Teacher: Who influenced your style of writing?

Pupil: I was influenced mainly by the band ‘’ because of the lyrics and the style of singing . . . also the way the guitars are played – the rhythm guitar and the lead section – it’s kind of hard rock/ kind of. But my song’s not an EMO song.

Teacher: So tell me about their music.

Pupil: Well, most of their songs have two electric guitars, bass and heavy rock drums – it’s officially classed as hard rock, but I always class it more as – like when you think of normal you think of a couple of guitars, bass guitar, drums and singing: that’s what I aim for, just a rock song . . . not like Nickleback: some of their early stuff appeals to me, but now they’ve just got to the ‘let’s just be popular with 13-year-old girls’ – all commercial!

Teacher: OK – so you say you’ve planned it. What parts have you planned? What are the different instruments going to be doing?

Pupil: We’ve got everything – we’ve got all the instruments – like, I’ve worked out the rhythm part, that’s the first part we’ll do – oh, actually, I did the lyrics first, then I added the rhythm at home. Then I changed the chords from open chords to bar chords.

Teacher: And why did you change them from open chords to bar chords?

Pupil: Because the open chords sounded like the folky, acoustic rock sound I was going for originally but then I decided to change it because I thought it would sound a bit better – I wanted it more hard rocking kind of sounds than an acoustic rock sound – it sounds much better with the bar chords.

Teacher So what aspects of your song would you say are characteristic of hard rock music?

Pupil: The thing that makes it rock music is mainly how it’s played and the lyrics, unless they’re more like a noise-orientated band like Heller or someone like that. How it’s played is, if it’s in a minor key then it’s more of an EMO rocky song, a sad rock song – but we played it in a major key: the tune is meant to be up-beat but it sounds kind of sad because of the vocals. Basically when you think of rock you think of love songs, sad songs about someone leaving – a boy leaving a girl or a girl leaving a boy . . but it’s not just that because you could have a rap song, like Lincoln Park, they have like heavy metal types of tunes – but it’s the words that make their songs more like hip-hop or rap.

Teacher: Is there anything else that makes it that?

Pupil: The way it’s sung . . . you can get rap-rock, but rock is normally sung (not necessarily sung good – that’s why I like it, ‘cos I can do it!); and you get RnB and stuff – well, what they call RnB these days – not like the proper stuff like . . what’s his name [can’t remember his name]. Anyway, you have to be able to sing to do RnB – like even modern RnB and soul and stuff like that – even Blues you have to sing a bit – but in rock you just have to have the right emotion in your voice: to me, rock is all about the emotion you have.