Do You Write Your Own Parodeities?

Hey, share them with everyone! In particular, I love to read good Christian Parodies of classic rock songs. So share your work with the rest of us! Send me a link to your web page containing Parodeities and I'll add it to Webster's Christian Resources Web links section. I'll certainly post your parodies here as long as I feel they're appropriate. In any case, if you've done some parodies, share them! You can contact me at rhyde@cs.ucr.edu.

Tools You Can Use to Write Your Own Parodeities

While, in theory, you need nothing more than a pencil, some paper, and, of course, your Bible, to crank out a rough draft, I use several computer based tools. I use a Macintosh Powerbook G4 laptop on the train to create my Parodeities. Of course, a desktop machine works just as well if you don't need the portability. PCs (Wintel) machines work just as well as Macs for this process.

To write the actual text, I use a text editor (not even a word processor). While you could just as easily use a word processor, I often cut and paste my lyrics between different programs, I find it more convenient to use an ASCII text editor so that I don't depend upon the formatting features provided by the word processor (this also makes it easier to convert the text to a web page once I'm done with the song). I also use the text editor (or, Internet Explorer) to view the lyrics for the original song that I've obtained from the Internet).

I also use QuickTime to play the MIDI files I use when writing the lyrics. QuickTime is the most convenient tool on the Mac, Windows also supports QuickTime as well as other MIDI file players. If your music appears in some other format, you will need a player for that sound format. I use a Roland XP-30 synthesizer to actually record the music, though you certainly don't need a synthesizer to actually create the Parodeity; most computers have the ability to synthesize the music directly (which is fine when creating Parodeities, though you probably should use a synthesizer module if you actually record the music).

Most MIDI files have a "VOX" (vocals/melody) track that plays the melody along with the rest of the song. Some MIDI files, unfortunately, do not have the VOX track; it is much easier to develop your songs when a melody track is available. So try to locate music files that have a VOX track. If you can't locate such a file, you'll probably want to play the original song (with vocals) a sufficient number of times so that you know where the words belong in the song.

Do be careful when using MIDI files. Sometimes the MIDI sequencer doesn't create a VOX track that is true to the original song. I've wasted a lot of time getting the number of syllables "just right" in a song based on the VOX track, only to discover that the original song didn't play it quite the same way. A good example of a big mistake I've made in is "Treasures in Heaven" (to the tune of "Stairway to Heaven"). The particular MIDI file I used completely eliminated one verse of the song. I was too lazy to add another verse to the song after I discovered this mistake, so I left it that way; however, had I started with a correct MIDI file I probably wouldn't have wound up with this embarrassing problem (hey, this is a learning process).

The above (plus your Bible, of course), are the basic tools you'll use to write Parodeities. Beyond that, inspiration, imagination, and experience become key. There are, however, some tools that can make your life a whole lot easier. Let's discuss some of these "optional" tools.

A tool that is almost required for writing lyrics is a "rhyming dictionary." If you don't want to actually purchase one of these, you can always go to "www.poetry.com" and use their on-line rhyming dictionary. This is an extremely useful tool for finding words that work at the end of your lines. The poetry.com web site has other useful suggestions for writing poetry (song lyrics are a special case of poetry), you should definitely take a look at this web site. If you get a rhyming dictionary, you should try to get an electronic version so speed up the process of finding rhyming words. Here are some on-line rhyming dictionary resources (hint: search for "rhyming dictionary" in google or altavista):

www.poetry.com

http://www.rhymezone.com

http://www.rhymer.com

http://www.freeality.com/dictionat.htm

http://www.writeexpress.com/online2.html

http://www.togethersoftware.com

The list goes on and on. A search via AltaVista using "rhyming dictionary" turns up hundreds of links.

A pair of very useful tools are an English Dictionary and a Bible Dictionary. The Bible Dictionary is quite useful for converting weird Bible terms into something that you can use in a line in a song. Beyond the obvious use of correcting spelling, an English dictionary is very useful for looking up words you find in a rhyming dictionary to see if they make sense in your current situation. Also, an English dictionary is great for looking up different variants of a word that have differing number of syllables. Again, electronic versions of these tools is most useful. Both are, undoubtedly available on-line (just search under AltaVista or some other search engine). A thesaurus is also useful for the obvious purpose.

An electronic version of the Bible is *very* handy. I personally use Zondervan/OakTree Software's "The NIV Study Bible Complete Library for Macintosh". Comparable programs exist for the PC as well. The electronic version (with OakTree's Accordance software) makes it real easy to quickly find references to phrases in four different translations of the Bible (KJV, NIV, NASB, and NRSV). As I've exhausted the easy ideas, this tool has been invaluable in keeping up my "one hour per rough draft" pace on the Parodeities. The study guides available in these electronic Bible packages are also a good source of ideas for songs.

How to Get an Idea for a Parody

Fortunately, the Bible is full of thousands of stories that are suitable for music parodies. There are enough ideas just in the Bible to keep you busy for a long, long, time.

I rarely "work" at figuring out an idea for a parody. I'll be listening to some song and a Biblical line will hit me and I quickly turn that into a Parodeity. Thus far, I've relied totally on God's inspiration to start a Parodeity. While this is the path of least resistance (it's really easy when you wait for the inspiration to hit you out of the blue), you could also approach this by picking a Bible story, some song, and working out the lyrics at that point. You'd need to do this, for example, if you were under contract to crank out a CD for some music company by some deadline. If you're not a recording artist, you probably can use the same approach I use.

Sometimes the original song's title will suggest the idea (hey, who hasn't done a version of "I'm a Believer" yet?), sometimes the secular song's message will suggest something. Sometimes the song's beat will simply match some Biblical phrase you're thinking up.

Still having problems coming up with ideas? Don't be afraid to "steal" some ideas. For example, "Calf of Gold" (the story of Aaron, Moses, and the Golden Calf) was inspired by Nancy L. Mari's "Wand'rin in a Desert Wilderness", specifically, I was really impressed by the following:

At the mountain we can make an idol
And pretend that it is really God
It can't do a thing 'cause it's an idol  
And we won't even think that that is odd!

Interestingly enough, I chose Del Shannon's "Runaway" as the music for "Calf of Gold." It turns out that ApologetiX' "Ronomy" tells approximately the same story as "Wand'rin..." and is a parody of "Runaway". "Calf of Gold" was (intentionally) based on "Wand'rin" and unintentionally uses the same music as "Ronomy". I found the whole situation rather amusing, personally.

As another example, consider "I'm a Believer" found on this site. Originally, I was just going to use Dean-o and the Dynamo's version. However, Dean-o's version was a little too secular for me; he basically changed two or three lines in the song and that was it. I wanted a song I could use in the Junior Church program at Pathway that had a stronger message. My first stop was the ReVersed Lyrics page. Nancy Mari had two different versions of "I'm a Believer" at her site. I wasn't completely happy with either of them, but they did have a couple of lines that were good. Between the original Monkees/Neil Diamond song, Dean-o's modifications, the versions I found on Nancy Mari's ReVersed lyrics page, and a bunch of work on my own, I was finally happy with what I came up with. The song turned out to be very popular with the kids at Pathway even before "I'm a Believer" (Smash Mouth) appeared on the Shrek soundtrack.

In any case, don't be afraid to take a look at Nancy's site; definitely you will want to purchase the ApologetiX CD set, and you'll want to take a look at my lyrics as a source of ideas. My work is all public domain, so you can legally (and with my blessings) steal as much or as little as you like (even without attribution). Note that Nancy Mari's page contains copyrighted material and ApologetiX' stuff is definitely copyrighted, so wholesale theft of material from these pages is illegal and unethical; this doesn't mean, however, that you can't use these pages as a source of ideas. "Calf of Gold" is certainly an example of what (I feel is) a legal and ethical "idea theft" from these copyrighted sources. I've also created some Parodeities after listening to some ApologetiX songs and was reminded about some (secular) song that I'd forgotten about. Anyone who is serious about writing Parodeities should take a serious look at J. Jackson's (ApologetiX) work; some of his stuff is absolutely brilliant.

Note that since my material is public domain, it's very easy to work with. If you want to change just a single line in some song to make it better, you are allowed to do so. Ethically, some others may not think highly of you if you take credit for the whole song, but I, personally, don't even have a problem with that. I made my songs available so that, hopefully, some people could make use of them. So use them any way that you choose; from my perspective God is the source of all these ideas, so you wouldn't be stealing anything from me anyway. If God inspires you indirectly through my work, so much the better.

Copyright Issues Concerning Parodeities

So you've just created a Parodeity and you want to perform or publish it. Can you get into trouble by doing this? Is it unethical to "rip off" other artists' songs? Are you going to get sued? I'm no lawyer, so I'll just quote ApologetiX' web page (and CDs):

What are the legalities involved in doing parodies?

In 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that parodies can be a "fair use" of an original song, requiring no permission or royalties. One of the main points the Supreme Court made was that when a parodist significantly changes the words and meaning of an original song to spoof it, the parody becomes a new work -- even if it uses the music of the original. Now, that doesn't mean a person can come along and just change a word or two and call it a parody or a new song; the Supreme Court laid down some specific guidelines.

For more information, please see

You can even copyright the new lyrics you create as long as they fall within the guidelines set down by the U.S. Supreme Court. I personally choose to release all my work to the public domain since I don't particularly want to restrict others from using my parodeities in any way. However, there is nothing inethical about copyrighting your own parodies . You don't need the original artist's permission or blessing to do this.

The media industry, and the music industry in particular, has some really crazy ideas about what is protected and what is not. Many singers have been successfully sued because someone mentioned an idea for a song to them, the songwriter/singer explored the idea and turned it into a song, and the person with the original idea felt that, somehow, they "owned" the result. Quite honestly, ideas are cheap; turning an idea into an actual song is a lot more work and it's hard to claim that having an idea occur to you gives you substantial rights over anything resulting from that idea. However, the courts (in the U.S., anyway) have been very sympathetic to the plaintiffs when it's clear that a song was based on one of the plaintiff's ideas. This is why lyricists like "Weird Al" and J. Jackson refuse to accept parody ideas from their fans. If you plan on making any money off your parodies, a good piece of advice to follow is to make sure your ideas for your parodies are all your own. If you use ideas that others have given you and you make any money at all off those ideas, you'll probably be the subject of a lawsuit, sooner or later. Note that this advice does not apply to any of the public domain ideas I've put up here on Webster. "Public domain" means exactly that -- it belongs to the public and they may use it anyway they see fit (also note that using ideas from the public domain does not prevent you from copyrighting your expression of that public domain idea).

How to Record Your Parodeities

It's always a good idea to record (music and vocals) your parodeities in order to evaluate the end result. You should do this even if your singing talent is about as bad as mine because hearing the song being sung (even badly!) may suggest some changes to the lyrics. It doesn't take much in the way of fancy gear to pull this trick off. If you've got a stereo cassette deck that accepts two microphone inputs, you can stick one microphone on your computer's speakers (or feed the computer's line output into one of the cassette deck's line inputs) and then sing into a microphone plugged into the other channel. While crude, this is actually good enough for most work. Various low-end Karaoke machines provide a big step up from this simple setup.

A better solution is to use your computer as a digital recording studio. Most PC sound cards have software that allows you to play a MIDI file (or other sound file) while simultaneously recording via a microphone. Then you can edit the sound and produce a more professional result.

I actually use several of my parodeities in the Junior Church service at Pathway Christian Church. At first, I thought I could get away with just recording the audio output from my synthesizer and playing the music without vocals. I discovered very quickly that without a vocals or, at least, a strong "worship team" that really knows the song, just playing music doesn't work. So I began recording my vocals (bad as they are) for use in Jr. Church. After all, those poor kids have got to listen to me sing live anyway, how much worse is another copy of my voice going to sound?

I put together a small digital recording studio in my office at home. This allows me to create semi-professional recordings that work fine when I play them on the "Boom Box" I use for the kids' service. I do all of my recording on a B&W Macintosh G3 system using a DigiDesign Digi001 system, a Behringer 24-channel mixing console, a Harmon Kardon CD-player with digital output, a Nanoverb unit (though I typically use the DVerb plug-in for ProTools rather than the Nanoverb unit), a couple of Shure microphones, a Roland XP-30 MIDI synthesizer, and some other miscellaneous gear. Not counting the computer, this set up runs between $2,500 and $3,500, though you could get by for a fraction of this cost (no, I'm not rich; just note that I don't have any kids and you can easily figure out how I afforded this). A small mixing board (8 channels runs under $200), a decent Microphone (Shure SM-57 or SM-58), and a decent sound card (with appropriate software) might be all you really need to produce really good results. That, combined with a CD-R drive and you'd be in business.

Then all it takes is a lot of patience and practice to make a recording. As I mentioned earlier, my vocal abilities are sufficiently close to non-existent that it takes a lot of time to create a recording that I'm willing to use in Jr. Church. Fortunately, one of the benefits of a digital multi-track recording setup like the Digi001 is that I can record a vocal track and keep the parts that I sing marginally well and throw away (rerecord over) the stuff that sounds atrocious. Furthermore, once I get a chorus right, I can often "cut and paste" that chorus throughout the song, saving myself from having to sing that part correctly several more times (I can hear the vocalists out there groaning about how bad this idea is, but when your singing ability is almost NULL, this is a tremendous time saver). Someday, I'm going to invest in one of those "pitch correction" devices (or software plugins) that digitally process your voice to keep you in tune (another groan from the vocalists out there) so I don't have to sing my lines over and over again until I can manage to keep the whole verse in tune. Currently, I just crank up the reverb to the point of making the words unintelligible in an attempt to mask my inability to sing in tune. I won't go into all the tricks recording engineers play to help those of us with really lousy voices, but suffice to say that there are a lot of things you can do to "fix it in the mix." There's no substitute for good vocal ability, but you can, at least, make the result tolerable (if not actually good) by spending a lot of time in the studio playing around with the recording. This is where the more expensive gear and software comes in real handy (e.g., the Digi001 and ProTools).

By popular demand, I've placed some recordings of my parodies here on Webster. However, don't expect professionally produced material; I've put these recordings on Webster simply because some people cannot mentally "visualize" how the lyrics work in the songs and they need to hear a performance to appreciate the work. If you want well-performed parodeities, check out the ApologetiX web site.

Well, I've spent more time than I really should have explaining how to write parodeities, now I should get back to work writing them. I'm certainly looking forward to reading yours, so pass them on by me some time.