Mark Simos, Assistant Professor, Songwriting from the Berklee College of Music has offered some handouts on Sierra Hulls song Easy Come Easy Go.
Mark writes:
Before Spring Break we had some excitement here at Berklee as Sierra Hull, a Berklee student and a smokin’ bluegrass mandolinist and vocalist, released her new Rounder album Daybreak. Her new video on CMT is getting more spins than any bluegrass or acoustic music has in a long time and excitement is running high. I wanted to help her out while at the same time furthering our goals of learning more about songwriting. So I prepared a little Spring Break gift – a complimentary lesson analyzing the Kevin McClung song on the video.
You can watch the video at www.cmt.com/videos/sierra-hull.And you can download the PDF of the lesson at the blog for Berklee’s Songwriting Club
The handout was written to be specifically useful to my lyric writing students, as the song is a nice example of a particular type of verse-refrain form; and to my songwriting students, as it’s also a nice example of combining front-heavy and back-heavy phrasing. Anyone interested in roots music and songwriting as part of those genres will also find it a great song worthy of some study. And of course – Sierra’s singing and playing and her stellar band are not too hard on the ears either!
As a special one-time offer: I am giving permission to pass this handout PDF on to fellow students, songwriters or musician friends of yours who might be interested in it. Please pass on the PDF with my copyright notice intact! Remember this is pretty technical, so it’s not for the fans or the faint-hearted. But it is a glimpse into the way we dig into song structure in songwriting classes at Berklee. And a nice testament to how well contemporary bluegrass songwriting holds up under that analytical lens. So enjoy – Mark Simos.
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