Lesson video

Hello and welcome to this Songs for a Better World unit.

In this unit we'll be exploring the different musical features of protest songs and how those features are used to make the protest songs really powerful and effective.

By the end of this unit, we will have composed our own protest songs, our own melodies, chord sequences, and lyrics.

We'll be working on a piece of software called BandLab to create our songs and we will be doing lots of listening, some performing, and lots of composing in the lessons.

In today's lesson, we're going to be focusing on how John Lennon uses melody to communicate the lyrics to his song "Imagine." So, without further ado, let's take a look at what we need to be successful in today's lesson.

In this lesson, you need a piece of paper, and a pencil to make notes with, you will also need your voice or an instrument or access to an online app or instrument or digital audio workstation such as BandLab.

This lesson is better with headphones but is not required.

If you need to pause the video to get any of the equipment you see on screen, or find a quiet space to work in, please do so now and press play when you are ready to continue.

Listening to the lyrics.

Listen to the start of this song and write down the words that you feel are most important.

What do you think this very famous song is about? Whilst you listen, you can have a look at the picture on the right, which is the piano that John Lennon wrote "Imagine" on.

It was bought by George Michael years later so that it could be kept in the UK and for people to enjoy.

♪ Imagine there's no heaven ♪ ♪ It's easy if you try ♪ ♪ No hell below us ♪ ♪ Above us only sky ♪ ♪ Imagine all the people ♪ ♪ Living for today, aha ♪ So that was "Imagine" by John Lennon.

You may be familiar with that song already.

You may have heard of John Lennon.

He was a member of the Beatles.

So let's take a closer look at these lyrics.

I'll read them out for us.

Imagine there's no heaven.

It's easy if you try.

No hell below us.

Above us only sky.

Imagine all the people living for today.

Imagine there's no countries.

It isn't hard to do.

Nothing to kill or die for.

And no religion, too.

Imagine all the people living life in peace.

You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.

I hope someday you'll join us and the world will be as one.

Listening to these lyrics, what do you think this song is about? Pause the video here and write four sentences on the meaning of the song.

This is a protest song.

What could John Lennon be protesting against or for? John Lennon wrote the song "Imagine" looking forward to a world of peace.

He was asking people to imagine a world without war, a world without religion, a world without borders, and a world where everybody gets along and lives in peace.

Lots of people have resonated with this message.

There are many similar songs.

And "Imagine" still to this today is one of the most covered songs of all time.

On screen I have shown us where the verse, pre-chorus, and the choruses are.

In today's lesson we will focus mainly on the verse and we'll have a little look at the pre-chorus as well.

Verse melody.

On the bottom of the screen I've put a picture of the score.

There are eight bars in the verse and I have some questions for you to answer.

How many phrases does the melody break down into? How many phrases can you see? How many bars long is each phrase? Does the melody use many different pitches or just a few? Can you name these pitches? For a stretch, is the melody syllabic, which means one note per syllable, or melismatic, more than one note per syllable? Pause the video here, analyse the score in some detail, write your answers on a piece of paper, and click resume when you are ready to continue.

Here is a closer look at the score that breaks down the phrases into four.

So, let's do some analysis then.

We have four 2-bar phrases.

They're all a similar shape.

They all end on the note E.

Very simple, actually only uses three notes, D, E, and F, and, therefore, has a range of a third.

It's F sharp, excuse me.

And it's syllabic.

Syllabic means one note per syllable.

So we have I-ma-gine there's no hea-ven and each verse syllable has a different note.

We will now be introduced to BandLab.

BandLab is a digital audio workstation, which means it's a piece of software where you can make music.

After the brief introduction on how to use BandLab, we will compose a similar melody to the one in "Imagine." Let's compose four 2-bar phrases that are similar in shape.

We can just use three pitches and we can use D, E, and F sharp too.

Once you've had an- Once you've done some experimenting and had a little bit of a play on BandLab and composed your four bar- your four 2-bar phrase, pause the video to complete your task and click resume once you have finished.

Analysing the verse and composing in the style of the verse, let's take a look at how John Lennon creates melodic contrast.

On the screen I have the score for the pre-chorus of the song.

Can you see any similarities or differences? Write them down on your piece of paper.

Okay.

So whereas before we had four 2-bar phrases, now we only have two 2-bar phrases.

John Lennon uses more notes.

Can you tell me how many more notes he used here? There is a bigger range.

Can you say what- what the range is? There are examples of melisma.

Melisma is where one syllable is played over many notes.

Look at bar 14 on the syllable "ple" from people and also in the last bar on the syllable ha.

You can see how the syllable stretches, and there's that line to show that, but there are multiple notes.

"Ple" has three notes, ha has four.

Comparing the verse and pre-chorus melody.

Create a table on your piece of paper that show the similarities and the differences between the melody in the verse and the pre-chorus of John Lennon's "Imagine." Using music software.

You can create music using audio-mixing software.

The demonstrations in this lesson use a free programme called BandLab.

BandLab is for use by over-13s only and if you are over 13, you still need permission to use it from your parent or carer.

So, let's get started with BandLab.

BandLab is the music software that we're going to be using to create our music in this unit.

I have an education BandLab account, so I'm going to go to edu.

bandlab.

com, but you may use the normal BandLab as well.

If you're using a device such as an iPhone or an iPad, you will need a standard BandLab account.

You're going to need your parent's help to get this.

You must be aged 13 or over, so if you haven't already got it, please pause the video now and get permission from a parent to set up a BandLab account and get them to help you out.

Okay.

So let's log in and I'll show you what it looks like when we get there.

Okay, so when we log in, we want to head over to what is called my library.

When you get into your my library, you can start a personal project in the mix editor.

So you want to click the little microphone symbol and click on mix editor.

It will load up your studio and prepare the audio and you're presented with this dialogue box here.

Now, this shows BandLab's functionality.

You can use MIDI instruments, which is what we're mainly going to be doing.

MIDI stands for musical instruments digital interface and it's just, essentially, a collection of sounds and information about that sound and you can select what instrument you want and the computer will generate something that sounds like a violin, something that sounds like a piano.

So, of course, there isn't a piano or violin living in my laptop, but there is information about what that sound sounds like.

So that's what we're going to be using, mainly.

There's also a drum machine which we will look at in a future lesson.

It also has the functionality to record real instruments.

So you can plug in a guitar or a bass and also use your laptop's microphone or a microphone that you have at home to record your voice or anything with the microphone at home as well.

As most digital audio workstations do, it also has an extensive collection of loops if you're interested in the more electronic dance music and other electronic genres.

There are many many loops that you can experiment with when you are playing around with BandLab.

So, let's open up a piano.

So I've clicked on just instruments and the default setting is to open up a piano.

Now you can see that I have an image of a piano down here in the bottom and it also has letters on it.

Now, if you're a piano player, you know that this note here is not called a Q.

We don't have the notes Q in music, but the letters at the bottom correspond to the letters on your actual keyboard.

So if I press Q W E on my laptop's keyboard I get a B F G sound.

So that's one way we can play that in.

Another way is to plug in a keyboard at home.

If you're lucky enough to have a keyboard that plugs into the laptop, BandLab will work with that as well.

But my preferred method, and the one I'm going to encourage us all to use, is just simply draw in our notes.

It allows us to be accurate.

We don't have to worry about being out of time all of the time.

If you wanted to change the instrument, you can select from a list of many.

Winds, voices, synth basses, strings, bass, brass, guitars, and if, for example, I wanted to do a bass, within that bass list I also have many many different lists- basses within that.

So I've got electric basses, double basses, things like that.

So I'm going to go back to my piano sound, by default grand piano.

I can click on the X so I can have more room.

Now, that's all well and- well and good, but how do we actually input notes? Well, the first thing we need to do is create a region.

A region looks like this and that's where the notes actually go in.

This is moveable.

I can move it to a different position in the track.

I can make it shorter.

I can make it longer by using the symbol at the bottom right-hand corner.

I'm just click, holding, and dragging.

I can also loop the section.

So if I had music in this- in these four bars and I wanted to repeat it, I could click, hold, and drag the top right-hand corner and that would loop the same thing.

So, once I've created my region, I can name it.

So I could call it simple three-note melody.

I could call it Bob if I wanted to, but it's- it's always a good habit to name your tracks so you can keep on top of things.

Similarly, you can name the track here.

So I could put piano melody.

And so- so now we're ready to input some notes.

I can double tap on my region that I've created and it'll bring up what is called a piano roll.

It's called a piano roll because it has a sort of rolled up piano all the way here, which goes from up to C8 so very very high-pitched, all the way down to the A below C1.

So what a big big range.

And usually we're going to be staying within this C4 octave.

That's the sort of median pitch that doesn't sound too high or too low.

So that's where we're going to be sticking for our melody.

If I were to double tap in any square, it would create- or, sorry, rectangle, it would create a note.

Just like I could move the region, I can go to the end of that note, click, hold, and drag and make it longer or shorter.

So, for example, if I wanted to play the note C, I would drag it to C, click, hold, and drag, and make it go all the way to bar two.

I release it.

It will save.

You can see that it's in this region and when I click play, I will have a note that lasts for one bar.

Good.

There we go.

Now, we said we wanted to make a three-note melody and we wanted to use the notes D, E, and F sharp.

So I have D, and all I did to move that was click, hold, and drag the note from C to D.

What I could have done is just clicked next to the note D and it would have automatically inputted the note D.

If I wanted to put an E in, I would click in the corresponding rectangle and if I wanted an F sharp I would do the same thing.

So now I have D, E, and F sharp, each lasting one beat- one bar each.

Let's hear how that sounds.

Oops.

Okay.

Now, although that technically fits the brief of a short, simple melody with three notes, it's very very boring.

So, what can we do? We can change the rhythm.

We can change the frequency of the notes as well.

So, one of the things that you can do is use the side planner to try and experiment with the different sounds.

Like that.

And if you're happy, you can start to input those notes.

So, I could do D, D, E, and once I've- once I've put in a few notes, I always think it's a really good habit to go back and hear what it sounds like just to check that you've put the right rhythm in.

Good.

Now what would happen if I didn't put the right rhythm in? I could use command to get rid of some notes, I could select the note I didn't like and delete it, or I could move those notes up and down.

I'm going to put those notes back in.

Doo, doo, doo.

And then I wanted my F sharp.

I'm going to do the same rhythm.

So I'm going to make that a bit shorter.

Little bit of rest.

This is going to start on beat- bar two.

Doo, doo, doo.

There we go.

So let's see how that sounds.

Just checking it's the right rhythm.

Right.

Okay.

I actually didn't want that melody to be- that note, sorry, to be in that rectangle.

I wanted it to start on the third beat of bar two, that's what the 2.

3 means.

But, actually, when I played it back I quite liked it.

It sounded a bit funky, so I'm going to keep it in.

Doo, doo-doo.

There we go.

Try that one more time.

There we go.

So that's my first two bars, so melody two bars.

So I would just need to do four more of those.

Each one slightly different.

I'm going to do that off-camera and come back to you and then it's over to you.

Okay, so I have finished doing my four 2-bar phrases.

I've got eight bars in total and what I did was I actually copied and pasted this region and in each phrase I moved one note and changed the rhythm.

And that was it.

I wanted to keep it a similar shape and I wanted to keep it fairly consistent throughout the four phrases.

So let's hear what it sounds like all the way through.

There we go.

That's my four very simple 2-bar phrases.

Over to you now.

What I would like you to do is, if you haven't already, setup your BandLab account with your parent's help and permission.

Open up the mix editor.

Have a little experiment, go around, see how you can add new tracks, see if you can label your tracks, see if you can add a region.

And then create your simple three-note melody and turn it into four phrases that are similar but that have very subtle differences, just like John Lennon did in his song, "Imagine." Good luck.

Take your time.

This would have- this might take you between 15 and 20 minutes maybe, or maybe you are used to digital audio workstations and you do it a little bit quicker.

However fast you do it, take your time and take care and pride in your work, and good luck with it.

Compose a similar melody.

Compose four 2-bar phrases.

The phrases should be similar in shape.

They should be simple, using just three pitches, and have a small range.

In my example, I used the notes D, E, and F sharp.

You can do the same or you can use three different notes.

Pause the video to complete your task and click resume once you've finished.

Well done for completing that task.

And well done for your hard work in today's lesson.

I hope you enjoyed it and I hope to also see you in the next one.

Don't forget to do the quiz to check your understanding of this content and I'll see you next time.