Write music first or lyrics first?

Do you write the music first or the lyrics first?

  • Music first

    Votes: 154 80.2%

  • Lyrics first

    Votes: 38 19.8%
  • Total voters
    192
I remember Billy Joel saying this during an interview.


"The traditional way to write, is to set poems to music," Joel said, adding that Elton John is a great example of an artist who has mastered that process.
"He writes exactly the opposite of me," Joel said. "I look at him and go: 'How the hell do you do it?'"
For Joel, the process works backwards.
"First, I think of the music," Joel explained, "Then -- if I like the music -- I jam words onto it."
The process may not be pretty, but it has helped him create a repertoire of stellar songs.


I don't know about myself. They seem to come together. Or if I have lyrics I pick something I'm working on that I think will go with the lyrics, or visa-versa. :)
 
Lyrics first

I wonder why Billy Joel would have said that about Elton since Elton had a partner by the name of Bernie Taupin who did the melodies and Elton only did the lyrics. Maybe he didn't know about Bernie at the time.
 
i have a few lyric bits hanging around, and music pieces also, sometimes they go together, sometimes i make a new music and an existing lyric fits, sometimes a new one, sometime i like some words and start building harmony around it. my best tunes were one of each, yes i only have 2 best tunes....so the first one was music and some dummy lyrics and eventually was complete, the other was an existing lyric draft done while thinking rhythmically, then a jam i liked stuck and i paged thru a notebook and found the lyric fit and worked it out from there.

i don't know why, but i've been stuck and just now while writing this, i decided to unstick myself and start simultaneous parts that exist on their own and i can expand or sew them together later, just start doing something; and the lyric can be totally obscure and irrelevant and even arbitrary, obnoxious, lame, abstract or ambiguous.
 
bernisava said:
I wonder why Billy Joel would have said that about Elton since Elton had a partner by the name of Bernie Taupin who did the melodies and Elton only did the lyrics. Maybe he didn't know about Bernie at the time.
Click to expand...

Err.. wrong way round surely :)
 
Sometimes you can hear a really cool phrase or expression and think "I have to use that!" but then I never know where to put it in an actual song. I also think some of the most interesting ideas come from not correctly hearing someone and thinking they said something they didn't, which ends up being words to a song. This is also cool for getting melodiy lines, if you listen to the radio / cd player at very low volumes with songs you are unfamiliar with, I hear things that aren't really there but my mind thinks it heard.

But most of the time it starts as a chord progression, and then putting lyrics on top. After that is done, (most of the time) it's time add other instruments. Only sometimes is something so cool that it needs different instrumentations put on top of it in one sitting. Those are usually tracks that get finished the same nite they get started.

Just some common things I work with.
 
I voted for music first, cause i tend to usually get my lyrical ideas from the rough first vocal i always stick on a new tune or in the moment of inspiration :D , of course sometimes whole song lyrics can flow from your pen (or whatever!), once i had a phrase running through my head when i was counting hamsters or summat at work and rushed off to grab a pen and paper and wrote a whole song in five minutes and never had to change a word of it. :cool:
 
For me it is usually music first, though it can go both ways. Often I'll play something on the guitar and a phrase or melody line follows it, and that's how it happens for me.

But the times when the words come first can be magical. I especially remember coming back from six months in Australia, seeing my old gang, hooking up with my girlfriend, and taking a mountain bike ride with her in the park on a perfect May afternoon. Knowing I was about to get lucky that night, I suddenly heard Frank Zappa in my head singing about this fine lady's tasty nether regions. By the next day an entire song had popped out!
 
I started out writing poetry a long time ago, then set it to music. With more experience, I wrote music first, then added words.

However, I've also had a concept in my head, which began with only a title first, then I wrote words that fit the theme of the title, or music only for the theme.
 
I like to write music and vocal sounds first , and then figure out actual words to fit the vocal sounds. It sounds really stupid when writing this way, singing allong in utter gibberish, but I find that the way the words sound is just as important as what you're singing about.
 
It depends and for me it truly goes hand in hand.

I feel more comfortable when I have a page full of lyrics first. The thoughts can be jumbled or half of it seems to have a lyrical purpose and then a totally different idea may come up halfway through and the lyrics may even take on a whole different meaning or tone. As long as you have thoughts and some sort of lyrical direction on paper - I then feel comfortable to move on to the next part.

I then toy around with guitar lines and get a rough structure of a song musically...but this isn't always the case...see the next paragraph.

I play the guitar line and start reading the lyrics and a melody starts forming depending on the phrasings and where the vowels and consonants start landing. I can then cut and paste the lyrics as I go along and begin to form the idea or theme of the song. Additional lyrics are thrown in here depending on what is missing or to strengthen the message and again, how the "beat" of the wording is matching the music and melody.

Sometimes this beat or melody dictates how the next portion of the song will go or flow (verse to chorus, intro to chorus, to chorus, to verse, to chorus intro, to chorus, to bridge...etc.).

This is the most fun and really the part where when you are in that zone that the song takes on a life of it's own - melodies and lyrics and phrasing and wordings just come flying out of nowhere - and you better have a tape recorder handy when this all starts flowing out of you. ;)
 
both

some great songs came from the band jamming a tune while the singer makes up stuff to go along with it. black sabbath paranoid i think

you can write poetry with rhythm and meter and thats easy to put to music.

i think a variety of approaches leads to a variety of effects. if you want continuity then use the same techniques each time.

i like variety.
 
i may have to change my mind because most of what ive been doing is making beats with bass and drums in fruity loops.

i had a whole bunch of them but i had to reformat and i lost them. they were developing into songs but i didnt have any words for them. just what was runiing around my head while i listened to them and played along on guitar.

ideas mostly but the whole process starts for me now with the drumbeat.
 
It appears as though most people write music first. So let me take this question a step further and ask for those of you who do write music first, do you write a melody line and attach lyrics to the melody or do you play some chords and sing to the chords creating a melody line as you sing? Personally, I write a melody line first and insert lyrics to the melody which, at times, can be mind boggling when what I'm trying to say has too many syllables to fit in the melody.

I'm not trying to generalize here but it seems that most guitar players sing lyrics while strumming chords, where as, piano/keyboard players attach lyrics to prefabricated melody lines. I'm classically trained on piano which I think is why I attach lyrics to melody. Maybe it has nothing to do with the instrument you play and more to do with you training? I don't know.
 
Emotion first, music second, and lyrics last

To create a great piece who can't separate the music from the lyrics. I think about what I'd like to say in a song on an emotional level first.

What's the emotion? Bitterness, love, flirtatiousness? That's the first step is identifying the mind state you want to be in for a song. Once that's done, you can write the music.


And once the music is done, I fill in the blanks with my lyrics.
 
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