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Setting poetry to music and singing it
Dec. 9th, 2011 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaI've always liked setting poetry to music. I think it started when I first read Tolkien at age eight or nine and making up melodies for the songs there.
It's hard to talk about how I do it, though! I mean, I love music and singing, and that's obviously a prerequisite. I most often make melodies that sound like folk music of some kind, because that's the sort of music I listen to most. I usually just go around humming and trying out different melodies and rhythms until I find one that works for me. Usually I won't write it down as sheet music, and neither will I be particularly bothered about the beat being regular--when I've tried to accompany myself with a guitar or something, I've often had to change the way I sing to make the beat more regular. Which is not to say that there isn't a beat, just that I've sung it in a freer way when I do it a capella.
Here's one I made fairly recently: it's fannish poetry bykill_claudio, originally posted here (the fandom is due South and the pairing Fraser/Kowalski, but it can hopefully be appreciated without context):
( Shattered Light, by Kill Claudio )
God, I love that poem--it's heartbreaking. Anyway, this one's interesting because it's a set of haikus, so the rhythm of the song is going to have to work with that. Also, I want the melody to somehow indicate the sentence breaks as well as the line breaks, which means that there are variations in the melody between the verses. My sister is the one playing the guitar and singing harmony, and I remember that we wrote down fairly precisely what she was going to do with the guitar (for example make a small break after "full stop" *g*).
Here's a second one: it's Kipling's "Song of the Little Hunter" from the Jungle Book.
( Song of the Little Hunter )
I did this one fairly long ago--maybe ten years ago?--so I don't remember much of the process. But I still like it. There's so much drama in it, and I get to act out all the stalking and the skittishness. And I like the language, too (but I remember having to practice saying "the lightning shows each littlest leaf-rib clear" fast without stumbling--there are a lot of consonants in there *g*). I also like how it lets me play around with volume, almost down to a whisper when the text calls for it.
It's hard to talk about how I do it, though! I mean, I love music and singing, and that's obviously a prerequisite. I most often make melodies that sound like folk music of some kind, because that's the sort of music I listen to most. I usually just go around humming and trying out different melodies and rhythms until I find one that works for me. Usually I won't write it down as sheet music, and neither will I be particularly bothered about the beat being regular--when I've tried to accompany myself with a guitar or something, I've often had to change the way I sing to make the beat more regular. Which is not to say that there isn't a beat, just that I've sung it in a freer way when I do it a capella.
Here's one I made fairly recently: it's fannish poetry by
kill_claudio, originally posted here (the fandom is due South and the pairing Fraser/Kowalski, but it can hopefully be appreciated without context): ( Shattered Light, by Kill Claudio )
God, I love that poem--it's heartbreaking. Anyway, this one's interesting because it's a set of haikus, so the rhythm of the song is going to have to work with that. Also, I want the melody to somehow indicate the sentence breaks as well as the line breaks, which means that there are variations in the melody between the verses. My sister is the one playing the guitar and singing harmony, and I remember that we wrote down fairly precisely what she was going to do with the guitar (for example make a small break after "full stop" *g*).
Here's a second one: it's Kipling's "Song of the Little Hunter" from the Jungle Book.
( Song of the Little Hunter )
I did this one fairly long ago--maybe ten years ago?--so I don't remember much of the process. But I still like it. There's so much drama in it, and I get to act out all the stalking and the skittishness. And I like the language, too (but I remember having to practice saying "the lightning shows each littlest leaf-rib clear" fast without stumbling--there are a lot of consonants in there *g*). I also like how it lets me play around with volume, almost down to a whisper when the text calls for it.
