ters
DID YOU KNOW?
î Banjo Paterson was one of our most famous playwrights but
he also gave Australia its most famous song, Waltzing Matilda.
It was written in collaboration with amateur musician Christina
Macpherson, who reworked a Scottish folk tune she heard
played at the Warrnambool races. The lyrics were later altered
and different tunes used, but Paterson is the person most
often credited as the songwriter.
î The Greeks are thought to have devised a method of
musical notation as early as the 4th century BC, but the oldest
known complete composition was found carved on a
tombstone dating to the second or third century BC in what
was once a Greek colony in Turkey. The composer seems to
have been a man named Seikilos who possibly dedicated the
song to his wife Euterpe.
î The most successful songwriter in history — according to
SOME GREAT
SONGWRITERS
COLE PORTER
Born in Indiana in 1891, Porter had composed
music and lyrics for more than 800 songs by
his death in 1964. He learned to play violin
and piano as a child and wrote his first song
at age 11. Many of his hits, such as Night And
Day and I’ve Got You Under My Skin, were
written for Broadway musicals and later
Hollywood films. In 1937 a horse fell on him,
leaving him in great pain and unable to walk.
PAUL KELLY
Bob Dylan (top), and (inset) the original
autographed lyrics for The Times They
Are A-Changin’, and (below) American
songwriter Cole Porter, circa 1910.
The Australian rock music singer-songwriter,
guitarist and harmonica player was born in
Adelaide in 1955. His hits include From Little
Things Big Things Grow in 1991, Before Too
Long, performed with his band the Coloured
Girls in 1986, and To Her Door from 1987,
which Kelly told an interviewer took him
seven years to write. “I sing little melodies
into a tape recorder and every now and then
I go through the tapes and have a listen,” he
explained. “I heard that and I thought it
would be good to put words to that, it’s a
good tune.”
WHILE a large proportion of songs are written with simple
lyrics, many of them talking about the person they love or
used to love and now hate, some songwriters have far
more literary merit and can stand alone as poets,
storytellers and even philosophers. Leonard Cohen
was a struggling poet before he turned his hand
to writing songs. Bob Dylan is often acknowledged
as one of the great lyricists, often appropriating
great literature to weave into his works and writing
cogent social commentary or using poignant
images that are often quoted as poetry. Some
songwriters have even won literary prizes for their
words while the American Pulitzer Prize has a category
for songwriters.
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Music: Counch-tlovUedseveIn
nt within
Music: Count Us In is a mu
w in its eighth
the national school calendar. No
was held on
year, this huge school initiative
ing more than
October 30 at 12.30pm, featur
than 2100 schools
500,000 students from more
same song, at the
across the country singing the
same time.
Doo to Hobart,
From Perth to Penrith, Humpty
s were busily
school kids of all ages and abilitie
r’s Music: Count
learning and rehearsing this yea
Us In song, Paint You A Song.
ts, including
This year, five talented studen
re selected to
Kaelyn Girao, 13 (pictured), we
Paint You A Song.
write the words and music for
the Cat
The students were mentored by
ran the
o
Empire’s Harry James Angus, wh
’s inner west.
songwriting workshop in Sydney
PETER ALLEN
Born Peter Woolnough at Tenterfield in
northern NSW in 1944, he had a talent for
playing piano by ear. By the age of 11 he was
working part-time, entertaining locals at the
New England Hotel in Armidale. At 15 he met
Chris Bell and performed as the Allen
Brothers, a clean-cut duo styled on the
Everly Brothers, winning a national audience
on TV variety show Bandstand. He met singer
Judy Garland in Hong Kong in 1962 and
married her daughter, Liza Minnelli, in 1967.
His hits include I Honestly Love You,
Tenterfield Saddler, written about his
grandfather, I Still Call Australia Home and I
Go To Rio. He died in 1992. Other great
songwriters include Bob Dylan, Leonard
Cohen (poet turned songwriter), John
Lennon and Paul McCartney.
SONGWRITING
AS LITERATURE
the Guinness Book Of Records — is Sir Paul McCartney, who
has written 188 songs that have made it on to the pop charts.
Of those, 91 have reached the top 10.
WRITING A SONG
THERE are probably as many ways to write a song as there are
songwriters. Perhaps the major division between styles of writing a song
is those who write melody first, those who first work on the lyrics and
those who work on both simultaneously. Some songwriters argue it is
impossible to write a decent song without first knowing how it will
sound, and that the words, the meter of the words and length of the
lines will depend on the music, as will much of the mood of the song.
Many other songwriters say they need an idea and words before they
can shape the melody around them, which will affect the key, the rhythm
and other basic musical elements. Most songs are written to a familiar
format of verses alternating with a repeated chorus or refrain, with
perhaps a contrasting interlude section (also called the “bridge” if it is
used to transition the song toward the end, or the “middle eight” if it is
eight bars of music in the middle of the song), but some songs avoid this
obvious format. Some forms of songwriting involve complete
improvisation, spontaneously making up words and melody.
SOURCES AND FURTHER STUDY:
BOOKS
Oxford Companion To Music edited by Alison Latham (Oxford)
Songwriting by Dick Weissman (ePub)
WEBSITES
Australian Performing Rights Association
www.apraamcos.com.au
Australian Songwriters Assocation www.asai.org.au
Encyclopedia Britannica
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Editor: Troy Lennon Phone: 9288 2542
Email: [email protected]
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