It's Not Chemistry... It's Alchemy.

There is something magical about traveling. Something that I, as a Californian, have taken advantage of, or not taken advantage of, is traveling by foot. In the last week I have walked almost 10 miles on foot.

"I am a slow walker, but I never walk back" - Abraham Lincoln 

"No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path" - Buddha 

"He would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying" - Friedrich Nietzsche

So, I've been walking every where from bus stations to school, from school to home, from home to the post office. And its beautiful. People say that working out makes them feel good and whatnot and I never got that. Now, I see the great in walking hah

I study around the back of the Court.

So today was my first day of classes and I had a three hour introductory course to History of Song. In this course we will gain a comprehensive knowledge of strategies used in popular songwriting and develop an advanced ability to contextualize our own songs.

Using references to popular songs written between the 1920's and today.

We will be studying the developments of musical. lyrical. and structural progressions of popular and commercial songwriting.

Intended Learning Outcomes:

• Developing systematic and comprehensive knowledge and understanding of a broad range of songwriting strategies.
• Developing the ability to contextualize and critically evaluate your own songs and the songs of others. 

 October 1st, 2013

Take a look at some of the classic song structures: AAA, ABAB, and AABA

The chorus section or the area that is not in the verse usually contains the most important lyrical and melodic content that can stand alone.

Sometimes songs have a third section called the bridge, here they call is the middle eight.

It is suggested by my classmates that the content is what gives a song its originality because all songs are the bit and pieces that we pluck from one song and another, or what we hear from our inspirations and references.

Songwriting is not chemistry. It is alchemy.

In class we watched a video by the band, Dirty Projectors, called Stillness is the Move. 


Even though the song ends up being pretty strange as a whole, when the song starts, you hear the catchy beat and a hook guitar riff until the vocals pop in with a strange inflection, rhythm, and lyric.

However, once the lyrics are uncovered, the song is almost genius with an eerie sense of simplicity.

The Bridge, or Middle Eight, thwarts the predictability of the song and has done so in this song. The bridge also offers a thematic change musically and lyrically and switches the mood of the song.

The role of the chorus is to sum up the main message of the song and create impact.

Lastly, classics are classics because we return to them since they still continue to stay relevant.

Welcome to Post-Graduate studies.
This is Bath Spa University.