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Subject: Re: [newmellotrongroup] More on singers

From: fdoddy@aol.com
Date: 2008-03-18

...then you won't like my album!!!!

Hate is such an ugly word.

Generally, I would say lyrics are intended to be sung and not recited or plainly read from the page.  That is part of the freedom of confining them to musical constructs. 

My daughter belongs to the all women's choir at the university she attends and to my untrained, sensitive and quite emotional ears, this amateur choir confirms my belief that the "first" instrument is truly the most beautiful. 

Think about it, almost every solo/lead instrument was designed to imitate the human voice, or at least its expressiveness. Think of how string lines are written in phrases, and rehearsed as though it were being "sung".  The same can be said of many instruments.  Often when I need to tweak a phrase to be played by an ensemble or solo instrument, I will sing the phrase to more accurately reflect the intention of the notation.

Back to lyrics.... Anyone who has spent time with an Anglican hymnal can attest to the beauty and power of "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" or  Weatherly's heart wrenching "Danny Boy", and if rock is your thing (it's certainly part of my DNA) Neil Young gets me every time. Certainly, pop lyrics are not up to the level of what Jimmy Webb crafted for "Wichita Lineman", but I find value in what Ben Folds writes as well as the doe-eyed naivete of The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne. Sometimes the lyric is just a substrate for the melody, as is the case with most prog, old and new.

I'm not trying to convince you or anyone to start listening to lyrics or sung melodies or anything that has to do with the human voice.  I use to think in a similar fashion when I was younger, I could care less about the value added or subtracted by the lyric. What I learned was that I really didn't have much to say when I was young, not because I didn't know how, but more because I was too ignorant of life and its many stories. The older I get, the more I realize I know far less than I did when I was young.  Make sense?  Now, I write about how much I don't know.

fritz






-----Original Message-----
From: steve_tebble <steve@studio43.free-online.co.uk>
To: newmellotrongroup@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 8:32 pm
Subject: [newmellotrongroup] More on singers

Great! I thought you'd all bite!

And it's true most lyrics, in any form of music, are pretty awful.
Even the best don't look too good when removed from the song and
placed on the printed page.

No it's singers I hate. Regardless of how good the lyrics are, they
always sound better when left out completely and played by an
instrument other than the human voice.

Other reasons I hate singers:

1 - an extra person on stage to take up space and share our money
with.
2 - invariably the most musically inept member of the band, to whom
timing, tempo and key are alien concepts, and most importantly
3 - always think they're the most important person in the band
although of course the reverse is true.

'Shut up and play your guitar (sorry Mellotron' indeed!

In fact a friend recently asked me what my favourite form of music
was. I replied anything where the lead guitar and Mellotron got
together to drown out the singer. Not sure he understood!

Steve.