Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person

Subject: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Sep 26 - 09:20 AM

My wife is someone who focuses on the lyrics. I practically ignore the lyrics and focus on the music. For me, there are only a few songs where the lyrics are paramount, like Imagine.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: GUEST,M Siirdewaye
Date: 23 Sep 26 - 10:49 AM

I think I give them about equal weight. A good melody elevates the lyrics and potentiates them. Instrumentals are also lovely, but very different. I love listening to the stories.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: Donuel
Date: 23 Sep 26 - 11:33 AM

A performer would have to have both. As an instrumentalist, I'm one sided. The ultimate for an instrument is to resemble a singer's voice.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: Paul Burke
Date: 23 Sep 26 - 11:57 AM

When I should be focusing on the music, I focus on the lyrics. And vice- versa.

As for resembling a singer's voice, best of luck with a Hardanger fiddle.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: meself
Date: 23 Sep 26 - 12:31 PM

Depends: if we're talking about songs, then the lyrics and melody combined are primary and inseparable, instrumentation can be a nice addition, for me; if tunes, the tune is central, accompaniment may have a job to do.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 23 Sep 26 - 04:52 PM

more music but if the lyrics are stupid then it makes me not want to listen. Or the rhythm of the lyrics is off.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 23 Sep 26 - 10:12 PM

I like lyrics ..

   BUT ... I wake up each morning with TUNES in my ear ..
   I am quite sure they came from MUSAK in the marketplace.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle
Dig, Dag, Drug

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 23 Sep 26 - 11:33 PM

also if it is sung as a man singing or a woman singing and they change the gender i will not listen to it.

p.s. i can not post in the non-music section. please dm me if you have an idea why.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: Mr Red
Date: 24 Sep 26 - 05:31 AM

It varies, usually first impact. I take in the whole effect, and maybe analyse the lyrics more because I can't read music.

I guess I follow "classic human". Decide first, rationalise at leisure.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: gillymor
Date: 24 Sep 26 - 05:46 AM

both

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 25 Sep 26 - 04:15 AM

It varies.
Lyrics can grab you if they have a particular relevance to yourself, or it may be a certain phrase that resonates. It is not often that I can learn a song's words quickly but if I do it is usually because humour or a joke with a punch line is included.

I have always listened to the tune first and can usually play along with one new to me in a session by the second or third time through. I must have a large subconcious memory bank of parts of tunes that I can see how they have been arranged into a new one.

Robin

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: gillymor
Date: 25 Sep 26 - 06:19 AM

A good song without it's lyric is like a BLT without it's bacon.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Sep 26 - 10:44 AM

The music is what grabs me first, I think. Good lyrics in a good song stick with me. Just don't ever ask me the name of the song or who performed it, I often can't tell you.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: The Og
Date: 25 Sep 26 - 11:14 AM

I'm initially captured by the music ...then the lyrics (like GUEST.mg above) or not. A lot of GREAT melodies need better lyrics!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: GUEST,Susanne (skw)
Date: 28 Sep 26 - 03:24 PM

I'm intensely interested in the lyrics and like tunes that do not interfere with them. But a snatch of a song will stay in my head for days sometimes, for no particular reason, till it switches to another one. Some I don't even particularly like or find particularly singable!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: GUEST,SRD
Date: 28 Sep 26 - 03:50 PM

But what of those tunes that have different songs attached to them, for instance the tune "Cranbrook" to which one can sing a variety of hymns but also "On Ilkley Moor" and the carol "Whilst Shepherds Watched". Does one form win over any other?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Sep 26 - 02:59 AM

Both

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: Paul Burke
Date: 29 Sep 26 - 05:34 AM

3 letter guests srk and SRD bring up an interesting point - that a singer can adopt a tune different from the "received" version if it suits their book. I'm somewhat given to it, with I must say rather mixed success. I like to sing Lake of Coolfin to one tune of The Poacher's Fate - it gives it a rather thunderous, ominous feel. The words of Poacher's Fate, on the other hand, go nicely to the Labrador song tune, Goose Bay. They've gone down OK. The Recruited Collier wasn't received so well to the tune of Andy's Gone With Cattle, some said it was too jolly, but that tune has a Northumbrian pipe feel to it that I think works.

And House of the Rising Sun can be sung to Teddy Bears' Picnic.

And as for lyrics, changing them to suit your own interpretation is also a possibility. After all, Sharp did it as a matter of course, so there's precedent.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: The Sandman
Date: 29 Sep 26 - 07:48 AM

And as for lyrics, changing them to suit your own interpretation is also a possibility. After all, Sharp did it as a matter of course, so there's precedent." quote
that is what differentiates newly composed songs from trad, if you want to alter fiddlers green or rambling boy it is only good manners, to contact the songwriter, first, it is their creative work.
that is why the 1954 definition is the best we have even if it is not perfect

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 29 Sep 26 - 08:37 AM

I have Made It Known on multiple occasions that my funeral should include Oh God Our Help In Ages Past to the tune CRANBROOK (see above):

* It works (try it);

* Those words deserve to be liberated from the dire tune usually used;

* I wish to leave this life as I hope to start the next: Raising a smile, and *Singing!*

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 29 Sep 26 - 08:50 AM

Meanwhile, back at the Subject: I like and collect both lyrics and tunes: either without the other would be not *quite* complete. Nowadays, however, my ears tend to miss the words on the first pass; however hard I try to listen, the tune crowds them out. Mebbe I shouldn't try so hard, or just resign myself to not being as young for my age as I'd wish, and enjoy the song as sung.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: The Sandman
Date: 30 Sep 26 - 02:13 AM

May you make many more posts before you pass on, good health

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: r.padgett
Date: 30 Sep 26 - 02:18 AM

Folk song is about the story so lyrics paramount

I play concertina (more like a melodeon) in sessions so tunes paramount

Ray

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: GUEST,Jim McLean
Date: 30 Sep 26 - 03:53 AM

When a man congratulated Peadar Kearney on writing the Irish National anthem he said he only wrote the words. “But a bird cannot fly with one wing,” replied the man.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 30 Sep 26 - 04:00 AM

My theory on "While shepherds watched" being used with the usual tune "Winchester Old" is that it is the quickest to perform, and as such would be popular with carol singers going door to door. It is certainly not my favourite and "Cranbrook" is not either.
Robin

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 30 Sep 26 - 05:38 AM

I have probably taken more interest in lyrics as I got older, but it does help if a song has a good tune.
One of the most used tunes is the one for “Star of the County Down” - I can think of 5 songs to that same tune: a good one!
Having been to one of those ABBA singalong concerts some years ago, I pretty soon realised that I didn’t actually know many of the words to their songs, but just was attracted by the tunes and arrangements.
Re “While Shepherds Watched”, I went to a number of the late Ian Russell’s “Carols in August” workshops at Whitby Folk Week, where we sang said Carol to a whole variety of different tunes from the Sheffield and Derbyshire Carol traditions.
As for singing one song to the tune of another, that happened regularly from Tim Brooke-Taylor on “I’m sorry I haven’t a clue”. Scottish friend Pauline Vallance took up the idea after Tim died, and now has over 100 of such arrangements. I went to her concert of these transmuted songs in the Edinburgh Fringe this year: absolutely hilarious!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: GUEST,Guest Joan F
Date: 01 Oct 26 - 09:06 PM

If the tune doesn't grab me, no dice.

But gotta have decent lyrics,

Lately I've been looking up English words to Irish tunes. So far they have been good.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 02 Oct 26 - 05:47 AM

As a slight deviation; what do you remember best , the tune or the words?
I don't think that your liking a tune or a set of words is what governs what you remember best. I used to be able to "play back" in my head entire Pink Floyd and ELP albums but I never learnt the words although I had the tunes perfectly.

Robin

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: GUEST,G-Force, currently offline
Date: 02 Oct 26 - 06:00 AM

Somebody once referred to Ol' Man River as being by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein. Hammerstein replied "I wrote Ol' Man River! He wrote dum dum dum-dum".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Are you a lyric person or a music person
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 02 Oct 26 - 10:09 AM

One Song to the Tune of Another: I fondly remember hearing "Supercalifrajilisticexpialidocious" sung to the tune of the German National Anthem. If provoked, I can reproduce it in Willy Rushton's cod-teutonic accent. Be Warned.