Song Writing for Beginners Part 2: Parody
Parody is defined as:
An imitation of a particular writer, artist or a genre, exaggerating it deliberately to produce a comic effect. The humorous effect in parody is achieved by imitating and over stressing noticeable features of a famous piece of literature, as in caricatures, where certain peculiarities of a person are highlighted to achieve a humorous effect.
In song writing, parody is a great thing. If you were to create your own piece, a vast majority of your piece must be your own work (i.e. original) or you could be sued by the person your copied your work from... even if you were not aware that you copied their work!
Musical parody is big business today and one of the leaders of the industry is Weird Al Yankovic. Please read the bio on Weird Al: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Weird_Al%22_Yankovic
An imitation of a particular writer, artist or a genre, exaggerating it deliberately to produce a comic effect. The humorous effect in parody is achieved by imitating and over stressing noticeable features of a famous piece of literature, as in caricatures, where certain peculiarities of a person are highlighted to achieve a humorous effect.
In song writing, parody is a great thing. If you were to create your own piece, a vast majority of your piece must be your own work (i.e. original) or you could be sued by the person your copied your work from... even if you were not aware that you copied their work!
Musical parody is big business today and one of the leaders of the industry is Weird Al Yankovic. Please read the bio on Weird Al: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22Weird_Al%22_Yankovic
After reading the bio, watch the a few of the parody videos below.
The first is "Fat" aka "Eat It" by Weird Al which is a parody of Michael Jackson's "Beat It."
The first is "Fat" aka "Eat It" by Weird Al which is a parody of Michael Jackson's "Beat It."
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This second video is "The Saga" by Weird Al followed the the original Don McLean's "American Pie."
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This last video should be familiar to you since we listed to the original before. The first video is Weird Al's "Amish Paradise" followed by the original video "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio.
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What is good about parody is that you cannot get sued for it!! You can "borrow" any of the music you hear for your background and the original artist cannot do anything about it because musical parody and copyright law actually protects you in this situation!! Amazing!!
Assignment
Step 1) Create a page in your portfolio called Parody Project.
Step 2) Pick a song that you like. It must have a video. Put the video in the Parody Project page.
Step 3) Find the lyrics to the song.
Step 4) In your portfolio page, write your own parody lyrics to the song. The parody lyrics must follow the same structure and form as the original and it must poke fun at something or be funny. Your lyrics must be G rated! You will not be granted a Parental Advisory Label. You only need one verse and chorus for this project.
Step 5) Be ready to share/perform at least one verse and chorus of your parody for the class.
Notes:
-The music for this project does not originally need to have lyrics. For example, you can the Star Wars Theme which has no words to it and add your own words. Here is an example of such a project....
Step 2) Pick a song that you like. It must have a video. Put the video in the Parody Project page.
Step 3) Find the lyrics to the song.
Step 4) In your portfolio page, write your own parody lyrics to the song. The parody lyrics must follow the same structure and form as the original and it must poke fun at something or be funny. Your lyrics must be G rated! You will not be granted a Parental Advisory Label. You only need one verse and chorus for this project.
Step 5) Be ready to share/perform at least one verse and chorus of your parody for the class.
Notes:
-The music for this project does not originally need to have lyrics. For example, you can the Star Wars Theme which has no words to it and add your own words. Here is an example of such a project....