The+Ballads+Today

So today was the first day that we performed our ballads, and at least in period H they all seemed alright; however, it seemed that just about any song could be adjusted to fit the beat pattern of a ballad. Now, I am not an expert on ballads; however, shouldn't the song be made to fit the ballad, rather than the other way around? I mean, the ballad has a specific meaning it is trying to get across, whereas a generic tune can be sung with any words. I am not criticizing any of the ballads today, I am just wondering what everyone else feels about the choice of ballad melodies. 1201832537

In response to your statement about almost any song being able to fit the ballad, I disagree. I know my group had a difficult time finding a fitting tune. And when I look back on what I heard in class today, many of the tunes people were able to come up with still didn't fit one or two stanzas. But I do agree that the song should be made to fit the ballad. Based on what we experienced today, almost all of these poems would have been performed better if an original piece of music was written to suit the rhythm of the specific poem. It is kind of like writing a song to fit with already writen lyrics. I don't really know anything about music, but it seems to me that this would be harder to do than the other way around. Or even writing lyrics and music at the same time seems like it would work out better also. 1201834110

I disagree with the statement that all songs can be used to fit every ballad. One thing to consider is the number of beats per line/stanza of the ballad in comparison to the beats/rythms in the song. I know we had origonally picked one out but then changed it becase it did not fit. Also one must consider the content and meadaade of the ballad and wether or not the song portrays those emotions. I think that it would work best to write the ballad and the music at the same time, that way there is no trying to fit it all together. I wonder if the people who wrote/preformed the ballads a long time ago had devised a system to make it work. I think they would have, since this was a major way of passing along information. 1201834965

If you look in the beginning of the Ballad chapter, it says that ballads usually have "disitncive and memorable meter," the first and third lines being iambic tetrameter and the second and fouth lines being iambic trimeter (73). This is especially true of the non-contemporary ballads because it always seems that the ancient poets stuck to the rules more or less (the modern poets on the other hand, tend to experiement more with form). For this reason, many ballads can be sung to a melody that was not originally intended for that specific ballad, as DSU was saying. Of course, some lines might fit a bit awkwardly into a line of song because of an extra syllable, but for the most part, I think that ballads can fit into pre-made songs because of their distinct and common meter. That's why bro tom was able to find a random song on the internet and sing "Sir Patrick Spens" to its melody; the meter of that poem is so common that it's not hard to pair it with a song that has the same meter. 1201836888

I agree with MBe about this whole deal with beats/rhythms in songs. What you've got to understand is that realistically, any of us could have synced up any tune we know to a ballad and made it work. Ok maybe that statement is a bit far-fetched, but what I'm getting at is that you can make pretty much anything work and often what works is some generic tune. For ours, it was the "custard" poem along to the rhythm of "Mary Jane's Last Dance" by Tom Petty, which is also the rhythm of "Dani California" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers as well as probably a bunch of other artists over time. Yes, the beat we chose has been done before, but it worked and if anything it was a new spin on an old beat/rhythm in a sense. If anything, the ballad is easier to sync up to music I think than any of the other poetic forms we've done aside of course from Shakespeare's work with iambic pentameter. Still, I honestly think that ballads were meant to go along with "generic" rhythms/beats that people could easily recognize because the people traveling and telling these stories would need an easy way to draw people in and what easier way to do that than to do a rhythm they all already know and presumably like?1201843482

Well I know that my group had to try a variety of songs' melodies before we found one that fit. For example we had "My Boy Willie," and were thinking about using the tune of the song, "Butterfly Kisses." But we found that it did not flow easily along with our ballad, and would had much too slow of a pace. It is not really how the song fit a ballad, but a combination of that with the ballad fitting a song - they have to fit each other. The girl finds out that her love has died in our ballad, so we needed to find something that could convey the tragedy in a moving way. We had to try to get the audience to feel the meaning and occurrences of "My Boy Willie." One cannot just do that with any song. The song, "Last Kiss," was the one we finally chose, and it was so exciting when we tried it out, because it is really special to be able to make that sort of connection and still have the intended meaning and effect. 1201844796

I like the ballad because it is so easy to have fun with it. Although I do not think it is incredibly easy to fit a song to a ballad; it is not incredibly hard either. We had people use songs like "Barbie Girl", "Last Kiss", and the Giligan's Island theme song. There are just so many possibilities to what can be done with this form. Although I was not looking foward to the Ballad performance when Brother Tom told us about it, in the end I think it was alot of fun. I think that even the people who don't have much musical talent made up for it with creativity. I think that this was a good project and a good way to finish the Ballad chapter.1201881078

I think that many of the ballads that we have been reading about fit a specific type of melody or song... the ballad style. It's just a slow, repetitive, one instrument kind of melody. In my group, we actually used one of our "ballad" melodies from Co-Choir to sing. It fit pretty well with an exception to several parts where we had to tweak it a bit. I think that most ballads can not be adjusted to fit some melody, but I think that any genre of melody can be customed to fit a ballad. Because the ballads all have their own beat, one would just have to adjust the genre of music for that ballad. I'm pretty sure that any country, pop, rap, or blues melody could be sped up or slowed down to fit the beat of the ballad. 1201882205

Sure not any song would fit any ballad but I can see what you're getting at, the song should probably be made to fit the ballad, or vice versa. Performing them in class we had limited time so we just adapted it to as song the "fit" the ballad rhytmically, but really the music, and lyrics should be more carefully matched up so that they are the same in meaning. Music can speak emotions and meanings just as loudly as words can and if we were trying to perform the ballad in a way that would be true to the ballad we would need to probably create music that fit the ballad not only in meter, but in meaning. It would probably be difficult to find an existing song that had the exact same meaning as the ballad. 1201924761

The song should probably be made to fit the ballad and I'm almost certain that back when these ballads where sung their authors had a tune in mind to sing them with or the songs to sing then with were written down. To truly bring out the full power of the ballad it definently means that you should try to tailor music to the ballad, unfortunently with this project we had little time to go about composing our own ballad songs so we had to make due with what we have. This dosnt destroy the overall greatness of the ballad that we shoehorned other tunes to fit that ballad in our performance, it just means that our performances weren't as effective as they could have been because we didn't tailor make the songs to the ballads. Of course I am not saying that our performances weren't good either, all that I am saying is that in the time that we had what we were able to do was the best that we could do and I think that all of us did the ballads that we justice even with the improvised music. user:DGr-c

I agree that the music should be tailored to the ballad but I don’t think that not exactly matching them together created a big issue. Someone in my period did their ballad to the Gilligan’s Island theme song. It changed the poem a little bit with some repeated lines but the message got across and the music matched the overall tone of the ballad. I bet there are a whole lot of songs out there that unknowingly base their music off ballads that are hundreds of years old. I doubt that people who came up with the ballads would care all that much if people modified their work or what music they played to the ballad. Just think about it…ballads were a way of passing down stories and information to others and with each passing they would change slightly. So what I guess I’m trying to say is that the writers of these ballads had to expect that their work would be modified and put to music that it wasn’t intended to be put to and if they expected all of that to happen they shouldn’t be upset with what we did in class, they probably wouldn’t even care because people have been doing what we just did for centuries. 1202059397

I also think that the song should fit the ballad not the other way around. I feel like the tone of the song plays such a big part in the tone of the ballad. It throws me off a little bit when I hear a fast, happy, uplifting beat then really listen to the lyrics and they are more sad and somber. If the beat of the song and the tone of the ballad don't go together then I think that some of the meaning of the ballad is lost. I feel like all of the ballads that were performed did a good job at keeping the meaning of the ballad intact while coming up with a beat to sing it to. I was able to keep the meaning of the words and the beat of the songs together and enjoy what everyone came up with.1202242781

Well, i think the song should fit the ballad...and i have to disagree with you on one point. Not every song fits with a ballad. I think that each group that I saw perform their chosen ballad had a song that kind of went with the theme of the ballad. My group, for example, chose to work with the ballad //Death in Leamington// and I initially was bummed that out of all the ballads this was the one we had to work with. It just didnt seem very song-like, nor was it a very uplifting theme...but I guess that is beside the point. Anyway, we chose to put it to the song "Colors of the Wind" from Pocahantos. Now, that may seem random, but we actually tried other songs first and they just weren't working. Our ballad needed a song that had a melody like that of Colors of the Wind. It was a depressing, well melancholy ballad and it needed a melancholy song with emphasis on certain parts. Colors of the Wind had the perfect mix of soft and loud and the melody turned out to be perfect, after a little bit of tweaking. So..not every ballad fits a song. Really, a song can be fit to a ballad, just as colors of the wind can be fit to death in leamington. 1202255369

I think the objective was to be creative. Of course, not every ballad is going to mesh perfectly with every song, but for the most part, the rhythm in the ballad makes it possible. When our group began, it was difficult to find a song the worked perfectly with our ballad, so we soon began to improvise. Thinking outside of the box, we decided to keep rhythm clapping while slowly saying the words in a sing songy type manner. The ballad we chose, Riverbank Blues, by Sterling A. Brown, worked with our method because it is about a man who is stuck by the mudbank. He wants to leave, but the mud and water keeps him rooted to the riverbank. Our slow beat conveyed the monotonous lifestyle by the riverbank. Then, we decided to add some interpretive dance. I was acting out the part of the man and the rest of our group was the mudd and the water keeping me stuck. I was moving a slow floundering dance that might have looked as though I was dying or drownding. That was the idea we were trying to convery. A visual interpretation along with the steady beats that kept me, the man, in his riverbank blues. 1202261549

I agree with cdu. The point of this activity was for us to use our creativity and imagination. I thought it was rather interesting how people put their ballads to music. I think the objective was to show us how ballads have a melody to them. It was through our performances that we brought these melodies out. The song choices were somewhat random for the most part, however there were groups who chose songs that fit the tone or story of their ballad. When a group did that, it added to the story the ballad was telling. For example one group in my class performed "Sir Patrick Spens" and they put it to a song that had an irish flare to it. It was a rock song, but it fit the idea of Sir Patrick sounding Irish. I enjoyed the performance because I thought it really added to the performance overall. Other groups did things along that line and I was able to get more into the performance. I feel that most songs can be put to a ballad and performed, however the ones that are put to songs with the same tone idea are the ones that turn out to be the stronger performances. 1202272624

Like most of you, I have to dsiagree with the original statement by dsu. My group did do a generic song to fit our ballad, and although it worked, in the end I felt it was completely irrelevant to the ballad and had we had more time to do the project I would have deemed the song unacceptable to do with our ballad. The song really does need to be tailored to the ballad because I see it the same way Mrs. Mueller taught us to write. She always taught us that the structure, tone, and rhythm of our writing should convey the tone, mood, and purpose of our story. So if we were portraying a rambling, ignorant, politician, the semantics of our writing would have lots of clauses and would run on and on using large hollow words about issues. I feel the same way about a ballad being compatible with a melody. The cadence, rhythm, and tone of a song has to match the intent, purpose, and semantics of the ballad almost to a T; anything else would really distract from the author's intentions. user:kco-c

One other characteristic I would like to bring in to support kco's point is the song itself. The ballad's meter is iambic tetrameter, for the first and third lines, and iambic trimeter, for the second and fourth lines, or at least many ballads are; thus, the song must be appropriated to this meter. The song that I chose, //In the Hall of the Mountain King//, fit perfectly for the first and third lines, the iambic tetrameter lines, as this particular song has four main sub-melodies for each line, each sub-melody ending with a high-note, further accenting the syllable that the ballad already accented. Our song had some difficulties with the second and fourth lines, because the four accented ends to the four sub-melodies did not match up with the iambic trimeter. To compensate, my group attempted to sing these lines as if they had four syllables, though this just could not sound right.

In this the song itself must fit the ballad because it must match up with the ballad's meter.1202274226

I can see where dsu is coming from with that the song should be made to fit the ballad, but of course as with most things there are exceptions. I think that some ballads are more difficult than others to make a perfect fit for a ballad. I think it gets hard when you want to give the ballad different rhythms. In our period it seemed that slower beats seemed to fit with more ease with most of the ballads. That can also be disproved though too becuase some of the more upbeat tunes worked very well too. I do not really have a definite stance on this issue becuase i can find how it works and how it doesn't. Everything from the ballad effects how a dong will fit. It depends on content of course and then the styles: like line length, stanza length, and the rhythms and beats of each line and stanza.1202274273JJa-c

Plainly, I do not think that the song should be made to fit the ballad. In other forms of poetry where song is not really an option, the author is not telling us exactly how to read his poem. There might be more accepted forms of reading them, but the choice of how to read the poem must really come from the person reading it. Another factor here is that yes, some poets may be trying to portray a singular and exclusive message in their poetry, but many are very ambiguous. Take bro's poems for example. We as well as he both may not know the exact meaning of his poems. They were not created for a specific purpose, more for the exercise of the mind and the free flow of thought. Poems like these have infinate meanings, and depending on how you read/sing them, you could get very different ones. I believe it should be up to the reader for how he/she wants to sing the ballads because they need to find their own meaning in it. And lastly, the adaptability of the ballad to music is why I think it is so popular and why it has survived so long. Millions of songs can be fit to the same ballad, making it enjoyable to billions of very different people across continents and cultures. It's a very accesible form because of its close ties to all types of music.1202287474

Well, yeah, most likely the song should fit it, not the other way around. See, ballads have not only a certain structure and meaning to get across, but they also have a specific number of syllables which alternates line to line. They don't always have the same beat, but due to the number of syllables, songs have to be able to accommodate the syllables into the beat or rhythm of the music. Song that have repeating patterns that go on for too long, for instance, will lead the performer to have to choose between sneaking in parts of lines into one sung line, or stretching the ballad's lines to match the patterns of the songs. It's best to take a song and simply cut it down or expand it with extra beats or notes to keep the same relative melody, but to adjust it to match the beats in the ballad. You could always change the ballad, but then you'd be performing some other ballad, no the one you started off with. 1202313165