Scott Paul Johnson
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Community Challenge 89 | Edit a Previous Challenge
🕑 Added 2025-04-01 18:58:14 +0000 UTCWhere to Start • Lesson Archive • Recommended Lesson Plan • Book a Private Lesson
Hi Everyone,
Each week, I offer a Community Challenge. This is an opportunity to put your education to the test in a real world situation. All your favorite artists have something in common: they all write music. You can too. It takes practice like everything else.
This week, your goal is to edit a previous challenge. In this case "Edit" means refine, adjust, finesse, tinker with. The goal is to turn something into MORE of a song. Not a complete song, just more of a song.
Post your edited previous challenge to the Community Forum.
My example shows the following earmarks of the editing phase:
A Placeholder Melody
This is a melody that isn't perfect, but goes through the motions of my melody-making rules, the most basic being "repeat with changes." This is called a "placeholder" because it does the job, but it isn't particularly exciting. The core components might be adjusted or completely swapped out in the future, but the fact that it exists gives me something to work with next time I edit the project.
B.S. Lyrics
This is an excellent way to make a melody SOUND more like music - these lyrics don't have to make sense, be coherent, or even contain complete words. Using B.S. lyrics makes it easier to hear and remember a melody, and makes it easier to start writing real lyrics later. Sometimes a songwriter might make note of certain consonants and vowels that sound good in their B.S. Lyrics and start writing lyrics from there. Other writers stumble upon B.S. Lyrics they actually like and end up keeping a few phrases as a starting point to write "real" lyrics.
B.S. Bridge
I threw together a bridge by stripping the verse down more simply. This MAY end up being the kind of bridge I write later, but it may not. Sometimes I prefer to write a bridge AFTER the bulk of the lyrics for the verse and chorus are complete so the bridge can function as a response to the content of the rest of the song.
No intro or outro
This will also be a response to the bulk of the song being written.
Key Arrangement Point
The song is currently arranged as Verse Chorus Bridge Chorus just to hear the interaction between the key arrangement points of the song. At this stage I'm not worried about writing a whole song.
Sections smashing into eachother
In the editing phase, I tend not to worry about finessing the transition between sections.
Post your edited previous challenge to the Community Forum.
Comments
John Var
Nice. Enjoyed it Scott. Gave me a bunch of ideas! Also appreciate seeing LogicPro at work. Thank you.
