The weather in the Rochester area of New York state is a crazy mix of temperatures and weather conditions in early Spring. Often we experience a gorgeousness day in the 70’s followed by plummeting temperatures and snow flurries the next. I wanted to incorporate a songwriting experience into one of my group sessions to explore different songs about sun and rain. I decided to center the experience around the popular chorus of “Joy and Pain” by Old School Players. Selecting popular hooks or choruses from existing rap songs is a great step in exploring rap in creative songwriting. I selected four different rap verses for students to choose from. Since the small group of students I was working with needed a lot of visual and language support in the songwriting process, I included a vocabulary bank for each fill-in-the-blank section. One student used the vocabulary list as more of an example of words to use, and then selected their own words. Here is a sample of the lyrics choice board I provided:
Free download: Joy and Pain
I created the background music for the rap using rhythm loops in Garageband and adding a simple repeating bass line. I kept the music the same throughout to make it easier for students to perform their rap without the stress of trying to time their solo to fit between verse and chorus changes. Each person took a turn saying their rap into the microphone. We would then repeat the rap again with everyone saying it together. The group repeated the chorus section between every rap verse and also added simple movements to the words.
You could simply use a keyboard accompaniment style like rap or hip-hop to provide the backbeat. Garageband for the iPad numerous ways to create easy hip-hop and rap back rhythms. Below is a sample of this feature I found on YouTube.
Wade is a board-certified music therapist and one of the directors at Spectrum Creative Arts. He completed additional training programs in Orff-Schulwerk, Neurologic Music Therapy, and Performance Wellness. As a songwriter and creative writer, Wade has authored several music resource books for music therapy and music education.