Songwriting Excercise

[hixmix]

Next time you go out and buy the latest album by your favorite musical group:

Read the rest of the lyrics(if provided) of the songs that you haven't heard and make up a melody and/or arrangement for them. Record what you come up with and then compare it with the original.

 

[badgas]

I've done that, hixmix.
Jeff Crossman did an album and I bought it. I'd only heard two songs off of it when I bought it.
My stereo was in the capable hands of my X so I didn't have anything to listen to it on.
I read his album cover and the lyrics over and over.
I wasn't with a band at this time, just working so when I was off I'd fiddle with his lyrics.

As I've said many times, I have a wall to get over when I try to put music to lyrics. The other way around is no problem.
I ended up with two songs with the lyrics to both rewritten and the whole song rearranged to the point it didn't even resemble any of his work, and they both sucked.

But that's a good idea, hix. When I write the words, a melody follows at the same time. Thats where I work from. Putting the music to that is a piece of cake. But I think it would be quite advantagous to add the melody and music after the fact, and someone else lyrics would suffice for a good project.

Have you done it, hixmix?
What kind of results did you get?

 

[Cyrokk]

Man, I forgot all about this..

When I was in high school, we were going over poetry format in one of my English classes..

Poetry and song structure use both the same symbolism when described on paper, like "a b a c" for example..

I don't remember what poem it was, but the structure went:

ab ab cd cd ab ab g g...

I pronounced it phonetically in my head and got a really cool blues swing rhythm. It's definately a guitar hook, but I never could get the key right to make it flow comfortably.. It's still in my head, so that must be a sign that it can fit somewhere in my toybox of ideas...

For me, writing the music is only half the battle. Good lyrics are a bitch to put together because they have to sit well in the song. They have to flow with the rhythm, and one single inappropriate word can ruin the entire song.. It took me almost a year to get the lyrics right for the song I'm currently recording. It's about a guy who discovers his girl was murdered, and since all the evidence shows he did it, he just gives into his instincts and bails. The working lyric was "I've got to bury her, and fade away". But this sounds like shit when sung.. I changed it to "Cave in to cold reaction, and fade away" which is not too bad, but saying two words that begin with "c" so close together requires me to change my vocal technique to deemphasize one of the "c's" to make it flow better...

Who knows, by the time it's done, it may end up being about some Hare Krishnas who buy a timeshare.

Cy

 

[Peter D]

That's pretty close to an exercise I've been doing for quite awhile. I find a basic chord/lyric chart for a song I've never heard performed and work up my own arrangement. Then I try to find the original recording or a cover and compare what they did differently than I did.

It seems to be a good exercise for both lyric writing and composing.

 

[stonepiano]

I sometimes use old poems for lyrics and put it to music. My great-uncle was a semi-famous lithuanian poet, Jurgis Baltrusaitis, and I used one of his translated poems once.

If anyone knows Lewis Carroll's Mock Turtle Song

Steely Dan did a demo with the words from it and it turned out pretty well.