The intro, outro and vocal melodies

Hello and welcome to the intro, outro and vocal melodies. My name's Mr. Noris. I'm really looking forward to going through this lesson with you today where we're gonna try and complete our understanding of grunge from this unit and continue to build on those compositional skills that we've been working on throughout. So let's get into it. Our outcome today is that I can add an intro and outro to my grunge composition and create a vocal melody for at least one section. So we're gonna be looking at the sort of the extra sections aside from the verse, chorus and middle eight. And then we're gonna be focusing on creating vocal melody, which is quite a different skill to what we've done so far. Our keywords, intro, which is short for introduction, is the first section of a song that introduces some of the musical ideas and sets the mood for the song. The outro is the final section of a song that provides an effective ending, often based on musical ideas from other parts of the song. And then finally, texture. And the texture of a piece of music is how many different layers of sound are heard at the same time. We can describe it as thick, whether there are many layers, or thin, whether there're a few layers. So we're gonna explore these concepts more as we go. The first part of our lesson today is called the intro and outro in grunge. The intro and the outro are the first and last sections in verse-chorus from. If this is the main section of verse-chorus form, then the intro comes at the start. And this is important for establishing the mood of the music and introducing some musical ideas early. If you think about most songs that you'll have listened to, usually there'll be something that happens before the singer starts singing. And this will be the intro where the mood is established, and some of the musical ideas, whether it's the groove, whether it's the chords, whether it's maybe some ideas about the melody are introduced before the singer actually starts. The outro comes at the end, and this is an opportunity to conclude the song in a satisfying way. Not all songs include outros, but it is quite a common feature in verse-chorus form. Both sections usually borrow musical ideas from the verse or the chorus. This could be chord sequence, it could be a riff, may be a bassline, it could be a melody. There are lots of different things that they could borrow, but usually there's a link between the music and the intro and the outro and the music and the rest of the song. Otherwise, it'll just feel like a standalone isolated section, and you don't want that. There's a clip here of the chorus and the intro from a song. This is a classic rock song. I'd like you to think about, as you're listening, which musical ideas are borrowed from the chorus in the intro of this song. So which features can you hear that are used in both? You can pause my video and have a listen now. Let's see then. So the intro used the guitar riff from the chorus. You have noticed there that the vocals were very different. There were no vocals in the intro, but there were vocals in the chorus. Some of the rhythms were slightly different, but the guitar riff was the same in both. And that links the intro with the rest of the song. We'll do the same now, but we're gonna listen to the chorus and an outro from a pop song. I'd like to know which musical ideas are borrowed from the chorus in this outro? So pause my video and have a listen. So in this instance, the outro uses the bass riff and part of the melody from the chorus. So it's linking the outro to the main memorable section from the middle of the song, which is the chorus, borrowing some features, but creating a satisfying ending at the same time. Let's check your understanding. What do the intro and outro have in common? They both borrow musical ideas from another section. They use the same musical ideas as each other, or they both use only original musical ideas. I'll give you a few seconds to work that one out. And the correct answer then is A, they both borrow musical ideas from another section. So usually they'll take ideas from either the chorus or the verse. It's rare that they would use only original musical ideas like in option C there, because then they would sound very different from the rest of the song, and we want them to feel like they're part of the same song as the verse and chorus. So with that in mind, to make a suitable intro and outro for a grunge competition, we borrow musical ideas from other sections. We also develop the texture in both sections, and this is a key way to make an intro or an outro really effective in their role. We'll watch this video, which shows us how to create an intro. Here we go. Now let's look at the intro. For the intro, I'm gonna introduce one of the riffs that I'm gonna use later on, and I've decided I want to introduce my chorus riff, so I'm gonna keep that in there. But I want the intro to be different from the chorus, and I want it to sort of build up to introduce the song a little bit. So what I'm gonna do in the intro is strip out some of the parts so it starts with a thinner texture and gradually builds up so that then when the chorus finally emerges at bar 17, it's very dramatic and exciting, but it still sounds familiar because we've heard the riff before. So I'm gonna start by taking out the melody. I don't want the melody in the intro, and I think I might take out the bass part as well. So I'm just gonna have my guitar riff playing, which sounds like this with the drums. (upbeat music) But at the moment, the drums are very dramatic, they're very powerful and energetic, and I want them to sort of build up. So what decided I'm actually gonna do is I'm gonna take my tom-toms and my open hi-hat, and we're gonna bring them in halfway through the intro. So we're starting with this thinner texture for the first four bars. Then it builds up a little bit from bar five to eight, and then we hit the verse at bar nine. So let's see what it sounds like. (upbeat music continues) And then we hear the verse. (upbeat music continues) And then this time we're gonna hear the full chorus. (upbeat music continues) So you can hear that when the chorus finally comes, because we've heard that riff before in the intro, it sounds a bit familiar, but because we kept out the bass and the melody and built up the texture in the intro, it meant it wasn't just a repetition of the chorus. So try something similar for your intro. Think about how you want your song to start, maybe with a thinner texture and getting thicker, and think about how you can build into the start of your verse at bar nine. Now let's look at how we do that with an outro. Here we go. For the outro, we're gonna do something similar to the intro, but kind of in the opposite way. So instead of introducing the ideas gradually, we're gonna strip the ideas out to create an effective ending. At the moment in the outro, all I have is my drums, but I am gonna add in my bass riff from my chorus, my guitar riff from my chorus. And during this section, I'm gonna gradually strip those out. So I might have the guitar riff plays twice, and then we finish with the bass, and then I might take out some of my drums for the second half of this section. So they're ending with just bass and some part of the drum kit. I'll see how that sounds. (upbeat music continues) I think that works reasonably well as the ending. It gradually removes the parts, so it's not a sudden ending, and it uses some of the riffs that we've heard throughout the song. You might decide for your outro, you might use part of the verse riff instead, you might use the chorus riff as I've used. You might just stick to the bass. Maybe you'll just stick to the electric guitar. Maybe you have a bit of melody in there as well. But think about how you can gradually thin down the texture so that by the time it finishes, it feels logical and natural for it to finish, rather than it just suddenly stopping. So have a go at your outro, creating an effective ending by thinning out your texture. Let's summarise those steps then. So to make a suitable intro, build up the texture by starting with one or two musical layers and gradually adding more. For the outro, we're doing the opposite. So thin out the texture by taking out musical layers and finishing with just one or two at the end. So we've got these two opposites at either end of the piece of music. The first one starts with a thin texture and gets thicker, and then outro at the end starts with a thick texture and gets thinner to make a really satisfying ending. For both sections, use some of the musical ideas from the verse or the chorus, such as the drum groove, the bassline, or the guitar riff. Using the melody can also be effective, but usually we do that in the outro rather than the intro. True or false? The outro is effective when the texture thickens. Have a think about that statement, and when you've decided whether it's true or false, I'd like to think about why. So justify your answer. You can pause my video as you do that. Let's look at this then. So that is false. The outro is not affected when the texture thickens, and the reason why is because the outro works better when the music dies away. So you're thinning out the texture by taking musical layers out. The intro is more effective if the texture thickens through the addition of musical layers. So that statement will be true for the intro, but not so much for the outro. For the outro, we want to thin the texture out. For task A then, you're gonna create an intro and an outro for your grunge composition. Some success criteria is that each section should borrow a musical idea, either a riff, bassline or drum groove from another section. Each section should be either eight or 16 bars long, and the texture in the intro gradually thickens while in the outro, it gradually thins out. You can pause my video now and have a go at creating your intro and an outro. Give it your best shot. For the second part of this task, I'm gonna play you a short clip of some music. Would this be more suitable as an intro or an outro? Once you've decided that, think about why. So why would this work better as an intro, or why would it work better as an outro? Here we go then. (lively music) So you can pause my video as you complete your answer. Would that be more suitable as an intro or outro, and why? Let's go through this one then. This would be more suitable as an outro because the texture gradually thins out and the dynamics fade out as well. So this would work much better at the end of a piece of music than as an intro at the start. Really well done if you got that one there. That shows that you're really developing your understanding of what makes an effective intro or effective outro. For the second part of our lesson, we're gonna look at creating a vocal melody. Lyrics are one of the defining features of grunge. They often have dark themes and explore issues such as loneliness, depression, and addiction. We can adapt an instrumental melody to a vocal melody by adjusting the melody to fit the patterns of the words. I'm gonna show you a video now that shows you how to write grunge-style lyrics. Here we go. As we know, one of the key features of grunge is the dark themes of its lyrics. Often grunge artists were expressing anger and frustration at the world around them. And grunge lyrics often explore issues such as loneliness, suffering, pain, depression, addiction, trauma, things like this. So quite dark themes. When we listen to grunge songs, typically the singers will be expressing these themes, and so when we're creating a grunge composition and we're writing lyrics for it, we want to sort of be matching that as well. It wouldn't really be fitting of the style to have lyrics that didn't match that. So I'm gonna start having a think about some language I might use, and I'm gonna, as I'm writing my lyrics, have a think about trying to use some imagery. So using things like similes, metaphors, some of the same kind of techniques we might use when we're writing poetry in English. We also wanna make sure that we're writing lyrics that will fit with the length of our sections. So most of our sections in our composition are eight bars or 16 bars long. So generally speaking, we're gonna want to be writing four lines of text for a verse, or four lines of text for a chorus that would generally fit with the length of our sections. So I'm gonna start off by saying something like, I'm tangled in a web of shattered dreams. So here we've got a bit of a metaphor going on, talking about being stuck in a web, and I'm using some quite powerful language, you know, shattered dreams, that's quite powerful, and it's quite kind of dark as well, isn't it? For my next slide, I want something that's a similar number of syllables, similar number of length of line, and I want something that sort of rhymes at the end of it as well. We don't have to be too strict about rhyme, but usually we will have pairs of lines that rhyme. So I want a word at the end that sounds not dissimilar to dreams. Let's say something like, I could say rusty chains bind me. I can't break free. So free and dreams don't quite rhyme, but within the context of our lyrics, we can hear that there's some similarity there. So, so far the theme, it's quite dark. It's saying, I'm bound, I'm tangled in a web, shattered dreams, I can't break free. And this is really typical of the language that we might get in grunge where the artists are often expressing anger, frustration, feeling trapped, feeling sad, et cetera. Now I'm gonna do two more lines along a similar theme. I'll maybe change them slightly so they're not so much about being trapped. And again, I want to find some words at the end of those lines that rhyme. I could say something like, something about being haunted maybe. So echoes, echoes of whispers haunt my restless nights. So here we're saying we're sort of haunted, we're tormented, and it's talking about sort of difficulty sleeping, and then something that rhymes with nights for the last line at the end. Lights, might, I think I'll go for lights. I'll find something with that. So we could have lost in the shadows of city lights. So that's four lines. We've got a rhyme at the end of the first two lines or close to a rhyme with dreams and free. And then we've got a rhyme at the end of line three and four, nights and lights, and the lines are roughly a similar length. There's no really long lines of text, and they're really short ones. And the theme of all these is about being trapped, about being haunted, about being lost, and that's really typical language that we might get when we're listening to grunge music. So for this task that you're gonna do shortly, you can either use some sample lyrics that I've written, so that includes this and another section, and you can use those if you want, or you can have a go at creating your own, trying to express some of those themes in a four-line verse or a four-line chorus. And then we're gonna have a look at how we can transfer that into our composition. Now let's look at how we can create a vocal melody once we've written those lyrics. Let's have a look at how we can take some lyrics and turn an instrumental melody into a vocal melody. In order to do this, we're gonna need to be able to record our voices into our software. So before you start doing it, set yourself up ready to do so. If you're using GarageBand, the way we do that is we create a new track, select audio rather than software instrument. And then depending on our setup on a computer, we'll either record in through the microphone built into the computer, or you might need to plug one in. Ask your teacher and they'll be able to help you set it up. I've set one up here, and as you can see, as I'm talking, it's picking up my voice so I know that that's working and that I'm gonna be able to record my voice in. So I've decided that I'm gonna use the lyrics that I wrote to create a vocal melody for my chorus. Let's just have a listen to that section before I start doing it. (upbeat music) So here I created an A, B, A, C melodic structure in my melody, and it starts off with the phrase (instructor humming). That's my first phrase. Now, what I'm gonna do is take my four lines of text that I've written and see if I can fit them around that melody. It will almost certainly mean when you're doing this that you have to change the rhythm of the melody you wrote because it's unlikely that you've created the exact pattern of words and syllables, the correct rhythms that will fit the words that you wrote. So you will have to adapt it slightly. So my first line, my first line of text is "I'm tangled in a web of shattered dreams." Now, if we think about how that fits with the melody, ♪ I'm tangled in a web of shattered dreams ♪ I have to add in a few notes there, a few extra notes to make the rhythm fit. But the overall shape and the overall pattern of the notes does fit. ♪ I'm tangled in a web of shattered dreams ♪ So I can use that as the first part of my melody. I could record that in. And in order to do that, I'm gonna mute some of my tracks so I can just hear my bass and my drums so I can really hear my voice coming over the top. So I'm gonna record that line in here. (upbeat music continues) ♪ I'm tangled in a web of shattered dreams ♪ So that's my first line of my four done. Now, the next part of my melody that I wrote on this guitar track here goes. (instructor humming) That's the melody, and my text is rusty chains bind me. I can't break free. So again, I've got too many syllables, too many parts of the words there to fit those notes, but I can change the rhythm. And the way we do this is just trial and error, trying to make it fit and seeing what works, seeing what comes naturally with the words. ♪ Rusty chains bind me ♪ ♪ Can't break free ♪ That sounds okay, I think that works reasonably well. I've had to add a few extra syllables in few extra notes there to make it fit, but that's gonna work so I can record that in now. I'm gonna mute my melody. (upbeat music continues) ♪ Rusty chains bind me ♪ ♪ Can't break free ♪ So that's two parts of my melody recorded in. Now I'm gonna have a go at my third line. As this is an A, B, A, C structure, this is the same as the first one. (instructor humming) That's the melody. My text here. Echoes of whispers haunt my restless nights. So there's a lot of words there to squeeze in. ♪ Echoes of whispers haunt my restless nights. ♪ It doesn't quite work, does it? There's too many words to fit in. So what I might actually do is change my words to make them fit a bit better. I think if I get rid of restless, so I've just got echoes of whispers haunt my nights, I think that might fit better. ♪ Echoes of whispers haunt my nights ♪ That fits a bit better so we can record it in. (upbeat music continues) ♪ Echoes of whispers haunt my nights ♪ And then the final bit, the melody goes. (instructor humming) And my words are lost in the shadows of city lights. ♪ Lost in the shadows of city lights ♪ That seems to work okay. Again, I've had to add in a few extra notes in the rhythm to just make the words fit the melody. ♪ Lost in the shadows of city lights ♪ So I can record that in. (upbeat music continues) ♪ Lost in the shadows of city lights ♪ Okay, so there I've recorded in then my four parts of my melody, and I've taken those words that I wrote. I made them fit the melody, so it's not exactly the same as it was. I've had to adapt some of the rhythms. I've had to take out some words, I've had to add in a few notes here and there to make it fit. But the overall shape of that melody fits quite well I think. And once I've done that, I can then get rid of my original melody because I've now got it as a vocal melody. If I wanted to, I can then also copy it as that's my chorus into my two other choruses, so I could copy those bits of my melody across and put them in at 33 and at 49. And then if I want to do the same with my verse or with my middle eight, I could write some lyrics and do the same, adapting those lyrics to the melody of those other sections. Before I finish, let's have a quick listen to how that melody sounds all together. ♪ Tangled in a web of shattered dreams ♪ ♪ Rusty chains bind me ♪ ♪ Can't break free ♪ ♪ Echoes of whispers haunt my nights ♪ ♪ Lost in the shadows of city lights ♪ Let's summarise those steps then. To write grunge-style lyrics, create four lines of text per verse or chorus. Choose powerful and dark words to reflect the grunge style and try and use some similes, metaphors and rhyme to make it really effective lyric writing. When we're then creating a vocal melody, we wanna listen to the instrumental melody and either adapt it slightly to fit the words or adjust the words that fit the melody. So we need to make the two somehow come together. Sing it to yourself first to check if it fits before you record it and select audio rather than software instrument on the DAW. Make sure when you're recording, you do it in your two bar phrases. So a line of text should fit with two bars of your melody. And break it up into little pieces to make it easier for yourself to record. How many phrases of text would you expect to have in the lyrics for a chorus? Three, four, five or six? Take a few seconds to work that one out. So the correct answer here then is four, And that's usually because we have eight bars or 16 bars in a section. So four lines of text would fit evenly over that. Well done if you got that one right. Describe the process of making lyrics fit with an instrumental melody. You can pause my video while you think of that. So the process looks something like this. Listen to the instrumental melody, sing the lyrics to the notes of the melody, and if they don't fit, adapt the notes of the melody to make it fit the lyrics or adapt the lyrics slightly to fit the melody. Well done if you got those three steps. It's time for task B, and for this, you're gonna create a vocal melody for at least one section of your grunge composition. If you have time and you want to, you can of course create vocal melodies for all the sections of your composition. Some success criteria: the lyrics are in the style of grunge, so you either used my sample lyrics that I've written or your own in that style. The instrumental melody is adapted to fit the words. The vocal melody is recorded in to replace the instrumental melody. Here are some sample lyrics that you could use if you wanted to. There are two different stanzas there, two different sections of text that you could use if you wanted. So you can pause my video now and give that your best shot. For the final part of this task, I'm gonna play you a vocal melody, and I'd like to think about what could be improved about this vocal melody. Let's have a listen. ♪ Screaming into deafening silence ♪ ♪ Drowning in noise ♪ ♪ Their thoughts are forgotten joys ♪ ♪ Crushed by my empty desires ♪ ♪ I feel like I'm burned by the flames of dying fires ♪ Pause my video and see if you can think of some ways that could be improved. Let's have a look then. So at the moment, there are some long lines of lyrics. So if the lines were a more similar length, it would sound more effective. It would also help the lyrics to fit the melody more naturally. At the moment, they don't quite fit with the melody, so there needs to be a bit of adaptation of the lyrics or of the melody to make them fit a little bit better. Well done if you picked up on that. To summarise our lesson then. The intro and the outro are important parts of a structure. They provide the frame for the main content of the song, so everything fits within them. The intro and the outro are usually based on musical ideas from either the verse or the chorus. The intro is an opportunity to introduce some of the musical ideas and set the mood for the song while the outro provides a neat ending to the song; it is not always used. And we can make an instrumental melody vocal by adapting it to fit the rhythms of words. That's the end of our lesson then. I hope you've really enjoyed it. I've certainly really enjoyed going through it with you, and I hope that you feel that you've developed some really valuable composition skills, but I've also learned some really powerful knowledge about this style of music as well.