Women Teaching Women

Two months ago, my husband and I were in California, staying with his parents during our Christmas break. And I was bored. Totally bored. Bored and without direction and purpose in my day-to-day life. While talking with Megan via phone one day, she suggested using a calendar and schedule, but not in the old, traditional way that I had given up after graduating from Bible school. She pointed me to bullet journals, habit trackers, and other methods of making my planner fit my needs. I fell in love with this new system and began filling it up right away! I had purpose and direction in my long, lonely days. Fast-forward two months into the present, and I am now on the opposite end of bored! I don't have time in a day to get bored, and where does my scheduling fall in these days? It saves me so much time and anguish! I write down everything, and when (yes, when) I forget, I don't have to fret about it. To spark ideas in your mind, whether you are in a stay-at-home-long-d...

    At the end of this series, I hope you have a true desire to write a good, God-honouring song (or songs!), and I hope you have tried your hand at it by now. I hope you have picked up some ideas for inspiration, instruction to help you actually carry it out, and tools to make it useful and good. The last thing we need to talk about is the essential “Now what?”           We have a pretty little song with perfect words and rhymes, but what are we supposed to do with this song?           The answer to that question depends a lot on you and your circumstances. Consider the purpose of the song: Why did you write it in the first place? I could spend paragraphs discussing what you could and should do with it and why, but I will spare you that and make an easy-to-read list for you: ü    Keep it personal. Use your music in your own personal worship to voice your ind...

 By this, I mean primarily “On what medium”, but let’s discuss the physical location while we’re at it! What is the appropriate place to write a song? Surely you remember Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham”, where he says you can eat it in a house, with a mouse, on a train, in the rain, etc., etc., etc. It’s the same with writing music! There is no mystical prayer closet or pipe-organ or study-dedicated desk that you  must  have in order to write great music. If you are sitting in the DMV when a stroke of poetic brilliance hits you, grab a post-it or receipt from your purse and jot down your idea. Of course, you will probably transfer your idea to a more appropriate medium when you get home, but for now, you have that idea captured! Besides, what else are you going to do at the DMV while you wait? You can always play the “try not to make eye contact” game. That’s lots of fun.           So, now let’s talk about the medium. Any...

PUTTING TOGETHER MUSIC AND WORDS Finally, we are at the final part of the “How” question of making music! Here we are talking about agreement, which involves putting together the words and the tune. It seems as if that would be easy, but there are three main points that we need to be aware of when combining the tune with its words. 1.     Agreement of Meter Remember back to the section on “meter” in part one of the “How” posts; maybe it would be good for you to just pull it up and read it again quickly. Of course, when we put our words to music, we must fit the number of words in with the number of notes in the tune’s melody. But there is something else about meter that I did not tell you before. There are different kinds of meter, basically represented by these two: “Iambic” and “Trochaic”. Iambic meter means that the stress is on the even-numbered syllables, while Trochaic means that the stress in on the odd syllables. I will use examples to help you unde...

TUNES           Since the tune is the glue between the words and our mind, it is important to make sure our musical tunes follow some basic guidelines in order to be good-quality and memorable. So, let’s look at some tools that will help us in the realm of making tunes! (Again, I am not a music-professional-anything, but I have learned a few things over years of listening, playing, and writing music.)           If you have never learned how to  read  music, I highly recommend that you do so before you try to  write  music (after all, who ever heard of an illiterate author?). Take some time to dedicate yourself to the study of how music works and what all the lines and dots mean; it takes a bit of learning, but it’s probably not as difficult as you would expect. I am writing this blog based on a basic understanding of music and musical terms, so it would be helpful for you to already know the terms I will use....

  Okay, here it is! In this three-part post, I want to give you some tools. Some of these tools will help you tweak little details, some install necessary components, and others will help you assess the situation of your music. Each is important to know how to use on each piece of music you make. Ready? It will be fun!           Before I show you the tools, I’d like to point out that there is no section giving you step-by-step instructions on how to write a song. This is because music-making does not necessarily follow a particular order: You may write the words first, or the music first, or simply have a concept first. Some smaller steps must go in order, but we’ll see those as we discuss our toolbox.           So, let’s open the lid and see what tools we have to work on our WORDS! WORDS           Of course, we must have words , ...