Taking the Plunge

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Alanfc

Alanfc

New member
Hello-
Until today I spent all my time on the tech and recording boards here. I dearly love this community and it has given me alot.

Now that I am more confident on the tech side I have to face my Lyrics.

My original purpose for getting back into music was to get back out there and play live & loud and just write songs that were coherent and fun to play. Now I'm looking more critically at my work. It was always my intention to put out an indie CD but the live playing was going to come first. But I haven't been able to find anyone that wants to play hard loud rock for fun. Everyone down here is 20-something and looking for triple platinum and world touring...I can't do that. So the CD is coming first. (I ramble)

I am incredibly unconfident in my lyrics. I mean, I try to keep them decent as far as language goes, and logical as far as the narrator's/singer's point-of-view and storyline go. My main worry is that the lyrics all seem so incredibly PLAIN to me. I have tried to get metaphorical and artistic about it and it has not come out too well in my opinion (that's ok for now). What I care about in the short term is that the lyrics are not LAUGHABLE..... The language seems so direct and so boring to me.

I mean, no matter how simple and direct other peoples stuff is, it seems absolutely brilliant. Then when I look at mine ---ugh.
I revise and spice it up, then change it back and then revise again... my spicyness comes out ingenuine (to me).

Please forgive my rambling. I really think this Songwriting board is where I should be spending my time. I believe that with enough input I will get a good sense of where I stand and whether I need a ton of work or if I just have a sicko artist's inferiority complex. Giving up is not an option.

"So Alan - just show us some friggin lyrics...just one song"

Not yet. I am going through the first few songs that I've finished recording and will put something up soon. Maybe I will pluck out some of the others I have yet to record. (one at a time-don't worry) I am always ready to revise-revise -revise anything. Nothing is set in stone at this point.

What was the point of my rambling?: To say hello,
and to see if anyone else out there has a similar kind self-doubt regarding lyrics, and what you do about it.

Thanks alot
 
Yeah same here.

I have written a few songs and I know what you mean. I listen to what other songs have to say and mine don't sound as good. I think people doubt themselves too much, whether it be looks or song lyrics. I believe that if you mean what you say, even if its chock full of mistakes, it's still better than uhh well stuff that isn't meaningful. *cough* rap *cough* I would really like to see a sample of your writing sometime, its probably better than you think. I have revised my songs a lot and still revise songs I wrote like a year and a half ago (I've been writing for about that long.) I try to use big words to sound smart...not sure if it helps though, anyway I rambled on look at that. Moral is people are too hard on themselves and underestimate their ability. Good luck with your writing!

(:edit: hello to you also)
later
cfw
 
When my writing become dull I know it's time to take a ride. Pop a pill like my friend Jim Morrison and the lyrics pour like a pitcher of light..
........
...Im allright....Mother is that you?.... ...Twisting the knife in my back like do.

Girls gone wild on a endless loop. .@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@Bullet coming from the Medina troops.

Smelly soldiers under the cool desert moon...Funky cold Medina

Mother is that you?

Rolling the dice...Snake eye's appear : : : : : : :
Ride the snake...feed the snake.
Birthday cake
Body by Jake

Body of water sucking me under with it's sand claws. Sea horse with a face like Cristopher Reeve laughing at my attempt to stay alive. Staying alive with the boy in the bubble and his Scientology trouble.

Mother ...It is you!
Why are you walking down the hall locking THE DOORS that Jim tried to jimmy?

When Jim opened THE DOORS he opened your mind. Much like Steven did with close enconters of a different kind.

FEED THE SNAKE : : :,

Geraldo drawing war plans in the sand. What a snake!! A vault full of deception. Feed the snake to the snake for a snack of apple jacks.

Conjunction junction...Whats your point?
?
?
?
?
?
?
Mom....I'm tired and my head hurts.

Zzz's
Zzzzzzzz's

Don't do this to me Rocky!!

Go ahead and Cher your opinion.

Feed the snake!

:
:
 
SerenityThen-

I see you draw from the world around you past- present- future and all combined.. It seems as though the images flow right outta your head to the keyboard.....you free your mind and get everything in print.... then come back later and use what you can?

Well, whether that was your point or not, thats what I got out of it. Dang I gotta try that right away.

thanks alot
 
Im gonna quote Skippy here.....

"Just Tell THe Story"


be honest, capture your feelings, and you'll be ok.....
 
Alanfc. Reading your post I thought 'Damn, that was me 2 years ago'. I thought then @I can't write lyrics, tunes yeh, but not lyrics'
My doubt came from the fact that for 10 years I 'did the music' and my partner ' did the words'. He was good at it and there was no need to try myself.

Like you i recently got back into music and I play covers with a rock band for fun. But for me there has to be 'more' than that. A covers band is ALWAYS second class to a band that writes some original material. So I wanted to write. At first i hoped another guy in the band would provide the lyrics, but it became clear that writing was not a prioroty for him, so I was stuck. So I decided to have a go at lyrics myself.

Some of the lyrics I have come up with are frankly embarassing and I shudder when i read them. But its something that you get better at as you go along, like anything else in life. Read, educate, look at what others have done, get advice from DGs like this one.

I can now say that I have written one or two lyrics that I am PROUD of and i think, god did I really write that, how did I come up with THAT? Of course that's the exception and it can't be done to order, but the more you write the greater the chance of it happening.

My one piece of advice is 'be yourself' You are not Bob Dylan, you are not Jim Morrison, don't compare your work with theirs. Don't conciously set uot to write 'poetry' if that does not come easily to you. I can't write poetry, but song lyrics are a different format to poetry (fortunately). If you get stuck, try to write down a story in conversational language, at least that's what I do, then think about rhymes and patterns to fit afterwards.

Some people can be their own judge, they can put the lyric aside then come back later and tell if it was bad or good. Other people need a second opinion to bounce ideas off. You can either post on a group like this or get a friend who is also a writer and critique each other's work.

For sure there are 'rules' in lyric writing and I think its good to learn them. Then once you've learnt them, you can start to break them with confidence. Some writiers just absorb the rules through years of experience, others can learn them from books and groups like this.

One things certain though. If YOU think your lyrics are not good, then they probably aren't, but at least you are going to do something about it.

It's those people who arrogantly think their stuff is GREAT despite sensible constructive criticism from others and no real success that have the problem!
 
Here's a completely different approach... won't work for everyone.

Most of my songs begin with the music already in a well-developed state before the words come. When I feel there is a need to lay down lyrics, I just start listening to the music, and humming melody. Eventually, I just know that a certain word belongs on a certain syllable. Then another, and another. Pretty soon, I am laying down a scratch vocal track with some words. The words get tweaked and changed a bit, and a first verse suggests a second, etc.

Then, I begin to discover the connection, and I understand what the song is about. It's something that happens very naturally when I work, and sometimes a wonderful complex story unfolds, even if it is rarely clear and easy to understand. It's almost as if the music is telling me the story, and I just have to listen closely to find it.

Of course this only works if what you're doing is a little off the beaten track.

Two examples from recent songs:

"a million faces in her troubled mind
race to capture her, but not in time
he rounds the corner, but she isn't there
she is gone, we don't know where
the mystery we'll have to bear"

and

"quiet, I thought you were quiet
crying, but I couldn't hear
every single word folded to silence
in silence, one word appeared

everything you wanted to say
is only several syllables away"
 
Thanks

Thank you all for this incredible advice. It being art, just like any other, its all pretty subjective, with a little logic mixed in.
Thanks again
 
A few well chosen metophores will make a difference..


Don
 
Alanfc said:

I mean, no matter how simple and direct other peoples stuff is, it seems absolutely brilliant. Then when I look at mine ---ugh.

[
Click to expand...

God - I know that feeling

First, you are reeealy on the right track with plain and simple. Simple is really the supreme goal, I think. I struggle not to be too abstract and high-level. One trick for that is.... detail -- that is -- not a lot of it, but the right detail. Writing that is simple and really brilliant, it usally some detail that evokes exactly the thing the writer wants to say.

Be prepared to write down a ton of stuff that will never get used. The act of writing itself makes a difference, and you kind of need to let the crap get out of your mind and out of the way so the good stuff can come out.
 
I'm sort of going through the same battle and I think part of the difference between the famous artist's lyrics and your own is sometimes the way that certain syllables fall on certain beats, i.e. the rythym of the melody.

And I know that even famous singers don't always have the lyrics ready straight away for a song. I watched a video of one of my favourite bands of all time playing a demo of a very famous song, and it was... crap. The vocal rythym did not help the song at all. Then it eventually became a great song a year later. This is what actually inspired me to pick up the axe again in the first place, thinking, if that piece of crap song turned into something great, then surely I've got a chance.
 
I also experiecne great difficulty writing what I believe are "competant" lyrics. In fact I usually tend to mumble when I sing so that people can't understand what I'm actually saying! Lately I've been on a bit of a tear, writing furiously and often and achieving personal satisfaction. Which is a rarity for me because everybody is their own worst critic. But some methods that have been helping me in my lyric writing: I listen to ALOT of music, not just a handful of bands, or even a handful of genres; from classic rock to emo, (although I guess it mostly rock in some form) but I try to think, what is it about those songs I hear that get me singing to myself an hour later? Is it the fact that the words rhyme well? flow well? have some sort of personal meaning? these are types of things you have to analyze and consider. Also, even if you think your stuff is tripe, don't worry about, just always be writing, when I was high school, college, I was always writing lyircs, or even random thoughts, one liners that maybe I could use...
Lyrics aren't just about the words too, it's how they complement the music behind them, one of my favorite lines that I wrote, isn't even words it's just me singing "la dat da da da da" and after we jam on that song, that's the part that is stuck in everybody's head.
So what I am getting at? I dunno either, I ramble too, just be patient, and as said eariler, the more you write, the better you'll get!

BP
 
Buckshots comments got me to thinking of one of my songs. It starts off with the very deep lyrics "doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo." Those words come back later as well.

I always thought the structure of the song was unusual too. When I was talking to my engineer friend about it, I said, "The song is unusual because it has no chorus." He said, "Sure it has a chorus! It's 'Doo-doo, doo-doo!'" You know what? He was right!

Another friend of mine has this particular song as her favorite among mine. It's called "Coming Back," but she just says "I like the doo-doo song!" :D

If you're curious, here's a link to a rough mix of it:
 
I know how you feel. I have this ongoing war with myself between the over-encouraging part that says "You know what, empirically speaking this may not be the greatest song ever written, but at this point in time, well, this is where I'm at, and at least I have this little new world that somehow came out of me. Yeah it could probably use a little work, but you know, I sort of like how those words fall into place...."

And then there's the other part -- The Ogre -- that says, "Oh man, you are so NOT TOM WAITS it's not even funny. In fact, forget Tom Waits. There are like 13-year old kids writing their first songs who could run cirlces around you...My god, if the staff at The Big Takeover got a hold of this stuff they'd be laughing for hours and drawing lots to see who gets to trash you" Smack, smack, smack...

For me, the difference between my 2 warring sides is that one doesn't care about how anything relates to anything else. This song is it's own little world and at the end of the day, is a world that's fun to be in or a world that shifts your emotional arc, etc.

And the other sits there like an judgemental ogre penning imaginary reviews on the fly.

That point of view of "okay, this song is it's own little world, and lets judge the music and lyrics on the basis of whether they fill it out in the right way" has sort of been my coping strategy when I feel the ogre of self-doubt starting to take over.

Tom Waits has his worlds. We all have our own.

Anyway, hope this helps.

You're definitely not alone!
 
say no to drugs

Please don't do the Jim Morrison thing. Drugs don't make you wise and brilliant, they just make you think you are... and it takes being on drugs for a listener to think you are too.

Okay, off my soapbox now.

I love lyrics. In most cases, the lyrics of a song are the number one factor for my enjoyment, although I think its healthy to let yourself "dumb down" for fun sometimes.

Simple fact #1: you will write the best lyrics when you're unhappy. Sucks, but its true. I'm very happy now, and the well is rather dry these days. But I receommend being honest in your writing. Write about your own life as much as possible, because unless you're also a very gifted method actor, it will be much harder to convey real emotion and passion when telling a ficticious story.

As you write about your own life, think first about how you would describe the situation to a very close friend with whom you would confide your deepest feelings. Don't think about how you can rhyme a word or phrase, but just how you tell the story to someone in conversation. Here's an example from one of my favorite lyricists, Blake Schwartzenbach from a band called Jawbreaker.

"What's the closest you can come to an almost total wreck and still walk away,
All limbs intact?
And when I go, you'll be there crying out, begging me.
I won't hear.
I'll just go fast into this night on broken legs.
A near miss or a close call?
I keep a room at the hospital.
I scratch my accidents into the wall.
I couldn't wait to breathe your breath.
I cut in line,
I bled to death.
I got to you, there was nothing left.
What's the meanest you can be to the one you claim to love
And still smile to your new found friends?
In the same confusing breath,
You pull away and draw me in.
"

I just imagine a guy talking to his friend: "dude, this chick is like a train wreck. I keep getting injured, but I can't leave her alone. Its like I have my own private room at the relationship hospital, carving a noth in the wall everytime she puts me back in there..."

We've all had those conversations, where you make those casual but perfect metaphors to explain how you feel. Just take those and expand them.
 
Miracle-
I'm safe on the drugs thing (13 yrs. sober)

Thanks for the concern
 
As far as I can remember the first years of songwriting I basically used the dictionairy to find cool words and write a dozen on a piece of paper. Then I would see if I could make a text with it.
When I look back on it, the vaguest lyrics are better than the early direct lyrics.
Over time it gets better. The best you can do is to increase your vocabulary with as much alternative words to commonly used words. Reading books or just reading other peoples songtexts helps as well.
However with me nowadays it takes a couple of months maybe half a year before the lyrics are written.
The key lies in the sentence that comes up unconsiously. When you're writing a song and humming a melody, sometimes a line just comes up. I take that line and write it down, think of what it could mean, then over a span of time I build the other lines around it.

after the first couple of bad lyrics, it gets fun. so don't worry. just don't pressure it too much.
 
Don't do drugs?
Well I'd agree with that I don't do 'em myself, just get drunk occasionaly.

However, it does seem that a lot of the great rock/pop performers I most admire DID do drugs during their most creative periods. Some examples include Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jim Morrison, Hendrix, Dave Bowie... it goes on.

It's actualy quite difficult to come up with any great rock performer who has remained 'clean' throughout their career and and produced outstanding work.

It's depressing that most of them DID do drugs in various forms at various stages of their careers. Its even more depressing that when they cleaned up, as most of them did sooner or later their best work was behind them (eg Lennon).

It's very difficult to say to young aspiring writers 'don't do it' when the examples they have been set by our best artists (in rock) may suggest to them that if you want to write like these guys then you have to experience what they experienced, which means drugs etc.

Now then, before you all come back at me in an angry fashion, can I just say I personaly think that drugs get in the way of creativity because of the lifestyle that comes with it, the lethargy, the dependancy the lack of focus, and they screw up your best asset to good writing - YOUR MIND!

Also I DO believe it is possible to be clean and to produce great music. For example, I have read a biography of Springsteen and apparently he has not done the 'drug thing' in a big way in his career. Of course I don't know how true that is, but I really hope it's true. Also Bowie now seems to be clean and just produced a superb album (Heathen) proving that drugs are NOT necessary - so it IS possible.

You don't need drugs, you do need to use your imagination, look after your health, be sharp, be open minded, and above all dream....
 
Glynb:

Glynb:

Yes indeed I've always believed that as with shaman (shamen?) and other ancients, as well as Jim Morrison, that drugs in whatever form have a strong effect on bringing the brain to places it otherwise doesn't go. (yippee)
I don't miss this feeling because of the other super-negative associations it has had, but I have practiced other ways of freeing -of- the -mind over the years to compensate.
And Glynb I will never get angry with you.

thanks for the note
 
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