Mad Libs Lyrics
Goals
Audience will connect poetry and music through the creation of their own lyrics or story.
Overview
Use Mad Libs to write a poem or story, then play the piece with the lyrics the audience created!
Process
- Choose a piece with a lyrical melody you can set words to. Identify a concept related to your theme/entry point, and compose lyrics to accompany your piece. [Or skip to here from “Lyricize”.] Remove words and replace them with (verb/noun/adjective/adverb) blanks for the audience to fill in.
- Have audience members fill in your blanks to complete your mad libs.
- Connect the words with the music as you’d planned, and sing your lyrics with the audience.
- Optional: Invite the audience to sing along as you perform.
Audience Type
What does this activity look like in action?
Example Script:
Piece: Paquito D’Rivera – Four Pieces for Brass Quintet – II. Danzón
Performer: The next piece on our program is an incredibly fun piece by Cuban composer Paquito D’Rivera. It’s so fun, in fact, that I think we need an equally fun story to go along with it. We’ve got some quirky characters in the music, so we’d love your help to complete this story!
It’s Tuesday morning and character has just hopped out of bed feeling emotion. They put on their article of clothing and their type of footwear and ran outside. They look up and see the color sky, and a animal crossing the street, just like any normal day in city/town.
They hop on the mode of transportation and head towards a place. Now, the weather today was quite weather , but they came prepared with a type of outerwear. They walked down the street until they reached a shop to buy a adjective , noun , and picked up a adjective , noun while they were there.
Before heading home, they stopped to pick up a adjective , type of food. That hit the spot! Now it was time to go home. They hopped on a mode of transportation, and went back to see their pet animal before going to bed.
(Collect responses for each blank – one by one without revealing the story, then read it back to the audience).
I loved that story! Let’s see if we can hear the _____ colored sky, as we ride the ____ through our city of _____.
Perform D’Rivera Danzón
Do you think our story matched our piece? Why or why not?
Modifications
- Step up your game and have different musical responses (short phrases to perform) to their answers.
- Instead of the Mad Libs format, have the audience freely write their own lyrics.
- Instead of lyrics, create an accompanying story.
- For lower interactivity, see “Lyricize”.
Notes
- A similar activity is “Create Your Own Adventure”, where the audience selects actions that mirror the music.
- Can be paired with “Storytelling”.
Create interactive performances. We have activities to help you connect with your audiences.