Peterik Chapter 1: Everything You Need to Write a Song
Introduction
Let's begin our summer side-along reading book today.
And now you're wondering, what side-along reading book? Didn't I just say in my last post that I'm no longer doing summer reading books? Didn't I say that never again will I purchase some cheap recreational math book from my library for $1 and then discuss it on the blog as if anyone really cares about it? Didn't I say that I'd write some new songs to perform in my math class instead?
Well, guess what -- yesterday I bought a cheap book about songwriting from my library for $1. This book is Songwriting for Dummies, first published in 2002. Like all For Dummies books, the author is an expert in the field. Actually, there are three authors -- the main author is Jim Peterik, who wrote the famous song "Eye of the Tiger" for the Rocky films. The other authors are Dave Austin (the leader of a music company) and Mary Ellen Bickford (the leader of a nonprofit music education group). But since Peterik's name is listed first, I'll refer to him as "the author" of this book.
My goal is to write better songs for my math class. And so a book like Songwriting for Dummies should help me reach this goal. Therefore I'm going to have a summer reading book after all. My plan will be to read a chapter in each summer post, and then write a math song based on the principles that are taught in that chapter. Again, the focus will be a Math 8 class like the one at the old charter from six years ago.
Of course, some of the later chapters in this book won't be relevant here -- Chapter 12, for example, is called "Writing for Stage, Screen, and Television," and this is followed by "Introducing the Business Players" and "Looking at the Legal End." I'm not trying to become a professional songwriter -- my only audience will be my students. My plan here is just to start reading from the beginning of the book -- chances are by the time we get to those later chapters, summer will be over anyway.
I'll continue to use the "music" label on the blog as we read this book. (My original plan was to use the label as I perform in my class this year, only to have a parent complain and wind up not singing at all.)
Peterik Chapter 1: Everything You Need to Write a Song
Chapter 1 of Jim Peterik's Songwriting for Dummies is called "Everything You Need to Write a Song." It's the start of Part I of the book, "So You Want to Write a Song." Here's how it begins:
"Songs -- the combination of music and words (or lyrics) -- have the power to make people laugh, cry, or even scream out in protest."
Why do people write songs, anyway? Peterik tells us:
"Songs are often written by people who have a hard time verbalizing what's in their hearts -- sometimes, pairing their feelings with music helps people say what they really feel."
The author implores his readers to find the songwriter in all of us:
"If you know the elements that make up a great song and how the pros go about writing one, you can get on the right path to creating one of your own."
Peterik wants us to take a look at our instincts. According to him, you just may be a songwriter if:
"You often find yourself lost in the industrial section of an unfamiliar town when you realize that the great lyric ideas you've been jotting down have totally obscured that little road map your friend had scribbled down for you to get to her house."
But we must start at the beginning, before we write a song:
"After all, where do you begin? Is formal music training a must? [No,] music training is not a prerequisite for songwriting."
And indeed, the authors lists several examples of genres dominated by untrained musicians:
"Folk music, chants, delta blues, country, and rock 'n' roll all got their start with people who had the raw talent to create songs."
At this point Peterik includes a sidebar. I won't always post them here, but I will post this one, which is titled "Capturing that loving feeling":
"In a survey based on performances, sheet music, and record sales, Variety, the entertainment trade paper, once named the 100 most popular songs of all time. An analysis of the themes of those 100 songs showed that about 85 percent of them were love songs. Many of those blockbuster golden oldies are still generating new recordings after 50 years."
Returning to the main text, the author labels the following as a "tip":
"When a melody or a lyrical idea pops into your head, make sure you have a way of freezing it in time. Try to carry with you, at all times, a notebook to jot down ideas and a cassette recorder to capture your musical phrases."
Now Peterik asks us to find inspiration within ourselves:
"When there is an issue you feel passionate about, when you are swept away by some new fad or idea, whether you are moved to tears by a movie or the passing of a loved one, or when you've recently fallen in or out of love -- these are the subjects and feelings that will resonate in your song."
Creating the mood depends on the chords we use -- and the author himself has taken advantage of this:
"Major chords generally result in happier and more optimistic songs like 'You Are the Sunshine of My Life' (written and sung by Stevie Wonder) or Survivor's "High on You" (written by Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan)."
The chapter concludes with six steps to writing a song. I'll post some of those steps here:
2. Find a simple melody. So many new songwriters get in over their heads trying to complex to win friends and influence publishers. Songwriters are not paid by the note -- we're rewarded by the connections we make in the synapses of our audiences' brains. Often the easiest melodies are the longest lasting.
6. Find the confidence within yourself to put your heart and soul on the line and share your song with others. It's through this loop of constant feedback that we'll learn how to improve our songs. Resist the urge to discount everything but positive reaction. Resist the urge to devalue the positive reactions. Breathe in the accolades and weigh the brickbats. Take it all in, but before making any changes, always check it against your heart for the truth.
Analysis of My Performances
In these posts, I want to write some new songs based on what I'm learning in this book. The chapters end with a "Practice Makes Perfect" section, and that's when I want to practice writing songs. But "Practice Makes Perfect" doesn't start until Chapter 2, so I'll wait until my next post to do this. So instead, let's analyze the songs that I've previously performed in math classes based on what we just learned here in Chapter 1.
Let's repeat this line from Peterik:
"You often find yourself lost in the industrial section of an unfamiliar town when you realize that the great lyric ideas you've been jotting down have totally obscured that little road map your friend had scribbled down for you to get to her house."
Surely this has nothing to do with the math songs that I wish to perform in class -- or does it? Hey, this sounds exactly like Square One TV's "Draw a Map" -- a song about navigating a friend's house. And the author also mentions the popularity of love songs. We know that Square One TV has several songs with "love" in the title ("Mathematics of Love," "Graph of Love," "Eight Percent of My Love"), and moreover, "Count the Ways" is also clearly about love (RIP Naomi Judd).
Of course, the songs from that TV show were designed to resemble real songs, so that these songs would resemble music videos (which explains why an artist, title, and label appear in the lower left corner of each one). Thus these songs are follow the same principles as Peterik suggests in his book -- they create a mood and invoke strong emotions such as love. And the goal of the TV show is to get youngsters to transfer those strong emotions to math -- and such is my goal as well.\
OK, so that's how Square One TV does it, but what about me and my original songs? In my last post, I included the lyrics of an original song. Even though this was before I bought Peterik's book, we can still analyze it to see how well it adheres to his principles:
Heroes and Zeroes -- by Mr. Walker
I don't know why I take math.
I'm all caught up in its wrath.
I'll just get a zero grade.
I won't pass math, I'm afraid.
Tell me what would happen when,
I will study now and then.
What if I were great at math?
What would be my future path?
Once I pass it in grade eight,
Math class I'll no longer hate.
When I graph lines, now I'll see,
Y equals mx plus b.
And each sphere has its volume,
Which is four-thirds pi r cubed.
Also a squared plus b squared,
Right triangles, that's c squared.
Reach the moon, be a hero!
I won't just get a zero!
I'll be great, or it may seem,
That this all is just a dream,
'Cause my math skills are so bad.
I can't subtract! I can't add!
I can't multiply by ten,
I'll just score zero again.
Now I know why I take math.
Help me find a better path!
I will be a math hero,
If I beat zero.
Recall that I first wrote and performed the original version of this song six years ago at the old charter school, and then again two years ago at the long-term middle school. And that song definitely invoked strong emotion -- strong negative emotion, unfortunately. Some students -- and parents -- complained about my use of a certain word to describe lazy math students.
The new song is designed to promote a strong positive emotion. It's written from the perspective of a young student entering the eighth grade and wondering why he must take math (or she, of course, but I'm the one singing it, so it's he). He starts to imagine what this new math class will be like and sees all of these new formulas floating through his mind -- the slope-intercept formula, the sphere volume formula, and of course the Pythagorean Theorem.
Outside of that objectionable word though, I like the original song's message. The old middle of the song has the subject imagine himself as a successful math student -- able to calculate change in his head, passing his Algebra and Calculus classes, and majoring in STEM in college. But I had to drop those lines in anticipation of another possible parent complaint -- I, the brand new teacher, am "singing songs in class" instead of "teaching the kids math" (as one parent complained to me last year). So I need to include as many equations in the lyrics as possible so that kids tell their parents, "He's singing math formulas in class" instead of "singing songs" (or even worse, "playing the guitar") in class. Only the line "reach the moon" retains the original message -- by doing well in math and majoring in STEM, we can build rockets to the moon.
Peterik writes about melody, how it should be simple. The rhythm of this song is very simple indeed -- it's in common 4/4 time, with seven syllables in each line filling six quarter notes and one half note.
As for harmony, we see in particular the use of major and minor chords. And indeed, the tune definitely uses major and minor to invoke emotion. The song starts in a minor key (C# minor) as the subject sadly dreads his upcoming math class. Then it switches to a major key (E, the relative major) as he dreams about having a successful STEM career in the future. But then he wakes up and realizes that none of this has happened yet -- he's still sitting in his present math class and lacks the basic skills he needs to be successful. So the song returns to its home minor key.
Indeed, even my actions during the performance reinforce the message. As the song begins and the subject is dreading his math class, I'm sitting down. Then as he dreams of the future, I stand up -- only to sit back down once the dream ends and the subject returns to the reality of his math class.
Unfortunately, the changes I made dilute the original message. The students in my class won't see a clear connection between y = mx + b or a^2 + b^2 = c^2 and reaching the moon. The need to make a quick song that introduces students and their parents to the idea that I'll be performing in class overrides the simplicity of its message.
Some Square One TV songs express this message much more clearly -- "Count on It," "That's Math," and "Wanna Be." And indeed, these are also songs that I like to sing near the start of the year. But those songs, while student-friendly for the beginning of the year, aren't parent-friendly -- I need parents to know that the ultimate purpose of the songs is to teach math, not just the reasons for math. Of course, more math-heavy songs will occur later in the year -- when we actually reach the lessons on linear equations, volume, or right triangles.
These math-heavy songs are the ones that I'm hoping to write as the summer proceeds. And so these are the ones that I'll compose using the principles from Peterik's book. The author has likely never written a math song before -- and yet my goal in composing is the same as his. I want to students to feel strong positive emotions as they learn math -- and besides, just as songs can easily get stuck in your head, I want these formulas to stick in their heads.
Rapoport Question of the Day
Today on her Daily Epsilon of Math, Rebecca Rapoport writes:
How many zeros does y = sin(z) have in [0, 50]?
This is definitely a strong Trig question that I could have given in my Trig class last semester. We know that the zeros of the sine function are of the form k pi for all integers k, so it remains to determine how many such multiples of pi lie in the interval [0, 50]. Using a calculator, we find that:
15pi < 50 < 16pi
and so the necessary multiples are {0, pi, 2pi, ..., 15pi}. This set has 16 elements, and so the desired number of zeros is 16 -- and of course, today's date is the sixteenth.
In my actual Trig class, I did ask my students to solve sin(z) = 0, with z = k pi as the solutions. But I never asked them to find the number of zeros in an interval. Still, it wouldn't have been that big a leap to explain how to find how many zeros there are. This also would have been neat to illustrate on the TI calculator -- graph y = sin x on the interval [0, 50] by [-2, 2] and observe that the graph definitely crosses the x-axis 16 times. Today's problem might have been an excellent Exit Pass for May 16th.
Conclusion
My summer project of revisiting my Math 8 class from the old charter school, and looking at how to improve the songs I performed there will surely continue. But now I have Songwriting for Dummies, which will definitely help me in this goal.
Soon we will read Chapter 2 of this book, and on that day I'll compose a song based on what I learn in that chapter. While I definitely like some of the songs I sang in Math 8 six years ago, there's definitely room for improvement there. I want there to be a much better song in my next post.
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