Lyric Writing - The Caboose That Couldn't

J

jeffoest

New member
Hi all,

I haven't posted here in a long while and haven't been writing much music either. Actually my studio is aglow with new ideas, my guitar skills are becoming good enough that I actually get inspired (i'm really more of a keyboard player), been learning the bass and coming to a certain competance level.

But for the last couple of years since I've been recording the home studio, I've noticed that I do EVERYTHING before I write the lyrics. I'll sing the song in scat, work on drum fills before I finally get to the lyrics. Sometimes I don't get to the lyrics at all - I have three songs (one where I spent a whole weekend recording a 15-part distorted guitar section! lol) ready to go except for lyrics.

I'm sure I'm not alone. Just looking for advice. I guess it's the music that absorbs me and is my creative outlet - I don't have a lot that I want to say in lyrics. That said, I have written lyrics (after much time for each song) that people liked and weren't too awful cliche so I (in theory) CAN do it (not saying I'm lighting up the world obviously).

Any advice? Am I the type that should just get a collaborator? The problem with a collaborator is that I have this notion that I don't really want to have another person writing lyrics that I may end up singing, give up complete freedom to do whatever I want to the song, collaborator expectations (I just do this for fun right now and am not active in marketing my work currently - in the future who knows, though I have copyrighted music that I have written through the copyright office).

Thanks,

Jeff
 
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I got some good advice from a dude I know who writes killer songs. He told me that for two years he wrote poetry every day.

I used to think I was a good wordsmith till I took a look at this guys stuff. So now I'm working working working on my writing. Still, writing comes easier to me that does music making. (I'm still intimidated by it!)

perhaps we should encourage/help each other out?

layla
 
Well, I guess you have to decide what's important to you: finished songs that you can perform or the enjoyment you get out of recording different parts and experimenting in your studio. For me, it's the former, so I'll give you my feelings from that perspective...

For me, working on drum fills or layering guitar parts before the song is finished is completely counter-productive and out of order. In fact, recording anything before I have at least a title idea is unthinkable. I love to play guitar just as much as the next EVH/ SRV wannabe, but it takes finished songs to entertain people. The lure of the studio can be powerful, but if you let it suck you in to recording things that just sound neat instead of actually writing songs, you'll never have any finished songs.

If writing lyrics just isn't your bag then you definitely should collaberate w/ someone. If you don't want to relinquish control of your songs, then maybe consider writing instrumental songs ( which also requires you to rethink your writing technique a little).

My greatest musical ambition is that maybe once I check out of the planet, people might still enjoy my songs (even if it's just my kids and grandkids). I want to leave behind a whole bunch of songs that people can sing and perform, not just a collection of guitar riffs.

A
www.aaroncheney.com
 
One thing about songwriting I've learned is that everyone does it differently. And most people do it inconsistently as well. For me, lyric writing and song writing are kind of separate processes. I keep a pool of lyrical ideas that are in various stages of completion. They kind of churn in my subconscious until they start to form into a song, at which point I start to pull together musical and lyrical ideas until they fuse into a song.
I guess my point is you shouldn't feel like you need to create the whole song -- music, lyrics, parts, etc. -- in one fell swoop. Write some lyrics, without any thought to how the music is going to go. Then when you've got a song with no lyrics, look through what you've got and determine if any of it can be modified to fit the song. The biggest thing that holds songwriters back is an unwillingness to edit and rewrite something they've already done; believe me, from what I've seen this is NOT how the pros work. They rewrite everything.
Maybe you should just collaborate with a lyricist? I mean, maybe you just don't have anything you want to say? There's no law that says you have to be a great lyricist to write great music.
 
Thanks for the great responses - lots of good thoughts and ideas...

I suppose it's just a matter of hunkering down and doing it (the lyric writing) for me. The quality of my work isn't horrible (that is to say, I haven't seen any amatuer work that just jumped out at me as clearly better than mine though I have thought highly of some of the lyrics posted in this forum) - it's not much fun for me but I do like getting a finished product to work with. The working on the drum fills and things before the lyrics are just a method of procrastination lol....
 
I think, and this is just the way I do stuff, that you should just go nuts with the lyrics - write whatever the hell comes to your head, write the most embarrasing cheesey terrible lyrics ços no-one sees them till yo're ready anyway. Then leave it for a while, go back to it and you'll probably find it's mostly bollocks, but that one or 2 ideas jump out, and you can run from there.

Another way that I heard from Don McGlashan from the Muttonbirds (who you probably won't know if you're not from New Zealand, but he's a more-than-decent lyricist) was to write down the whatever you want to write a song about (like "sex", or "apple") and then write down all the words that come into your head about that topic or thing until you have a page of stuff from which to build verses, choruses, etc.

failing that, go to lyrics.com and cut and paste your way to pop stardom :)
 
nickjc said:
I think, and this is just the way I do stuff, that you should just go nuts with the lyrics - write whatever the hell comes to your head, write the most embarrasing cheesey terrible lyrics ços no-one sees them till yo're ready anyway. Then leave it for a while, go back to it and you'll probably find it's mostly bollocks, but that one or 2 ideas jump out, and you can run from there.
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Yeah I agree; when me and my bandmate used to write together, I always had two or three really bad ideas to get out before the good ones started flowing. Something about writing down an idea gets it out of your head and clears the path to better ones. I always compared it to aerosol cheese: you get it out of the cupboard and it's got that hard, crusty string of cheese stuck in the nozzle. you have to get that out before the good stuff comes out.
 
In my songwriting book and classes I talk about a couple of hats: the "creative hat" and the "editing hat". When you are writing songs, you can't wear them both at the same time, becuase your editing hat will tell you that everything your creative hat thinks up is stupid. Nickjc was hinting at the same idea: when your "creative hat" is on and you are writing, your "editing hat" should be locked away in the closet and ideas should be pouring right from your brain to you pencil. Things that you might once have thought were too ridiculous to even bother writing down will suddenly appear on your paper.

That's when good lyrics start to happen.

A
www.aaroncheney.com
 
Jeff,

If you listen to much of the amateur stuff that's posted, you'll start to notice that bad lyrics ('dear diary, she was mean to me...') lead to to bad music - writers get hung up on the emotion that was the catalyst of the song and don't edit those rantings into something suitable to a well crafted song.

Van Halen was a good example - if memory serves, "Jump" was just music that Dave added lyrics/melody to after the fact, and that worked out OK. Rush is another example where Geddy and Alex would write music separate from Neil's lyrics. The key is getting the vocals to sound good, even the lyrics seem lame - ever read Shania's words on paper? Absolutely brutal.
 
mrx said:
Jeff,

If you listen to much of the amateur stuff that's posted, you'll start to notice that bad lyrics ('dear diary, she was mean to me...') lead to to bad music - writers get hung up on the emotion that was the catalyst of the song and don't edit those rantings into something suitable to a well crafted song.

Van Halen was a good example - if memory serves, "Jump" was just music that Dave added lyrics/melody to after the fact, and that worked out OK. Rush is another example where Geddy and Alex would write music separate from Neil's lyrics. The key is getting the vocals to sound good, even the lyrics seem lame - ever read Shania's words on paper? Absolutely brutal.
Click to expand...

Seems to me that 90% (that's probably a conservative estimate) of the lyrics to pop songs are crap. I'm dating myself here, but Steve Allen used to do a hilarious bit where he would read song lyrics as if they were literature. I remember the Rolling Stone's "Satisfaction", in particular-
"I can't get no....satisfaction,
I can't get no....satisfaction...
and I tried...and I tried...and I tried...and I tried.........
but I can't get no....
satisfaction...."

There are a few singer-songwriters who can put an intelligent lyric to music (I'm not one of them, btw), but not many.

I did like that "aerosol cheese" bit lykwydchykyn! :)

Ted
 
tedluk said:
Seems to me that 90% (that's probably a conservative estimate) of the lyrics to pop songs are crap. I'm dating myself here, but Steve Allen used to do a hilarious bit where he would read song lyrics as if they were literature. I remember the Rolling Stone's "Satisfaction", in particular-
"I can't get no....satisfaction,
I can't get no....satisfaction...
and I tried...and I tried...and I tried...and I tried.........
but I can't get no....
satisfaction...."

Ted
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Good point!

It also reminds me of Benny Hill, I think, comparing Shakespeare's sonnets to modern music. The song he read was Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff"

"Hot stuff

Hot stuff

Hot stuff

Hot stuff

Hot, hot, hot, hot stuff
Hot, hot, hot
Hot, hot, hot, hot stuff
Hot, hot, hot"

:p

Seriously, I like the ideas some have suggested about writing anything, stupid or not and editing it later. Once something is on paper, it's easy for me to think of improvements.
 
The idea of chucking everything on paper, leaving it and coming back with a fresh eye to pick out the good bits sounds good to me.

In response to tedluk, lyrics are never meant to sound good on their own; we are not writing poetry. It's the emotional impact they have in conjunction with the music that matters. Donna Summer singing Hot Stuff works :)

PS do you like my new signature?
 
There is validity in a couple of the points just made.

Garry is correct about looking at lyrics in the context of music. Neil Young and Michael Stipe have had great success by focusing on the 'sound' of the words in a lyric over the literary value of the narrative.

Writing everything and editting the content works as well - by far my best experience with collaboration came when I took a singer's 'lyrics' - which where basically cathartic rantings about her boyfriend - and used a tweezer to pull out the lines and ideas that formed the basis of 'songs'. (Might be an interesting project - have someone post one of these ranting purges and see how others would edit the content in a song...)
 
hey, now that's an idea . . . anyone know any psychos who could write a rant for us? I've tried cutting random bits out ofg the newspaper and making songs from that - doesn't always get good results, but it's an exercise and hones your skills. I mean, to write lyrics you don't even really need the "creative hat" as Aaron Cheney puts it (by the way, big ups on the posts - I'll buy your book, where can I get it?), you could just grab random pieces of writing or dialogue (a george bush speech, for instance) and edit it down into something new. lyrics are everywhere, it's just editing them down and putting them to music, really (although that makes it seem all so easy . . . . )
 
When you write a lyric and when you sing the same lyric, it takes on a different meaning. Writing sounds like oh ah uhuh and adding a few yeahs looks incredibly lame, but if you were to sing those same few sounds, it could sound really great. So my best advice for this would be to just write. I agree with Layla on the whole poetry writting thing. Start writing stuff now even if you dont think it goes with the music. Put everything aside and just write. It will do wonders for you. Good luck. ~la
 
you sound like you write a bit like me jeff. i tend to do the music and lyrics at the same time, sometimes the lyrics of a song will come out making no sense but i will like the melody of it all, the big question being how do you then adapt new lyrics to the melody? well why not keep the lines that you like!!! i had a problem a while back, and still do a bit, of over analysing my lyrics. id go over it again again, but im tryin to learn not to give a damn anymore. how many songs get misunderstood? people just pick out the bits they like and fit them to the way they feel anyway!!!
 
nickjc said:
hey, now that's an idea . . . anyone know any psychos who could write a rant for us?
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Dude, this is the internet; you can't swing a dead cat around here without hitting a ranting psycho.
 
by the way, I like the lovelabormusic site. will certainly be sendin my CD in when I get it fully sorted (as in, sounding not shite)
 
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