love"; "The Lady Is a Tramp"; "Manhattan"; "Where or When"; "Blue Moon"; "Bewitched (Bothered and Bewildered)," and "My Funny Valentine." I've left out several well known other tunes, but the point is these songs still have "legs."

Which, brings me back to Tom's discussion about "MacArthur Park" and the arguments about Amber choosing it. While you can like/or love the song to pieces, Tom, "MacArthur Park" had limited appeal in the days when it was popular, and it just doesn't have what it takes to withstand the "tests of time" to become a standard.

While Amber's effortless vocals astonish me and frequently I have mentioned what great potential she has, I also recognized from the outset that there were several things that she needed to do, during her AI run, and one of those is that she needed to learn to pick her songs wisely. In that arena, she's been very hit and miss. I'm often floored that she chooses such old songs like "My Funny Valentine," "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life" and "MacArthur Park." Valentine, of course, is a standard and she sang it beautifully. "What Are You Doing" was a huge risk for her, but it worked out. Perhaps, based on her success with those two, she thought she could make it three for three. Clearly, she didn't.

[Miguel]

Casey interviews Stefano:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/s...can-447376

[Shela]

Casey interviews Stefano:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/s...can-447376

Well that was awkward... Stefano looked really weird with those glasses and I didn´t even know that Casey was doing this for THR. Thanks again for posting it Miguel.

[My Alter Ego]

Casey interviews Stefano:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/video/s...can-447376

LOL! That's an interview???

[Miguel]

Stefano looked really weird with those glasses...

A few days ago Casey tweeted this picture and I tweeted the one below it in response.





That interview with Casey is the most animated that I have seen Stefano.
No pun intended.

[mercfan3]

oh dear, I always joked that the little trio of Casey, Haley, and Stefano could have been cast as the adult versions of Ron, Hermione, and Harry. Those glasses help my case.