K
k2shei
New member
Has anybody tried improvising the words and melody to a couple chords and then building off that? it works pretty well, but then again my lyrics are generally quite simple and really not that deep...
rayc
retroreprobate
Oh, in case you didn't notice I write LLLOOONNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG songs FULL of words that sometimes overflow.
Manslick
Road
+1
That’s how the Beatles did it. Nothing in their lyrics ever touched me emotionally. My love affair with them was their sound and the hype.
Z
ZiM_XG27
New member
Lyrics... I prefer my own to be a little ambiguous and based on negatively inspired emotions and situations. Seems like every time I try to write something straight forward and positive (like a love story type of song), it sounds like 100% American cheese. And I'm talking the cheapest of prepackaged crap. Not even deli. That said I really enjoy listening to those that can pull it off well. So i guess mine would be a more on the "dreamy" end that you are talking about.
My process you ask? Why certainly! Lyrics are the VERY last thing I worry about. I'm a vocalist so melodies and lyrics are my main job. My band comes to me with an instrumental part they've written and we all hash out what sounds good, what would sound better, etc. After that I'll come up with a melody that I like using nonsense syllables like DA-DA-DO-BE-BA-WHATEVER. When the MUSIC is written I then ask myself, "What does this say to me?" and "What kind of emotion does the music evoke in my gut/chest/heart/whatever?"
Only THEN do I begin to write lyrics. Don't know if this is the "right way" of doing things. But to me the music comes first. I know many others who come up with a melody and write a whole song around it, but that just never seems to get as good a result as just feeling a piece of music and letting it speak to you. Even if the words sounds like nonsense to the listener, they can usually pick up on the emotion behind the words and get what you were trying to say.
My process you ask? Why certainly! Lyrics are the VERY last thing I worry about. I'm a vocalist so melodies and lyrics are my main job. My band comes to me with an instrumental part they've written and we all hash out what sounds good, what would sound better, etc. After that I'll come up with a melody that I like using nonsense syllables like DA-DA-DO-BE-BA-WHATEVER. When the MUSIC is written I then ask myself, "What does this say to me?" and "What kind of emotion does the music evoke in my gut/chest/heart/whatever?"
Only THEN do I begin to write lyrics. Don't know if this is the "right way" of doing things. But to me the music comes first. I know many others who come up with a melody and write a whole song around it, but that just never seems to get as good a result as just feeling a piece of music and letting it speak to you. Even if the words sounds like nonsense to the listener, they can usually pick up on the emotion behind the words and get what you were trying to say.
fritsthegirl
Taste of home
Watch took about 100 goes before I could get through the whole song without sounding out of breath. Loved it though, and thoroughly enjoy your music and lyrics .
jamusic
New member
I always write the lyrics first. That's just the way it happens for me.
Usually a line or two comes along that is often inspired by something & then that starts to build the rest of the chorus or verse and 'gives a taste & flavor' for the song at large.
Usually a line or two comes along that is often inspired by something & then that starts to build the rest of the chorus or verse and 'gives a taste & flavor' for the song at large.
grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
As with many things, I find lyrics to be something of a paradox. On the one hand, they are crucially important to songs involving a vocalist. I enjoy lyrics and I think a good lyric {what I consider to be a good lyric} can really enhance a song. On the other hand, they're not particularly important, after all, I like songs in languages that I don't understand so the lyric there is pretty irrelevant. Then there are those songs where much of the lyric is indecipherable, yet so wonderful is the song, that it really doesn't matter. I've been listening to the Jackson 5 for 40 years and I still can't make out some of what Michael and some of the Jacksons are saying ~ in most songs ! When I sing along, I make up words or wordless sounds. On "Great to be here" there's an accapella bit that still sounds to me like "Delmeskin senorita/Palinkin palacea/While kissing in the igloo/My eskimo Sernoonoo". That's what I've been singing since 1973 ! But I love that song ! I've been Frankensteining theirs and many more songs for most of my life. And there will be lines or moments in various songs that are key to the song that sound so fantastic sung, yet if you actually said the words, they're so stupid or bland or corny or nondescript. In Whitesnakes' "Long way from home" there's a near orgasmic part that goes "I would do anything to be near you/You're everything any man could claim/I see your face in the night/I hear you calling my name....." Singing that part, the way the melody and music mesh is heavenly. But the lyric is awful. I would never say that to a woman. I'd never say that to anyone. I'd have to be going senile to actually seriously write that or something similar. But it's such a great song ! I bellow that part loud and proud !!
When I was a kid just getting into pop and rock, we used to get these magazines, 'Disco 45' and 'Smash hits'. They basically gave you the lyrics to chart songs and they settled many an argument. Because deciphering lyrics was no easy thing and it often came as a surprize when you'd see whatever the lyric that confused you actually was.
But not knowing never stopped one loving the song because the overall sound and direction counted more than any particular individual bits. And I still feel that way now.
When I was a kid just getting into pop and rock, we used to get these magazines, 'Disco 45' and 'Smash hits'. They basically gave you the lyrics to chart songs and they settled many an argument. Because deciphering lyrics was no easy thing and it often came as a surprize when you'd see whatever the lyric that confused you actually was.
But not knowing never stopped one loving the song because the overall sound and direction counted more than any particular individual bits. And I still feel that way now.
grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
To a large extent, I would have to say my lyric writing has developed in phases over a 30 year period.
I kind of fancied being the bassist that wrote lyrics and did backing vocals while also producing the records of "the band I was in". The major problem I had when these ideas came to me around the age of 16/17 was that I had no idea what a producer did, my voice had broken and my voice was lame, no, dead, I didn't know what a bass guitar looked like and I couldn't write lyrics to save mine or anyone else's life.
My earliest attempts at lyric writing were so pathetically awful, they didn't even reach 'embarrassing' on the scale of shittyness.I'm truly thankful that none of them made it to today.
I used to have though, fragments of lyrics that I'd come up with but they never had any melodies or complete music to bring them to life. I remember in the summer of '83 on two consecutive days while I was babysitting, coming up with two complete sets of lyrics that I was actually quite pleased with {one of them has actually made it to now and is actually recorded} but it wasn't until I really began in earnest thinking about recording in '92 that I began knocking out lyrics even remotely worthy of the name.
Most of the lyrics I came up with between 1992 and 2010 bore absolutely no relation to any particular or intended music. I would write what came to my head and later on {like, maybe years later !} shoehorn them into music I'd recorded. Long before I had started to write lyrics, I was writing songs on the bass. Because they weren't written with words in mind as I did them, they went in all kinds of directions, fascinating directions, but once I began to think about lyrics for them, I ran into problems and consequently, they're not very good. Actually, many of those songs are pretty disjointed, as well as being poorly recorded and esoterically mixed.
Except for on a few occasions, words and music always existed as independent entities. They came together in kind of arranged marriages, you might say.
But since around 2009, I've been so much more focused on the marriage between the lyrics and the music. I've deliberately concentrated on shorter 2~3 minute songs instead of my 17 minute extravaganzas with 8 minute intros ! And what I've found, which very rarely used to happen prior to 2010, is that lyrics and music are coming together at the inception of the song. As I discover words, I'll put a melody to them and that gives me a different kind of freedom in working out what the music will be because the words and melody already exist, rather than finding words and a melody to an already existing piece.
It's hard to say what kind of emotions come through in a lyric. Sometimes I'm very straightforward and blunt, sometimes I'm angry, sometimes I'm humourous, sometimes I'm deep and mysterious, sometimes I'm very loving, sometimes I'm pissed off, sometimes I'm rambling about nothing in particular, sometimes I'll disguise what I'm saying in terms only I would understand, sometimes I'll let it all hang out and be vulnerable, sometimes I'll be private and closed off.
grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
I've written on tons of subjects. At times the lyric will have great meaning, at times it's just recounting things that have happened and sometimes, it's just been hard work and I've written something that grammatically makes sense but to which I have no attachment. It was like simply arranging language.
Sometimes thoughts will strike me as I'm driving or cooking or watching telly and I quickly jot it down. I was in a pensive mood one day as I went to pick up my bass amp that was being repaired and the guy still hadn't gotten around to fixing it. So My mind was awash with various thoughts when these lines arrived;
The years my kids were born
Are the years my parents died.
All true. When my wife was pregnant in 2001, my Dad died and when she was pregnant in 2004 my Mum died. It had long struck me as interesting. I don't personally ascribe any significance to it but the song developed into a "Is there any connection and significance ?" kind of song. I came up with a melody as I scribbled out a first verse but a few weeks later I chucked it all except those opening lines because I liked the feeling they evoke. This time though, instead of thinking too hard, I just wrote down the first things that came into my head and thought 'I don't care if it makes no sense'. It was actually easy to write and after a bit of refining, I finished it very quickly, in about half an hour, in between various deliveries. I literally wrote it as I drove.
But in a way, it's a very emotional lyric though it may not seem that way. It has moments of anguish. However, it's not very poetic. But then, I don't consider myself a poetic writer. Although I like most of my lyrics, I don't think they make for grand reading and I'd be surprised if they brought out poetic appreciation in anyone. They're often a good example of how lyrics aren't intended to stand on their own. They're paradoxical because they are {with the vocal} the frame that the song may hang on, yet, they're not supposed to draw attention.
Wonderlick
New member
To me, lyrics are hit or miss - I think of them as poetic, informative, enlightening, stupid, lowbrow, irrelevant. In the grand scheme of a "song", the message/its content are unimportant. If the music/sound/song works as a whole, I don't care if there are no lyrics, or lyrics that consist of "Oooo's" and "Ahhhh's", or lyrics in French (go Stereolab), or lyrics that go against all of my political and spiritual beliefs - I'll still tell all my friends about the song and its arrangement and impact.
I try and use a lot of hip hop influence when writing lyrics, as I find them to be the most consistent in coming up with catchy metaphors and turns of phrase. Fortunately, I write a bunch of music that's not that, so I can slow my music down lyrically and use the best similes/metaphors/phrases that I can come up with.
Then I hope that this lyrical creativity can stretch for approximately two minutes and fifteen seconds.
Daryl
I try and use a lot of hip hop influence when writing lyrics, as I find them to be the most consistent in coming up with catchy metaphors and turns of phrase. Fortunately, I write a bunch of music that's not that, so I can slow my music down lyrically and use the best similes/metaphors/phrases that I can come up with.
Then I hope that this lyrical creativity can stretch for approximately two minutes and fifteen seconds.
Daryl