JPF Home Page Forums Lyric and MP3 Feedback Creative Challenge Forum Composition Challenge Rewrite a song #1

This exercise is to challenge yourself to grow and practice melodic variation and rewriting.

Take a song you have already recorded and put a completely different melody to it.
Post them both with the links for comparison.

Good luck!

AW, Come on folks. It can be just a work tape.

I promise to do this one! This will be a blast. But I may have to do it much later and dig up this thread...big old pile on the to-do list right now, but this has got to be my favorite challenge that I have seen here yet.

I'm with Jean: come on folks! Do a "Save As" on one of your songs and delete the lead, and sing something totally different.

Thanks, Mark! We'll leave this one up for a while. I know it takes a little longer.

bump

I wrote a song based on a popular melody as per a different challange (not yours). Can I use the original melody? I know I'm trying to get out of this easy. But it would be cool to hear it in the melody that it was written in. Ben

If the melody is in public domain? Yes. If it is a melody with a current copyright, you can't create derivative works without the composer's permission.

Shucks!

Yeah, it's a legal thingie.

This is my first thing on here, so here it goes. It was fun and I enjoyed doing this. After I read the challenge, I lost power here. So I gave myself the added challenge of writing and recording it before my laptop battery ran out. 2 hours. So the second version is a bit raw and everything we 'first take'. I like it though...I changed a slow 'reminiscent' song into a more upbeat tune. I don't know how to make links on here, so I'll just put the addresses.

Chapters of my life (Original Version)
http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?pid=1134692&T=5972

Chapters of my life (Second Version)
http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?PID=1134685&t=5030

I was in an odd mood, so the music reflects that, i think...lol.

Hey, this is cool. Hmmm, both are nice but I think I like the new one the best. Needs a little refining as you say, but with some polish, I think it will work really well.

Really great job, Kevin!

All right, JPF is back up!

This challenge was a blast. I decided to take this song, "I Wrote This Song for Cash":

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=759055&songID=6175214

...and transform it into this song, "The Bad Old Days":

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=759055&songID=6712624

I kept all the instrumentation but pulled out the vocals, then just sang a new melody and lyric. Kinda different!

Thanks for a fun challenge, Jean! -mk

Wow, Mark! Very cool! This is fun. Interesting how the same musical foundation could produce two very different songs. Enjoyed it.

Hey Jean,
I'm new on the forum, though not a new songwriter. I'm definitely going to try and get a couple mp3's up. I've done a few different exercises like this that were really fun and helpful to break out of melody ruts. I did one once where we took just the syllabic scansion of any tune you want and change the melody/lyric. We took "Yellow" by Coldplay, sped it way up, swapped the melody contour for the verse and chorus and rewrote the lyric. Really gratifying way to get a simple tune out of an hour or two. I've also done one where you take three chords and come up with a melody using all chord tones, and then one with all non-chord tones and then combine.

Hi, Tim! Looking forward to hearing your MP3s. Yes, there are a lot of different exercises we can do to stretch our composing muscle. Those exercises sound like they were fun to do.

David Bowie used to do this too!

On his Lodger album from 1978, the opening track was a song called "Fantastic Voyage", sort of a mellow, conversational song about reminding those who shoot missiles to remember the value of human life. But then later in the album comes his minor hit, "Boys Keep Swinging". It had a bombastic production and lots of "up front" back-up singing...but once you dug deeper, it was the exact same chord structure, tempo and key as "Fantastic Voyage".

Also on that same album was "Red Money" which was the exact same instrumental track of "Sister Midnight", a song he wrote for Iggy Pop's The Idiot album...only with totally different lyrics and melody.

Any more participants?

I am going to start Composition Challenge 2 soon. However if you have been working on the challenge, do continue and post it so we can enjoy it. I knolw these things take longer to do - especially recording the music.

Going to try and keep these challenges together.

Last call for this challenge.

I was curious, but just didn't have the time. Gigs out-of-town, you know. Sorry Jean! Now I'm back home though, and can't wait to participate in Challenge #2!!!

Nick, you can bookmark the topic and bring it back up if you still want to participate.