Fi’s blog – songs for children

Guitarist and songwriter John Gill is here to talk to us about writing songs for children.† He talks about his history and his experience in teaching guitar and music technology and playing in a skiffle band, touring and working etc.

He starts with talking about the only people who can give critiques on a kids’ song is kids themselves.

The session includes some tips on introducing fun, rhyming and repetition at a basic level to keep children engaged. He also talks about the value of ‘nonsense words’ in songs to keep kids interested. He demonstrates this and has the audience laughing and engaged straight away.

Conversation then turns to other facets of childrenís songs such as characters, storylines and actions. The group then discusses how lyrics can be made to relate to actual experiences in the child’s world.
He talks about the use of chords to evoke different moods and talks of strong and obvious use of dynamics, and gets the group to sing some examples, which raises gales of laughter as the adult group try to behave like a class of 6-year-olds. He says that kids like to hear really obvious things about the character, i.e. Joeís sitting here, hello Joe, Heís got big ears, theyíre really big. John plays along and gets the audience to join in.

To demonstrate sound of words, humour, action, dynamics, use of non musical aspects etc, John then gets the audience to stand up and makes the point that with children you have to be continuously keeping their attention. He demonstrates with the ëscarecrowí song getting the audience on their feet and cueing the audience in with actions and singing. He has them jumping around and singing, an excellent demonstration and everyone looks like they are really enjoying it.

A following demonstration does the same thing with a story-based exercise, where members of the group write alternative endings for the ëSharon Smedleyí story (from Jilted John’s song ‘The Birthday Kiss‘). He then performs an anti bullying song that he was asked to write for a musician-in-residence project. In the delivery of it he uses dynamics and the unfolding of a story to get a point across [editor's note - John describes the song as being based on a real-world situation, involving one adult bullying another - demonstrating that there is sometimes an overlap between the issues that adults and children may relate to in a lyric].

We then get into more musical territory – John talks about skipping and demonstrates effective use of 6/8 or swing rhythms in accompaniments and melodies. John then demonstrates a song which uses imagery as he says kids listen more in pictures than adults. He demonstrates this with his song about someone running a marathon.
He then goes on to demonstrate how songs can be used to teach the core curriculum – using his song about the Coelacanth fish! Itís brilliant and I now know more about this species than ever before!

Itís been a great session and everyone leaves with huge smiles having jumped around and joined in with all the songs!