Listen To The Winning Song From Our Contest! + Behind The Scenes Creating The Song

 

A little while ago, fellow blogger Melissa Miles and I held a contest for a chance to win a custom song if you subscribed to both our blogs. I am so excited to announce that the song is done and you can listen to it here!

I’ll also share the story that inspired the song and my thoughts on the collaborative process working with a musician as a lyricist for the first time. (Hint: It was awesome!)

Without further ado, here’s the song, This Love For Swing. I wrote the lyrics, and Melissa wrote the music and recorded the instruments and vocals.

 

This Love For Swing Lyrics:

Lyrics by Cassie Creley & Music by Melissa Miles

The first notes of the piano
Always take me back in time.
Swing is always young
And with each song that’s sung,
The keys never lose their shine.

Oh teach me to dance
To your favorite songs.
Teach me to play
And sing along.
We’ll always share
We’ll always share
We’ll always share
This love for swing.

A big band and a violin
Spin me ’round to yesterdays.
Swing is always new
And my dancing shoes
Feel like part of my DNA.

CHORUS

When you met at that dance
It was more than just a chance
And ever, ever since
Music’s still bringing us together.

CHORUS

 

The Inspiration Behind the Song

The winner of our contest is Diana Calvillo, who also happens to be Melissa’s aunt. I’ve enjoyed learning about her story, and even some things I didn’t know about Melissa.

When we asked Diana who she would like a song written about, she said herself, which is so fun! Having someone write a song about me is definitely on my bucket list, so it was awesome to be the one to make that happen for someone else.

As for genre, Diana picked swing, which made me really excited because I love swing music as well. The soundtrack to Swing Kids is probably one of my favorites, and swing is easily my favorite kind of dance. (I really hope to be able to swing again someday!) I also love more modern music that evokes a swing quality such as The Hush Sound, Caravan Palace, and Caro Emerald, so I drew on my experiences with swing when working on the lyrics.

Diana’s love for swing comes from her parents. They have a pretty incredible love story.

Diana’s father Clement is a first generation American whose parents moved to the U.S. from Mexico. He was serving in the army overseas during World War II, and while he was in the Czech Republic, a town sponsored a dance for servicemen. That’s where he met his future wife, Diana’s mother. I love the serendipity of their story, and how they came together from worlds apart to meet on a dance floor. Clement spotted Bozena, a beautiful young woman who he worked his way up to dancing with. Bozena thought he was a very good dancer. Music was literally part of what brought them together. After courting for two years, they married and were off to start their life together in America.

Clement had played violin through high school, and played music in Hollywood movies and with big names like Tony Bennett. Diana grew up hearing her father practice songs like Amazing Grace and beautiful Spanish music on the violin. She was eager to learn piano, partly inspired by the challenge to be better than her older sister! Her mother was her biggest fan, sitting to listen to Diana practice, encouraging her with her enthusiasm. Diana also recounts holidays filled with music with aunts and uncles joining in, playing everything from classical, Spanish music, Russian music, polka, spiritual songs, and of course, swing. Melissa told me that her grandpa inspired her love for music as well.

Not long after they married, Clement and Bozena both became Christians. Clement’s desire became to use his musical talent to glorify and honor God.  The lines of the song about meeting at a dance being more than just a chance are a nod to their strong faith in the Lord that they modeled and inspired in their children and grandchildren. I love how this couple had a generational impact by inspiring a love of music, as well as by setting an example by their faith.

Melissa shares some great photos and more about her family on her blog. 

Today, Diana continues to love playing the piano, and sharing that love with others, playing for her father, and at a retirement home. Diana talked about the ability of music to make her and her audience feel young at heart, as well as that special bond that music creates between people. Music continues to provide a connection between generations, as well as the past.

So how did I boil down these wonderful memories into song lyrics? I chose a few details that really stood out to me to frame the song. I wanted the song’s lyrics to capture that sense that music has the ability to function like time travel, evoking a different era and bringing back memories of another time. I love how Diana is continuing her parents’ legacy of sharing music—and I wanted that shared aspect of music to be in the song as well. And finally, I had to mention the piano and violin, as those two instruments have special meaning to Diana.

 

Collaborating On Lyrics And Music

For those who want to write music or poetry, I thought I would share more about the creative and collaborative process of creating a song. I’ve written lyrics before, but I’ve never done anything with them as far as having them put to music and recorded. I was a little nervous about it, especially since Melissa and I were going to be writing a song for someone, and I wanted it to turn out well. But we had been tossing around the idea of collaborating for some time, and the excitement helped trump my worry. Also, Melissa kindly pointed out that writing lyrics really isn’t that different from writing poetry. My mom’s encouragement made me laugh—she pointed out some songs with rather silly lyrics that we’d heard lately on commercials, and said that if that could be a published song, then I could write a song! XD So just remember that next time you doubt yourself!

Melissa and I sent Diana a first round of questions—Melissa wrote the questions about musical taste and style, and I wrote the questions about the song’s content. Melissa and I had a brief phone confab about how we wanted to proceed, and decided that I would write the lyrics first, and then Melissa would write the music from there. I had written up some more questions for Diana, so I ran them by Melissa before we sent them. Mel also helped fill in details of her grandparents’ story.

I started jotting down ideas for the song, and the verses ended up coming together first. I asked Melissa for her brutally honest opinion, and her response was, “My brutally honest opinion is…I really like it!” As someone who is brutally hard on my own writing, it’s lovely to work with someone encouraging. (I’m sure she would have told me if they were terrible. Right? RIGHT?) She pointed out that she liked that my writing was symmetrical, which made it easier to write the song. Good to know! I had tried to pay attention to my syllable count (more than I normally do when writing unrhymed verse), while recognizing that music lets you “cheat” a little bit and hold syllables for the counts you need.

I wrote several different versions of the chorus and several different bridges, finally settling on the version that appears in the song. I also wrote another chorus that was going to alternate in the song, but we ended up scrapping it after hearing rough cuts of the song. The song only really needed the one chorus, and both of us felt this one worked better.

Melissa got to working her magic, and sent me the first half of the song with mostly just piano and vocals. She sent me three slightly different versions to see which I liked best. We went back and forth with Melissa’s idea to add some “La la’s” in the song,” but that idea was eventually dropped. Melissa also made a couple tweaks to the lyrics, including coming up with the idea to repeat the line “We’ll always share.” She wanted to make sure I was okay with that change, and I let her know I was fine with any changes that she thought made better sense musically. I think that’s one thing that made collaborating with Melissa great—our goal was what was best for the song.

Melissa then sent me some versions of the bridge, and I wanted to make sure one part wasn’t hard to sing (Melissa said it worked fine). I realized I had quietly sung most of the song to myself to make sure it sounded good out loud, but had forgotten to do that with the bridge. This is something I often forget to do with poetry—make sure it flows when spoken! Also, since I didn’t know how the song was going to sound, I made up my own tune for the chorus, but couldn’t think of anything for the verses, so I randomly ended up singing it to the tune of “The Bare Necessities!” Yeah, I’m not sure where that came from! But I was careful not to mention this to Melissa in case she got the song stuck in her head while trying to write the music!

The funniest thing happened when I was listening to the rough cuts of the bridge: I was sitting outside in the garden and as soon as I pushed play, I heard the chirp of the hummingbird. I looked up to see a baby hummingbird hovering about ten feet away. As the clip played, it kept flying closer and closer in little bursts and chirping as it listened to the music, until it was only a foot away from me! As soon as the clip was done, the hummingbird zipped away. I had to tell Melissa that a hummingbird approved of her song!

 Later, I kept thinking of something Melissa had said about one of the lines reminding her of another song, no matter how many different ways she sang it. Now, whenever I thought of that line, I thought of that other song, so I decided to change it. I texted Melissa three different versions, and asked if it would throw a wrench in things if we made a change at that point. She was totally fine with a change, and after talking it over, we picked our favorite line, which we both agreed was a better match for the rest of the song.

It was really fun to go back-and-forth getting inspiration from each other and watching the song evolve, first having the lyrics influence the music and the music influence the lyrics. When Melissa sent me the final track, it was amazing to think that I’d been a part of bringing a song to life that had never existed before. I learned a lot about music and writing for music, and if you’re thinking of trying to write a song, I highly recommend it. The whole process was a wonderful experience.

Also, is it bad to walk around singing your own song? 😀

A huge thank you to Diana for inspiring this song and taking the time to share some of your story!

Please let us know what you think of the song! Do you have a favorite part? Do pets or wild animals stop to listen while you’re playing it? XD