What attracts you to a song or tune?

08 Oct 99 - 06:24 PM (#122181)
Subject: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Davey

I'm interested in knowing what it is about a song or tune that attracts you enough to want to sing it or play it, strongly enough that it becomes a part of your repertoire. If this topic has been covered before, just point me to it and I'll dig through it there.

When I was a teenager delivering newspapers, one of my first purchases with my earnings was a transistor radio, and I used to bicycle around my paper route listening to the local country station. I'd learn and sing along with just about anything (didn't start playing an instrument until many years later)... In those days, also, I was growing up in a military environment, and had absolutely no knowledge of concepts such as left wing, right wing, social justice, etc. Those also came much later, and greatly influenced my choice of music. Until then I was mainly attracted to songs that had a good dance beat and catchy, if sometimes dumb, lyrics. I was also influenced by my peers who were listening to the latest rock 'n roll tunes.

Since the folk revival in the 6o's, and learning to play instruments, and a social awakening thanks to a few good friends, my tastes have become much more selective. Now I will learn a song that has a social message, is not racist, sexist, ageist or otherwise a putdown of any disadvantaged groups. The song has to have an interesting structure and usually, though not always, a shareable chorus.

If it's a tune I'm learning to play, it also has to have a compelling melody, whether fast or slow, and be a reasonable challenge. Some recent examples of tunes I like are Ashokan Farewell, St. Anne's Reel (still struggling to master that) and Dill Pickle Rag.

Contemporary songwriters whose songs I sing are James Keelaghan, Jerry Rasmussen, Gordon Bok, Utah Phillips, Alistair MacGillivray, and John Prine, among many others. I also sing a few 'trads'

So just what is it in a song or tune that "speaks" to you other Mudcatters? :-)

Happy singing
Davey...

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08 Oct 99 - 06:46 PM (#122188)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: DonMeixner

Davey,

For me its the honesty in the lyric more than anything else. A catchy tune is cute, "Happy Birthday Sweet 16" catchy little lyric very comercial but like popcorn gone very soon after the experience. "I Come And Stand At Every Door" has haunted me from the first time I heard it.

Honesty in humor is just as powerful, "Donald and Lydia" or "The Mountains of Mourne" Both tragicomic, both brilliant and both honest in their sentiment.

Its the honesty that draws me to a song.

Don

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08 Oct 99 - 07:01 PM (#122190)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Llanfair

I try to learn any song that gives me goose pimples. At present that's Tam Lin and No Man's Land. It tends to be the words that attract me. Hwyl Bron.

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08 Oct 99 - 07:09 PM (#122191)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Jon Freeman

Although is some cases the lyrics can attract me to a song, in most cases, it is the melody that makes me want to learn something.

I tend to like tunes that do something a little bit new or different to what I am used to. As as an example, I will mention the Golden Eagle which was one I had to have first time I heard it.

Jon

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08 Oct 99 - 07:18 PM (#122192)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: emily rain

ditto don's lyric honesty... also i tend to go for songs that have something out of the ordinary going on; an unexpected interval in the melody, or particularly clever/moving/poetic/striking lyrics. i like scottish songs for their melodies, and american songs for their lyrics.

sometimes i love a song because i can hear potential for beautiful harmony: "la llorona" and "katy cruel" for example.

sure doesn't hurt if it gives me chills. *smile* hi bron.

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08 Oct 99 - 08:13 PM (#122197)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Susan A-R

Good story, interesting melody/rhythm and good harmonizing possibilities (Flowers of Bermuda has it all!!) I also oike those modal tunes

I think that one thing that makes a song musically interesting to me, which I had not noticed until it was pointed out to me by my concert pianist husband who knows how to name such tings, is the movement in base line and chord structure. There are dance tunes which do not thrill me until I hear them played with an accompanying pianist/guitariist who does interesting things with the chords, then they grab me.

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08 Oct 99 - 08:30 PM (#122201)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Margo

Whoops. forgot to turn off the bold!

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08 Oct 99 - 09:21 PM (#122216)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: annamill

Oh, that's an easy one.

It makes me happy, or sad..makes me laugh, or cry. Makes me tingle or melancholy, makes me warm or makes me angry, makes me want to dance, or lay down next to a warm fire. It makes me want to go out and have beautiful children, or go out and be the devil. Makes want to pick up my guitar, or never play again... makes me want to be with wonderful friends, or, quietly cuddle on the couch with my honey...makes me want to share, or keep it all to myself..

Makes me want to bake bread, and wash clothes, make beds, pick flowers, or, put on a suit and be successful, make lots of money, slaughter the competition..

Life would be sooo boring without music. I can't abide music that doesn't do any of those things.

It makes me want to live... and more.

That is what attracts me to music.

Love, annap

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09 Oct 99 - 01:11 AM (#122262)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: sophocleese

I am led, always and inevitably, by melody. I love minor or modal tunes. 6 months ago I started teaming up with a guy from our song circle and now we sing together, just did an opener at a local club tonight. When we went through some of the tunes that we like we realized that if it was minor and in 3/4 time we probably liked it. Now we're deliberately learning tunes that are different to add variety but its sometimes an uphill struggle. Given the choice of indifferent words set to a good melody or good words set to an indifferent melody I will choose the the good melody first time. I like Scottish tunes and what my singing teacher years ago called 'those weird English tunes." I like a song to be interesting enough to be sung a capella.

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09 Oct 99 - 01:25 AM (#122265)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Margo

Oh Sophocleese! We must be two peas in a pod! I love Scottish music and those modal scales. I am writing a set of songs right now of that very genre! When I get them done, I'll make a point of sharing them with you....

Margarita

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09 Oct 99 - 07:18 AM (#122275)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: MandolinPaul

Nothing too deep in my answer, I'm afraid. Upon examination of my tastes (folk, old old country, cow punk), I find one common thread: You can whistle it. It must have a very obvious tune. A little bit of melancholy humour doesn't hurt either.

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09 Oct 99 - 08:56 AM (#122278)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: sophocleese

Margarita that sounds wonderful! I look forward to hearing it.

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09 Oct 99 - 09:33 AM (#122280)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Ted from Australia

I'm ith Llanfair< I no longer bother to analize. If it makes thr hairs in the back of my neck stand up ,that's it
]Regards Ted

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09 Oct 99 - 12:05 PM (#122293)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Mary in Kentucky

Like sophocleese and Margarita, I too love the sound of the Scottish traditional music. Even as a child I was attracted to these songs. I never really thought about what they had in common until I found this link:Beginner's Guide to Modal Harmony.

Mary

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09 Oct 99 - 04:14 PM (#122326)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: bseed(charleskratz)

I like songs that give me room for dramatic and philosophical interpretation in my singing: "Abilene," in addition to having a beautiful melody and a theme of homesickness and urban alienation seems also to me to be about lost childhood, lost innocence. I add a couple of my own verses which make this more explicit.

An old country chestnut, "The Green, Green Grass of Home" I can milk a lot of emotion from: it starts out aparently with the same theme as "Abilene," but the last verse shows us it's not just nostalgia: the character awakes from his dream of home and love to the reality of his impending execution: The last time I sang it for my Once Born friends even a couple of the men were wiping tears from their eyes.

I'm working on adding "Aragon Mill" to my repertoire because of its relevance to one of my political concerns, the decline of American industry, the shipping of jobs overseas, the corporate abandonment of the source of their wealth, the workers who built the industries. The song, like "Abilene," is too short for my taste, so I'm adding a couple or three verses (which I'll post if they're any good).

I also like these songs because, even with my limited ability, I can play decent breaks on them with both banjo and harmonica.

--seed

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09 Oct 99 - 08:37 PM (#122358)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Ely

I guess I would say I like words to be articulate--say what they have to say clearly and with a bit of originality; see "Hot Buttered Rum" from the fall songs thread. Traditional lyrics should at least be coherent; some of them sound so pieced together the song doesn't even make sense.

Instrumental tunes need to be distinctive and have some energy, and preferably not too busy or full of key changes or accidentals so I can play them on mountain dulcimer until I learn a better melody instrument! "Elzic's Farewell", "Greasy Coat", "Booth Shot Lincoln", "Flowers of Edinburgh", "Tater Roll", and "Cherokee Shuffle" come to mind.

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10 Oct 99 - 08:01 PM (#122557)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Mudjack

I like for a song to paint a picture in it's wording or let the listener see the descriptive scenes the lyrics are telling. A good tune can grab me and sometimes what certain singers/performers do to a song can pull me into their favor. Example, I just borrowed a tape from Frank from Toledo called "Tulare Dust". It's all Merle Haggard songs covered by singer/songwriters. I just never thought I would ever be interested in doing ANY M.Haggard tunes. I've been waken up to some great songs. I strongly recomend everyone give it a listen.
What is popular at the top 40 stuff does'nt grab me until I hear it 2 years down the road and once in a while something will grab me. (Rarely)
Mudjack

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10 Oct 99 - 11:20 PM (#122611)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Cap't Bob

I guess I sort of echo Mudjack's response. Sometimes a song will just grab me the first time I hear it played. Most likely a combination of lyrics, topic, and tune. Other times a tune will sort of grow on me. I have had tapes, records, & cd's that I have listened to for a long time (sometimes a year or two) and then I find a song that I just have to learn.

Cap't Bob

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11 Oct 99 - 08:06 AM (#122664)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: GeorgeH

I'm entirely with Llanfair on this one. Which is also the way June Tabor once professed to select her material. And yes, a tune (without words to avoid "separation by a common language") can also have that effect, though less usually. The thing HAS to work emotionally before it's worth thinking about on any other level.

G.

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13 Oct 99 - 02:02 PM (#123500)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: emily rain

annap, please add me to the long list of people who have declared undying love for you. : )

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13 Oct 99 - 02:15 PM (#123507)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: MMario

I've never analyzed this either, and am not sure if I want to analyze it. Some songs (or tunes) just "grab" me. More rarely, either tune or lyrics will hit me and the other won't. Then I usually start hunting for alternate versions until I find a version in which BOTH lyric and tune are compatible for me.

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13 Oct 99 - 02:24 PM (#123512)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Bert

Don, I like the honesty too, but I think it's honesty of expression rather than 'true' lyrics. Think of all those great tall story songs.

Annap, you've said most of it for me, I don't know how you managed to express it so much better than I could.

I think the mood I'm in also plays a big part in whether I enjoy a song or not. Play a happy song when I'm sad and it doesn't work.

Also, 'where you are' can make a big difference. For example; I love dance music but the most terrible torture in the world is to hear it and NOT be able to get up and dance. There is a special place in hell for all those classical composers and Celtic groups who force us to listen to dance music while we are SITTING in the audience.

Bert.

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13 Oct 99 - 02:39 PM (#123517)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Jon Freeman

Bert, I hadn't thought of mood but my mood certainly has an effect on what I enjoy. My song for a sad day at the moment is Time by Tom Waits. I don't know why but I find myself playing it over and over if I'm feeling low.

I am not much of a dancer but there is some music that I can not keep still to as well.

jon

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13 Oct 99 - 02:50 PM (#123523)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: catspaw49

This thread's been driving me nuts from the gitgo. There are so many elements and now I feel that all of you have brought up excellent reasons. Like Mario, I'm not really sure I want to know what, although all the factors mentioned have brought me to various songs...But you know what I really find curious?

I can listen to a song for years with never a thought. Its just a song like many others. Then one day it hits me...and jumps right to the top of my list. Never gave it a thought before, just another tune...and it may or may not have included all the items that normally attract me. But one day it goes from "Uh,huh" to "Holy Shit!! What a GREAT song!!!!"

Can someone explain this or am I just the crazed SOB you all know? Does this happen to you?

Spaw

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13 Oct 99 - 03:10 PM (#123529)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: MMario

'Spaw, you're just a crazed sob *grin*

I've had the same thing happen. In ONE case, I KNOW what happened. "wild mountain thyme" - okay, pretty song, nothing really ever reached out and grabbed me about it, except it was the closing song for a faire that I particularly liked. Then one day the performer sang "if my true love were to leave me, I would surely find NO OTHER" rather than "another".....and THAT version now sends goose bumps up and down my spine. For me it changed it from a ho-hum song about a guy who hits up everything he sees in skirts to a song about a love that will last forever....

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13 Oct 99 - 03:53 PM (#123534)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Willie-O

Guts.

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13 Oct 99 - 04:01 PM (#123538)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Willie-O

With some melody attached, preferably.

And for me to want to sing it, the lyrics need to have a rhythmic fit with the tune. Richard Thompson is more than somewhat good at this. "Vincent Black Lightning" and "My Sweetheart's On the Barricades" being cases in point--songs with all their parts.

Two more: "The Workers Song" by Ed Pickford, as sung by Dick Gaughan. Or a more recent example: "Cold Missouri Waters" by James Keelaghan.

Going the opposite direction:

"The Battle of Harlaw" (Child #163). Learned this straight out of the books, never having heard it. It just kind of marches off the page and thrashes you. (has been recorded by Old Blind Dogs recently)

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13 Oct 99 - 04:29 PM (#123549)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: annamill

Why thank you, Emily Rain. ;-)

That doesn't come along every day, you know.

Love, annap

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14 Oct 99 - 02:59 AM (#123738)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Jack (Who is called Jack)

I haven't the faintest idea.

If there's a universal thread tying all my disparate musical preferences together I haven't found it.

Depending on my mood, I'll listen with relish to anything from Black Sabbath to Aaron Copeland to Frank Zappa to Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. I like Led Zepplin as long as I don't have to look at them. I love The Who and Jean Redpath. I'll take in an opera, chamber music, most songwriters, Big Band anytime, and Jazz from Monk to Mangione. I think Ella Fitzgerald at her peak in the 1960's is the greatest singer who ever walked the face of the earth bar none. I think Weird Al and Spike Jones are the best. I sing 'Big Leg Emma' by the Mothers in the shower, and I think everyone should learn the traditional blues music of the Mississippi Delta as part of their formal education.

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14 Oct 99 - 11:17 AM (#123832)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Davey

What great!!! responses to this thread, and I agree with all your answers.

Don, you struck it right when you mentioned honesty, as that's certainly an element for me which I hadn't considered when I started the thread.

Annap, your wonderful contribution speaks volumes, and others have echoed these sentiments. What does it for me as well is the feeling and emotion that the song generates. A song will grab me even though I can't describe why at the time, and often not even later.

'Spaw, I've often experienced what you described, a song that's been around for a long time and suddenly, 'bang' it jumps up and bites me. Maybe it's the right timing, I've matured (or regressed *BG*), or I've heard a different interpretation of the song by another singer, I've never figured out (or tried to) what suddenly attracts me.

I've even developed a habit of listening to a new CD a couple of times, and if it doesn't interest me, I'll store and come back to it a year later. Then, if it still doesn't do anything for me, I'll throw it out or give it away.

I also have a head full of songs that I wish would go away, but that belongs in the 'bad' song thread.

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14 Oct 99 - 01:00 PM (#123860)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: Allan C.

Only last week I was just looking at my "short list" of songs I thought I might play at the Getaway. It was as if I was seeing it for the very first time. I wondered what it was about those songs...what about them appealed to me? what might they have in common? They all seemed so very different from one another! I think I discovered this: Each of them contains a line or phrase which causes ME to see a strong mental image of something within the song. (My hope, of course, is that I can sing it in such a way that other people can get a glimpse of that same picture.)

"...standing in the rain, waiting for the morning train"; "Hear the mighty engines roar. See the silver wings on high..."; "His head was found in the drivin' wheel but his body was never found..." "Wind, come and fill my mainsail..."; "It shines like the crown of an angel and fades as the mists come and go..."There's three white horses in a line - weary now from their heavy load."; "I stepped up to my rival, my dagger in my hand. I seized him by the collar and I ordered him to stand!" -- Only a few here, but I could go on and on. I appreciate songs which have tunes which match them well and I especially like tunes which allow me to be a little flexible with the timing or phrasing of a particularly meaningful line.

My overall sense of songs is that nearly anyone can sing a bouncy, happy song as long as the words and tune support that. I sing a few such songs, but lean more toward the ones which I view as being thought provoking or perhaps just create a mood other than that of joy. Love songs, songs of murder and intrigue, work songs, songs of melancholy or despair - all of these appeal to me for one reason or another.

Once in awhile I find a song which expresses some aspect of my sense of humor. I try to sing that kind of song too.

As for songs I like to hear, I came to a new realization this weekend at the Getaway. Our own Uilleand along with Flawn William (who, I was told, lurks here sometimes) sang some absolutely beautiful German folksongs. Now, I have almost no abilities when it comes to understanding German whether spoken or sung; but I can tell you that these songs were way beyond wonderful. It wasn't just the melodies, it was the way the sounds fit within them. I had no idea what the songs were saying, but I sure loved the feelings they expressed.

So, I guess I am only a little closer than I was to figuring out what about a song really gets my attention. Sometimes the lyrics are almost enough on their own; sometimes it is the way the tune works with them. And sometimes it is just the way it makes me feel.

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15 Oct 99 - 09:01 AM (#124177)
Subject: RE: What attracts you to a song or tune?
From: kendall

Hey Spaw, that has happened to me more often than I can count. Songs such as Phoebe Snow by Utah Phillips. Had that around for 10 years. Now it is on my very short list right up there with The Band Played Waltzing Matilda. Another was Stan Rogers' Front Runner. I loved Walt. Matilda right away, but, the other two needed time to sink in. What attracts me to a song mainly is the feeling that it was written for me, that I was there when it happened. The poem, The Loch Arcre by John Maisfield.. I was there! after all these years I still have a hard time getting through it. These songs have something to say besides yeah baby dont mean maybe.. they require more than a teaspoon full of brains to understand them.

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