Fairy Dust (Original Song)

 For one of the songs for my assignment (to write two songs in two different genres), I chose to write a pop ballad. 

My process for writing this song was I first thought of a key signature that I wanted it to be in and I settled on D major. After that, I played through a chord progression and hummed random bits of melody over the top which made up my verses. 

Once I'd come up with the melody for my verses, I also wrote melodies for my pre-chorus and chorus and none of it had yet had specific lyrics assigned to it although I knew I wanted a theme of light and using it as a metaphor and motif throughout the song to represent the happiness that the person brought to the singer. Pop ballads are typically about love songs and so I chose to use this theme. I spent some time singing through the melodies and trying to assign words to them that would fit the context and I managed to write some basic lyrics for my first verse, my pre-chorus and my chorus. 

After this, I got stuck and couldn't think of how else to progress the song - I knew a rough structure that I wanted but I couldn't think of the lyrics to put in. This made me think of how the song would have a storyline which lead me to think of the idea of writing a story plan in order for me to be able to progress with the song. I wrote out the plan of the story and, in brackets, I wrote how it relates to the motif of light. I also wrote a mini plan showing the progress of the light. 

This really helped me to come up with the rest of my lyrics and allowed me to start developing the music to support the singing. I wanted a big build up to the chorus and so I had the chords played on an acoustic guitar and strummed quickly but having the strings duffed and then opened during the chorus to give a sense of volume and adrenaline which is a typical feature of pop ballads. 

I managed to add the piano to acoustic guitar as it gave the instruments more variation and 'conversation' as they could sort of go between one another during instrumental parts. I am also working on backing vocals for parts of the chorus and maybe the bridge and I'm also writing violin parts to thicken up the instruments and give it a deeper feeling with more harmonies between all the instruments.