Illustration Friday: Tales and Legends

Above: Following my New Year's Resolution to do more drawing just for fun, I created the above for Illustration Friday. This week's topic: "Tales and Legends." I created this in Corel Painter using a variety of brushes and their variants including Sponge, Pen, and Airbrush.

And here's my daily Doodle:



Title: "Contentment." Also did this in Corel Painter.

Since starting to paint with real acrylics, I've become more aware of colours. In the drawing above, I experimented with an earth-tone palette rather than my usual turquoise-blue faves.




Above: I've revamped the graphics for the Canadian Blog Awards, including the award graphics. Yes, I know I only discovered the CBAs a few days ago but I thought the graphics needed a Canadian beaver, eh? :-). I approached the CBA people and they said yes.

I am SO in love with Scrivener these days. I'm using the Screenplay option, tweaking the formatting to suit my graphic novel script. I don't even have to use the shortcut keys (saving on typing) but just hit the TAB key to automatically get the right formatting for page headings, panel headings, scene descriptions, character names, parenthetical directions, and dialogue.

Makes me wonder what the MS Word people think of all this. MS Word handles automatic style selection as well, but I've been finding Word increasingly more frustrating; I often feel like I'm trying to wrestle with a 500-feature three foot power tool just to cut an apple.


Thanks to those who answered yesterday's song survey about what you tend to focus on when listening to a song: the music or the lyrics. I enjoyed reading through your answers, and also got an insight into how a few of you write songs. Some of your replies:

madfilkentist: "Mostly the music, though both have to be worthwhile to get me to listen to a song repeatedly. This depends on the kind of song, though. In filk the lyrics tend to be more important, especially if it's something to an existing tune."

clothsprogs: "Lyrics. A tune I like is important but the vast majority of music I like to listen to has lyrics, and I like to be able to follw them (which is why most opera is out and I don't listen to many things with non-English lyrics). For the most part, I regard songs as stories set to music, so I want to be able to follow the plot."


d_michiko_f: "I tend to focus on the music and how it makes me feel. I was rather appalled to belatedly learn the lyrics of Crank That (Soulja Boy), but I figure in my case, I probably like a lot of songs with lyrics that might appall me."

oreouk: "I'm (mostly) indiscriminate. Good tune is key for singing along to things I like that I've picked up from the radio, but filk is almost all story songs (in a way that non-filk is less likely to be) and I like my story songs to have good lyrics. There are German filks that I adore though, and I haven't a clue what the lyrics are, so it's tune (and performance ability) all the way there."

phillip2637: "I think that for me there's a difference between "the hook" and a song's long-term appeal. The hook that catches me first may be words or music, but to be something that I play repeatedly over time, there usually needs to be some resonant meaning in the words. (Though, I *can* name a few instrumental pieces that communicate to me as clearly as anything with lyrics.)"


redaxe: "I tend to hear the music first, unless for some reason I've already read the lyrics. Like several others, I'll go back to songs that have good lyrics more than poor ones, although if either sparkles, it's a reason to keep going back. (Also, since I listen to so much live performance, the particular performance is important; a good rendition of an average song can really get me coming back to it, again and again and again and again.)"

stevieannie: "I've been thinking about this recently myself. I had a small inheritance at New Year, and I spent a bit of it on buying myself an iPod Nano and I've been having an incredibly good time loading lots of music on it, and generally having a soundtrack to my life, in a way that I haven't done since I stopped listening to my walkman after I stopped working in London.

The thing with walkmans and CD players was that the media were so clunky that you could only carry two or three around with you, so if you had a long commute, you tended to listen to the same albums over and over again. This intense repeated listening really made lyrics very important to me. The albums on which I adore the lyrics are almost always those that I listened to repeatedly for weeks on end - "Broadsword and the Beast" by Jethro Tull, for instance.


When I started working from home, I had access to all my music, so wasn't nearly so intensive. As a result, I found that I was appreciating the music more generally, and the lyrics weren't so crucial for me.

Every now and then, though, I'll find an artist who just gets it perfectly *right*. I bought Christine Kane's "Right Outta Nowhere" album from iTunes because the title track makes me cry every time, not out of sadness, but just because the lyrics are so completely *perfect* for where I am right now."

billroper: "Generally, a song has to have a lyrical hook -- usually in the chorus -- if it's going to attract my interest. At that point, it will drag me in to listen to the rest of the lyrics. See, for example, the chorus from Don't Fear the Reaper:

"Seasons don't fear the reaper,
Nor do the wind and the sun and the rain.
We can be like they are..."

Or Maxwell's Silver Hammer:

"Bang, bang, Maxwell's Silver Hammer came down upon her head.
Bang, bang, Maxwell's Silver Hammer made sure that she was dead."

Now, don't you want to go back and see what the heck was going on before the chorus hit? :)


In a less grim vein, how about Our House?

"Our house is a very, very, very fine house
With two cats in the yard.
Life used to be so hard.
Now everything is easy 'cause of you."

From the writing side, I observe that -- if a song I am writing is going to have a chorus -- those are almost always the first words that get written down and the first music that gets set. Which is tangential to the original discussion, but...

Anyway, if I'm listening to music, the lyrics are clearly more important. If I'm just using it as background filler, then it would be the music."

ldwheeler: "They're so intertwined that it's hard to separate the two. Generally, the music has to be compelling enough to draw my interest enough to focus on the lyrics. On the other hand, there's a lot of folk-tradition songs that use a basic, fairly similar, almost-template melody, but it works for them. (Same with various blues stylings, certain elements of country, etc. -- heh, a number of classic, seminal country songs are, essentially, filks of earlier classic, seminal country songs.)


But usually a boring arrangement means that I don't maintain enough interest to concentrate on the lyrics -- unless the lyricist is so much a proven quality that I know it'll be worthwhile. At this point, I would probably listen to a Bob Dylan song even if the instrumentation was Bob's slapping concrete blocks with salami. (Somebody may have actually done that.) Though Dylan doesn't always sustain such faith (Exhibit A: "Wiggle, Wiggle"). For that matter, I would probably pay attention to, oh, Urban Tapestry lyrics even were they married to a mediocre melody/arrangement -- but then that could only happen in the Mirror Universe, if even there. *smiles*

Lyrically, I've held that a song needs a strong opening line/couplet/stanza to grab the listeners at the beginning and draw them in. I made a full post a couple years ago on the subject -- and don't have time to look it up and link right now -- but a few of the examples I gave follow:

I wouldn't mind if you died!
I couldn't care less if you weren't alive ...
(Ookla the Mok, "Three Monkeys")

Ookla are particularly good at this: "Poor Gary Coleman, he's had things hard" ... "I'm 5-foot-11 standing in six feet of snow" ... "I am a gambler, I am fortune's son" ...


Then there was the time I saw the great Hank Williams singing onstage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and he was all dressed up in drag --
from his rose red lips to his rhinestone hips, he belted out song after song as he drank from a brown paper bag ...
(Robert Earl Keen, "The Great Hank")

Holy Moses! I have been renewed!
I have seen the spectre -- he has been here too ...
(Elton John, "Border Song")

I've tried to apply that to my own songwriting, and I'm kind of happy with the opening lines of "Let Me In":
I'm big and I'm bad, so they say --
I'll blow your straw houses away ...

Anyway, for the song to stay with me for the long-term, it generally needs both strong lyrics and compelling music (for the sake of this discussion, I'm discounting instrumental music) ... or, if not compelling arrangements, a simple enough melody to put the lyrics in relief."

peteralway: "I hear the music first. As a youth, I pretty much ignored or couldn't make out the lyrics of the pop music I listened to. Good lyrics are the icing on the cake for me, and on rare occasions they really mean something to me, but for the most part it's the music.

I find writing lyrics particularly hard--I have a hard time figuring out if they are any good, even by my own standards. I often see people quoting lyrics they think are particularly good or particularly horrible, and often I can't tell which goes into which pile.

But music, yes, I can tell if I like it right away."


damedini: "Both. I can love a song totally based on music, as witness my huge collection of South Asian pop, which is in Hindi or Urdu and I understand a word in, maybe, 20.
But a song with a lyric that I dislike, no matter how good the tune (English lyrics) will bug me and I won't listen to it."

andpuff: "Hmmmm... I very much dislike music where I can't make out the lyrics or the lyrics make no sense so right off the top, I'd have to say lyrics. Except, the lyrics and the melody line are so entirely interlinked that I suppose the actual answer would have to be both. I've only just started being able to "hear" and appreciate music beyond the melody line."

markiv1111: "had spent my whole life insisting that I always needed to get into the lyrics first, and that if the lyrics weren't pretty well marvelous, I would walk away from the song. I don't know when this changed, but there are now a lot of songs where the music is just totally paramount. I agree with a lot of people who have posted on this thread."



markbernstein: "I'd say that lyrics are slightly more important to me. Inability to understand most of the lyrics is one of the two biggest factors keeping me from enjoying most modern rock. (The other is the dominance of the drum track.)

I do love a good tune, and agree that a better tune makes a better song. But great lyrics paired with a repetitive tune (as happens with some filks and old ballads) will keep my attention, while a good tune paired with poor lyrics won't make my replay list. (As an obnoxious example, "Afternoon Delight" has a very catchy tune. On a slightly more controversial note, I've long maintained that the musical "Les Miserables" has beautiful music, and English-language lyrics that range from thuddingly obvious and banal to genuinely awful.)

It's really more complex than that. For one thing, there's a big difference between stupid lyrics and silly-fun lyrics ("Hockey Monkey", "Witch Doctor"). For another, quality is a spectrum, so you might have a great melody with OK lyrics, an OK melody with slightly better than average lyrics, and so on. And I love good instrumental music, both classical and jazz."

keristor: "Since the majority of what I listen to, and buy, is pure instrumental it's fairly obvious that I go for the music. Even a lot of music with lyrics I like has 'nonsense' lyrics or very obscure, like Yes ("Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face / Ceasar's Palace, morning glory, silly human race / On a sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place / If the summer turns to winter, yours is no disgrace!") where the words are being used mainly for their sound rather than meaning and are effectively another instrument.


And the thing I remember is the music. Even with songs I know really well, like "Sam's Song", the chance of me getting the words in the right place is slim, and I'll forget and substitute words. Just today, in fact, I caught myself singing Tom Lehrer's "Poisoning Squirrels in the Park" with the line "And maybe we'll do in a pigeon or two" (note to anyone who doesn't know it, the two creatures are the other way round in the original). Or my rewritten Christmas carol:

As I was out walking the streets of Laredo
As I took a walk in the city one day
I came across something I wasn't expecting:
The little lord Jesus asleep in the hay...

That's a mixture of at least two songs to that tune plus a line from "Away in a Manger" which got in there by accident. I didn't care, the words all fitted the music, it's all the same to me..."

singlemaltsilk: "Though I'm lyrically driven, a poorly constructed or generic melody can still compromise a song for me, regardless of the quality of the lyrics. But if the lyrics themselves aren't up to snuff, the song is a non-starter for me, no matter how lovely the melody."

mbumby: "In _general_ I want lyrics that I like -- but the best of lyrics can be destroyed by a nasty tune, or raucous noises where a melody should be.


But that said, I can like songs in other languages -- including those that I understand *nothing* of. There, the tune needs to carry it. (And I worry that if I learned the language I'd discover that the song is a misogynistic piece of krrrep!)

If I understand a bit of the words, and there's a great tune, I may not listen hard to understand all the words... but if I start to understand them and decide they're stupid, or get frustrated because I can't understand what the heck the song is about, that'll pretty much ruin a song for me."

aryana-filker: re: music or lyrics -- "I try to focus on both. When it comes to filk music, it's mostly "lyrics first"."

angharads-house: "Lyrics I should think, if the song is sung in a range or style that would not be within my grasp.

On the other hand, if I am in mind of perhaps learning and eventually singing that song, or using it as a starting point for something else quite different altogether, I shall focus on the music and, inevitably, the phrasing thereof.

(parenthetically, have been wrapping my head round When Fall Comes To New England, and pondering what its springtime equivalent might be)."


barkerland: "I'm not a musician and I can't sing but...
I know what I like.

I generally like three types of music for two different purposes.

1) Non-English lyrics in a language I can't speak. I used this as background for writing; I let my imagination go and it helps me compose.

2) Orchestral soundtracks,usually epic, for the same reasons.

3) Just for listening, English lyrics that have some meaning or which trigger images and flights of fancy in my imagination. Jane Siberry, for example. If you analyze her printed lyrics it's just hippy dippy silliness but heard sung, they're surreal and odd and can be quite inspiring.

Science tells us that song lyrics are processed by the brain in a different way than spoken words, and that they're stored in a different part of the brain. Makes sense to me."

thewayofeeyore: Music vs lyrics -- "Music when I start writing/creating a song. Lyrics when it get to the editing phase.

Which are more important to you?
I feel both are important. A great song is the marraige of both. If pressed, I will say the melody gets me to a song, the lyrics keep me coming back."

msminlr: "Lyrics, absolutely. Most of the time. Every now and then a song that I have no idea what the words are about just has such a magnificent tune that I can't resist it. Exhibit A: Julia Ecklar's "Burnish Me Bright". But even IT has a plot. Of sorts."

surrdave: "Two ends of a continuum. But I'll say this, 'She Loves You' loses nothing in translation."



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Scott Adams Songwriting Experiment - and a song survey

Shane McEwan pointed me to a recent songwriting experiment by Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame), who launched the project in his blog after pointing out that hit songs often have gibberish lyrics.

In a recent blog post, Scott invited his readers to help him write a song. Rules included: max 2 lines, grammatically correct, no klunky-sounding words, about life or love, and "It should sound like it might have deep meaning to someone else."

In his follow-up post, The Hit Song You Wrote, Scott posted the final lyrics as well a link to an MP3 of the song put together by German band Rivo Drei.

Heh, not bad. As Shane pointed out "it sounds a good as anything that gets produced in the American Idol cloning facilities."

And a brilliant marketing move by Rivo Drei, as well. I was amused by their About page (they have an English version). An excerpt: "We are a tremendously successful pop/rock band based in Berlin, Germany. Our three band members are amongst the best instrumentalists you can find in Europe. And we're very good-looking, too. Girls want to be with us. Guys want to be like us. If you haven't heard about us yet, shame on you. But be glad that you're here now."

But the experiment got me thinking more about why I like certain songs, and whether or not lyrics are important. For me, the music is key. The song can have the most beautiful lyrics in the world but if I don't like the music, then I usually don't like the song.

I tend to be drawn toward songs that have a catchy melodic or musical hook. If the lyrics are also memorable, that enhances the song for me. I like the Beatles' "I Love You Yeah Yeah Yeah" despite the lyrics.

Hm...though now that I think of it, the songs I tend to listen to over and over again tend to focus on lyrics, though, so I suppose I'm already contradicting myself.

Hm, must think more about this.

A Survey:

What about you? Do you tend to focus on the music or the lyrics? Which are more important to you?


Photo by Michelle Poirier.

I have a new blogTO post up, by the way: Some Words Spoken: An Interview With Monica S. Kuebler. Monica is the associate editor and webmistress of Rue Morgue Magazine and also runs Burning Effigy Press in Toronto.



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Canadian Blog Awards, Best Of Independent Toronto Awards

For those who didn't know (the majority, I suspect, since I hadn't heard of these awards up to now either, and I think most of you are in the U.S.), the Canadian Blog Awards are now into Round 2.

A blog I write for, blogTO, has been nominated Best Local Blog. If you're familiar with blogTO and think it deserves to win, please do vote by January 30th. You can only vote once per category, per round.

And speaking of awards, BlogTO is holding a Best Of Independent Toronto poll. If you're a Torontonian, I encourage you to participate!

Pic O' The Day

Devil Skwerl (thanks Margaret & Seanan!)




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Will Write For Chocolate

Will Write For Chocolate has been updated.



Above: Jodi and Peter at GAfilk. This year's convention was bittersweet for those at the convention who knew Peter's brother; Dave Alway passed away just after last year's GAfilk. I missed seeing Dave's smiling face, and (like many others at the convention, I'm sure) thought of him frequently. I put one of the buttons that Dave gave me on my Weta bag (also from Dave) and used the bag during the weekend.

Video of the Day:

I discovered the highly amusing video below from a post by Adam Schwabe. I thought it really WAS Celine Dion at first. :-D





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GAfilk part 7 (final): people pics

In my last Blathering, I raved about Play It With Moxie. For those interested, band member Dave Rood has posted an overview of what goes into a performance.

My GAfilk report thus far: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, and here's the final installment...

As you might have guessed by now, I had a ton of fun at GAfilk and there's no way I could possibly go over all the highlights. Rob Wynne has a list of other people's GAfilk reports online.

But here are a few more of my favourite photos. This was the first filk convention where I brought my DSLR, and it was an enlightening experience. Though I'm happy with the pics, it was somewhat more of a hassle to lug around the camera than I expected, mainly because I was paranoid about leaving it unattended, plus it wasn't nearly as easy as my point-and-shoot to catch people by surprise :-). Next time, I will likely bring my point-and-shoot to carry around with me most of the time, and only take the heavier camera for concerts.



The Interfilk auction was fun...it's great entertainment and for a good cause. Thanks to those who bought the paintings I donated to the Interfilk auction, including Dave Weingart for buying "A Quiet Moment," Brenda Sutton for buying my Dirty/Clean dishwasher painting, and especially steviebomb for buying "Perchance To Dream." Thanks also to Rand for buying The Smallest Autobiography Of Jeff Bohnhoff In The World.



Another highlight: finally getting to meet Rob Balder (above right). Rand had mentioned him to me before, and then when I was being interviewed for Comixtalk, Xavier Xerxes asked me if I knew him, since both of us are webcomic people AND filkers. Rob is the creator of PartiallyClips, among other comics. His graphic novel, Erfworld, was listed in Time magazine as one of the Top 10 Graphic Novels (!). Rob is also part of The FUMP (The Funny Music Project).

And here are a few of my favourite people shots taken at GAfilk. They're not technically perfect, but I'm pretty happy with how each captures some of the essence of the subject, or at least how I see them. :-) I'll be posting more GAfilk people pics in upcoming Blatherings now and then.





















Many thanks to the GAfilk guests and concom for helping to make the weekend so successful! And if you've never been to GAfilk, do consider coming next year! Guests of Honor in 2009: Barry & Sally Childs-Helton, Toastmaster: Larry Kirby, Interfilk Guest: Harold Feld.

And as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, there's no way I could possibly list all the highlights. You'll just have to come and see for yourself. :-)

For more info, please see the GAfilk Web site.




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