• Forget the vocabulary you most readily associate with the hip hop genre. Open your mind to all vocabulary. There is no established protocol of acceptable words in rap. Rap is poetry and poetry is literarily infinite.
• Be patient. If there’s something you want to express that is complex and difficult to realize, work through it. Take it one line at a time and make it happen. Do you want to be the rapper or the fan? The fan waits around for the rapper to articulate what he himself cannot.
• Avoid committing to a phrase or word choice immediately after you write it. While looking for its rhyming counterpart, a better option may emerge. Always be willing to revise your work, both for the sake of discovering which words sound best together and maximizing the originality of your choice of words. I can’t tell you how many times I wrote ‘beautiful’ for lack of a more creative choice, then later replaced it with either a better-sounding or more unique adjective:
Example:
Lay upon my mattress beautiful Catholic actress (rhymes better)
Girl with the beautiful musical face (more original)
It’s all true if it’s according to you, but you should always use a mirror look at your reflection when you think things through (more accurate – self-evaluation was what I really meant when I initially wrote ‘use a mirror’)
• The punch line of a joke is more satisfying when everything leading up to it is funny. The setup of a joke is part of the punch line. In the same way, every word you write is part of the rhyme. Alliteration increases the momentum of the rhyme and makes the words sound like they belong together. Many rappers give you one rhyme for every two bars, as in the classic, “My name is Chris Burns and I’m here to say, I rock the microphone in a major way.” Why waste two bars on one rhyme when you can use alliteration to create a sea of similar sounds?
Example:
Bar 1. thank God I don’t stutter, my words are butter, a plethora of odd
Bar 2. utterances, sentences with a penchant for senselessness,
Bar 3. it’s my sensible nature I’m sensitive and simply a hater,
Bar 4. I tend to degrade that which was meant to be greater.
• Visualize that the set of words in a line you wrote is a city skyline. Each sound is a different-sized building. When you write the next line, try to build an equal skyline:
I like you like like like you like high school
you’re bright &cool like white Nikes & ice cubes
• By no means does a rhyme need to be written linearly. If you have a specific phrase in mind that you feel is the perfect way to end a verse, write it down. Then go back and decide how you can set it up to rhyme. Below, I’ve numbered the order in which I wrote each of these rhyming phrases. Note the contrast between the origin of the content and when it appears within the verse:
1. lower-back tattoo
2. at or too
3. new latitudes
4. bad achoo
The eventual structure:
I resent sentences ending with at or too, bad sneeze is a disease, it’s called ‘bad achoo,’
girls keep getting the same lower-back tattoo, I keep liking them, no, I’m not mad at you, I breathe in and ascend to new latitudes
• The beauty of writing before you record is that you can rhyme retroactively, and that is truly a gift.
Tips on recorded rap:
• Resist the temptation to inform a girl* that she is your muse or source of inspiration. If you’ve written a song for a girl, tell her you want her to hear it and give her a copy. Let your music do the talking. If she doesn’t realize it’s about her, she doesn’t deserve the song, I mean, she doesn’t even know you for gosh sakes.
*feminine gender randomly used
• Don’t release a song to your friends or fans when you know it can be improved with a couple more days’ or weeks’ worth of work. You want nothing more than to share your finished product with others – the praise, the acclaim, the feedback – but it’s always worth making it as good as it can be before you take that step.
• Be aware that listeners generally accept the content of a rapper’s lyrics as his personality. If you can’t beat up the biggest bully in school then don’t say you can in a rap, because you won’t be able to back it up in reality. It’s far more effective to acknowledge that, of course, he is physically stronger, but you’re smart enough to destroy his credibility with your vocalized, poetic thoughts.
• Part of the reason the rap genre is considered so ‘real,’ aside from its rough inner-city origins, is because rappers usually express themselves in a way that is stripped of these literary devices (such as metaphor and symbolism) so frequently found in rock & roll lyrics. The result: as listeners we know a lot more about Eminem’s family life than we do of U2’s Bono. Rap lyrics are traditionally very personal. Protect yourself – spitting 16 bars about your significant other, your parents or your best friend is an excellent way to increase the vulnerability of those relationships.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
Procedures to be Considered when Composing Hip-Hop Lyrics
Ever wanted to write Hip-Hop lyrics? Ever wondered what the formula was to writing a good Hip-Hop song? Are you the one listening and wondering, “Why do they speak that way in their songs”? Well in these following few steps you, yes you, will learn how to write hip hop lyrics.
This document on writing rhymes and lyrics is only a foundation in becoming a good emcee or lyricist. Most of the things you say in your songs and the way you constitute yourself is the major factor to your success. This guide will show you many ways to write a rhyme and lead you through techniques which you, may or may not, want to use.
Terms that you'll encounter and what I'm going to cover:
1. Rhyme structure - How a verse's written. Such as amount of bars and location of rhyming words.
2. Simile - A comparison using the word "like" or "as".
3. Metaphor - A comparison without using the word "like" or "as".
4. Wordplays - A pun or words that have double meaning.
5. Multi-syllables and Multi - Rhyming using words or combination of words that contain more then one syllable.
6. Punch-line – Rhymes used for insulting people
7. Alliteration - Rhymes or verse that contain words that start with the same first letter.
Let's begin by pointing out the differences between a "battle verse" and a "non-battle verse". A "battle verse" is just that, a verse that's written to battle another Hip-Hop lyricists or M.C. These types of verses usually contain heavy usage of Punch-lines, Word-play, and Multi-syllable styles. Along with it a small usage of Similes and Metaphors, a "battle verse" is a verse that belittles your opponents. One mistake that most lyricists make in battle verse is that they tend to talk about themselves. Your focus is supposed to be mainly on your opponents. You're not supposed to talk about yourself; rather you should be degrading your opponents.
A "NON-battle" verse is any verses that’s written as topical, or even a freestyle about a certain thing or incidents. This could include almost everything. What make it different from a "battle verse" is that rarely does it have any punch-lines. In this particular verse, the usage of Simile and Metaphor is heavy. Included with it are light usages of multi-syllable, Wordplay, and Alliterations. In this type of verse, it's acceptable to talk about yourself. Though, it's not necessary.
Subject matter of your lyrics does not matter when writing or making a song, using a Hip-Hop lyric format. The focus is on how you creatively write, the grammar you use and the originality of your subject. The first component you should focus on, in written lyrics is Rhyme Structure.
1. Rhyme Structure- keeping your lyric sentences the close to the same length for easy reading, for instance:
“My rhymes of philosophy, brings wisdoms of Socrates.//”
“Avoiding hypocrisy, trying to defeat worldly monopolies.//”
Note: The “//” is what I used to stop a verse or complete thought in a rhyme, you may use something different.
This also helps for easy rhyme placement that makes it easier to perform in a song or a battle.
2. Simile- Being able to use similes in your rhymes helps the entertaining value and also can raise the level understanding that your message relays to its audience. Basically using “like” or “as” helps give meaning to what you say and amplifies what people get from your thoughts. Simile usage:
“You must be joking like comedians.//”
“I got it hot like customers ordering peppers.//”
3. Metaphor- Another form of comparison emitting the words “like” or “as”. Creativity is your main goal when using metaphors. It captures your audience and may delight them with your creative intelligence.
Metaphorical usage:
“My rhymes are so sharp, they cut through diamonds.//”
“The streets are ringing so much, the telephones are getting jealous.//”
4. Wordplay- The part of lyricism that, distinctly, separates it from all other forms of lyrics in any other music genre. Commonly used in battles and used in songs, Wordplay is constructing lyrics using puns. Puns are words or a word that have a double meaning, used to conjoint two different concepts together, making sense out of both. In its simplest, it’s playing with words. Wordplay usage:
“You must be facing forward, the way your fronting.//”
-That was a battle rhyme. It may say you’re facing forward, the direction you stand when you’re in front or fronting. But the second and true meaning is using the first part to pun the second part, because fronting is also slang for lying or bluffing. Its double meaning is the Word-Play.-
“In this battle, I know you’re raw, but I like to eat this meat uncooked.//”
-That was another battle rhyme that also uses slang (Keep in mind that you don’t have to use slang when using Wordplay.). Its first meaning is to call say that the opponent is like raw meat. The second and Wordplay meaning is to say that his opponent is “raw” (slang for good), but he will still eat him uncooked, as in defeat him easily even though he is “raw”. -
5. Multi and Multi-syllable rhyming- First multi rhymes are rhymes using more than one word at the end of the verse. Many people use it to show skill or to use as a means to increase speed of performing with ease. Multi-syllable rhymes are rhymes that consist of using the syllables in the last word of the previous or upcoming verse. Multi rhymes:
“Its college-time, I go and arrive to receive knowledge-prime.//”
“The cat-attacks, I need to get him off me with bat-smacks.//”
Multi-syllable rhymes:
“My rhymes must be Gobstoppers by Willy Wonka, the way their everlasting.//”
“The lyrical skills imitate tempests, when I rhyme its like weather-blasting.//”
-The words eh-ver-last-ing (everlasting) and weh-ther-blast-ing (weather-blasting) are in a direct synchronous rhyming pattern. That is what’s meant by Multi-syllable rhyming.-
6. Punch-line- Mostly used in battles to insult an opponent but can be used in a song if you want to insult someone.
Punch-lines:
“Your rhymes are so broke homeless people give you money.//”
“This guy going down in a hurry, he reminds me of today’s stock market.//”
7. Alliteration- Using the first letter of the first word of the rhyme throughout the complete rhyme. Although rarely used, they are very nice to use at the beginning of a song or in a battle. Alliteration:
“Simplistic styles rate your statistics as sporadically spiraling in stupidity.//”
These foundational techniques and usages are only the beginning when writing Hip-Hop lyrics. The rest is all up to the effort you put in rhyming and originality. Using these guidelines will get you recognition as a skilled lyricist that knows the basics. If there are any questions or comments you can e-mail me at carnalkay@gmail.com.
__________________
I aint rhyme in a minute but yall aint catch up...
and that aint blood on ya vest .. thats ketchup!
-fugees
This document on writing rhymes and lyrics is only a foundation in becoming a good emcee or lyricist. Most of the things you say in your songs and the way you constitute yourself is the major factor to your success. This guide will show you many ways to write a rhyme and lead you through techniques which you, may or may not, want to use.
Terms that you'll encounter and what I'm going to cover:
1. Rhyme structure - How a verse's written. Such as amount of bars and location of rhyming words.
2. Simile - A comparison using the word "like" or "as".
3. Metaphor - A comparison without using the word "like" or "as".
4. Wordplays - A pun or words that have double meaning.
5. Multi-syllables and Multi - Rhyming using words or combination of words that contain more then one syllable.
6. Punch-line – Rhymes used for insulting people
7. Alliteration - Rhymes or verse that contain words that start with the same first letter.
Let's begin by pointing out the differences between a "battle verse" and a "non-battle verse". A "battle verse" is just that, a verse that's written to battle another Hip-Hop lyricists or M.C. These types of verses usually contain heavy usage of Punch-lines, Word-play, and Multi-syllable styles. Along with it a small usage of Similes and Metaphors, a "battle verse" is a verse that belittles your opponents. One mistake that most lyricists make in battle verse is that they tend to talk about themselves. Your focus is supposed to be mainly on your opponents. You're not supposed to talk about yourself; rather you should be degrading your opponents.
A "NON-battle" verse is any verses that’s written as topical, or even a freestyle about a certain thing or incidents. This could include almost everything. What make it different from a "battle verse" is that rarely does it have any punch-lines. In this particular verse, the usage of Simile and Metaphor is heavy. Included with it are light usages of multi-syllable, Wordplay, and Alliterations. In this type of verse, it's acceptable to talk about yourself. Though, it's not necessary.
Subject matter of your lyrics does not matter when writing or making a song, using a Hip-Hop lyric format. The focus is on how you creatively write, the grammar you use and the originality of your subject. The first component you should focus on, in written lyrics is Rhyme Structure.
1. Rhyme Structure- keeping your lyric sentences the close to the same length for easy reading, for instance:
“My rhymes of philosophy, brings wisdoms of Socrates.//”
“Avoiding hypocrisy, trying to defeat worldly monopolies.//”
Note: The “//” is what I used to stop a verse or complete thought in a rhyme, you may use something different.
This also helps for easy rhyme placement that makes it easier to perform in a song or a battle.
2. Simile- Being able to use similes in your rhymes helps the entertaining value and also can raise the level understanding that your message relays to its audience. Basically using “like” or “as” helps give meaning to what you say and amplifies what people get from your thoughts. Simile usage:
“You must be joking like comedians.//”
“I got it hot like customers ordering peppers.//”
3. Metaphor- Another form of comparison emitting the words “like” or “as”. Creativity is your main goal when using metaphors. It captures your audience and may delight them with your creative intelligence.
Metaphorical usage:
“My rhymes are so sharp, they cut through diamonds.//”
“The streets are ringing so much, the telephones are getting jealous.//”
4. Wordplay- The part of lyricism that, distinctly, separates it from all other forms of lyrics in any other music genre. Commonly used in battles and used in songs, Wordplay is constructing lyrics using puns. Puns are words or a word that have a double meaning, used to conjoint two different concepts together, making sense out of both. In its simplest, it’s playing with words. Wordplay usage:
“You must be facing forward, the way your fronting.//”
-That was a battle rhyme. It may say you’re facing forward, the direction you stand when you’re in front or fronting. But the second and true meaning is using the first part to pun the second part, because fronting is also slang for lying or bluffing. Its double meaning is the Word-Play.-
“In this battle, I know you’re raw, but I like to eat this meat uncooked.//”
-That was another battle rhyme that also uses slang (Keep in mind that you don’t have to use slang when using Wordplay.). Its first meaning is to call say that the opponent is like raw meat. The second and Wordplay meaning is to say that his opponent is “raw” (slang for good), but he will still eat him uncooked, as in defeat him easily even though he is “raw”. -
5. Multi and Multi-syllable rhyming- First multi rhymes are rhymes using more than one word at the end of the verse. Many people use it to show skill or to use as a means to increase speed of performing with ease. Multi-syllable rhymes are rhymes that consist of using the syllables in the last word of the previous or upcoming verse. Multi rhymes:
“Its college-time, I go and arrive to receive knowledge-prime.//”
“The cat-attacks, I need to get him off me with bat-smacks.//”
Multi-syllable rhymes:
“My rhymes must be Gobstoppers by Willy Wonka, the way their everlasting.//”
“The lyrical skills imitate tempests, when I rhyme its like weather-blasting.//”
-The words eh-ver-last-ing (everlasting) and weh-ther-blast-ing (weather-blasting) are in a direct synchronous rhyming pattern. That is what’s meant by Multi-syllable rhyming.-
6. Punch-line- Mostly used in battles to insult an opponent but can be used in a song if you want to insult someone.
Punch-lines:
“Your rhymes are so broke homeless people give you money.//”
“This guy going down in a hurry, he reminds me of today’s stock market.//”
7. Alliteration- Using the first letter of the first word of the rhyme throughout the complete rhyme. Although rarely used, they are very nice to use at the beginning of a song or in a battle. Alliteration:
“Simplistic styles rate your statistics as sporadically spiraling in stupidity.//”
These foundational techniques and usages are only the beginning when writing Hip-Hop lyrics. The rest is all up to the effort you put in rhyming and originality. Using these guidelines will get you recognition as a skilled lyricist that knows the basics. If there are any questions or comments you can e-mail me at carnalkay@gmail.com.
__________________
I aint rhyme in a minute but yall aint catch up...
and that aint blood on ya vest .. thats ketchup!
-fugees
Sunday, August 17, 2008
How to Study a Lyric's Form
Step1Begin with the most common form in popular music, the "ternary song form." We think of this as A A B A. (Let's use Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" as an example.)
Step2Look at the initial musical statement, A. This is usually eight measures (bars) long. (This ends after the first "Anything goes.")
Step3Examine the second A. It's an exact, eight-measure repeat of the music in the first A, but the lyric continues to move along. (This brings us to 16 measures, to the end of the second "Anything goes.")
Step4Note that this second A is critical in two ways: the listener's ear perceives the melodic material better after hearing it twice, and the lyricist retains the rhythm of the first A so that the musical idea is not disturbed.
Step5Go on to B, the "bridge," an 8-measure departure from the musical material of the A section and its repeat. (We've now used up 24 bars, through "silly gigolos.") Listen to how the composer or lyricist departs from the rhythmic and melodic material used in the A sections to draw the listener's ear away from familiar ground and establish a fresh idea.
Step6Finish with A in the final eight-measure section. This is a return home to the familiarity of the beginning melody and rhythm - leaving the wilderness of the bridge. (This brings us past the third and final "Anything goes.")
Step7Note how this A A B A form seems deceptively simple. In fact, it can be quite intriguing in the hands of a master composer-lyricist like Cole Porter.
Step8Study another common, basic form - A B A C. Analyze "Gigi," with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. "Gigi" is written in this form.
Step9Make an intensive study of other lyricists and other styles. Although creating a song is a very personal endeavor, you will increase the colors on your own palette and foster the growth of your own versatility by doing so
Step2Look at the initial musical statement, A. This is usually eight measures (bars) long. (This ends after the first "Anything goes.")
Step3Examine the second A. It's an exact, eight-measure repeat of the music in the first A, but the lyric continues to move along. (This brings us to 16 measures, to the end of the second "Anything goes.")
Step4Note that this second A is critical in two ways: the listener's ear perceives the melodic material better after hearing it twice, and the lyricist retains the rhythm of the first A so that the musical idea is not disturbed.
Step5Go on to B, the "bridge," an 8-measure departure from the musical material of the A section and its repeat. (We've now used up 24 bars, through "silly gigolos.") Listen to how the composer or lyricist departs from the rhythmic and melodic material used in the A sections to draw the listener's ear away from familiar ground and establish a fresh idea.
Step6Finish with A in the final eight-measure section. This is a return home to the familiarity of the beginning melody and rhythm - leaving the wilderness of the bridge. (This brings us past the third and final "Anything goes.")
Step7Note how this A A B A form seems deceptively simple. In fact, it can be quite intriguing in the hands of a master composer-lyricist like Cole Porter.
Step8Study another common, basic form - A B A C. Analyze "Gigi," with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. "Gigi" is written in this form.
Step9Make an intensive study of other lyricists and other styles. Although creating a song is a very personal endeavor, you will increase the colors on your own palette and foster the growth of your own versatility by doing so
Saturday, August 16, 2008
How to Compose a Lyric
Step1Select a topic - love or a humorous or novelty theme like "Never Hit Your Grandma With a Shovel" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," which are other exceptions.
Step2Select your approach - compose your lyric and melody simultaneously; write the lyric, then find a melody to fit; or fit your lyric to a melody previously written.
Step3Write both the lyric and the melody yourself if you possess the musical skills. This may be the most advantageous route. Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim and Irving Berlin, for example, worked more productively alone.
Step4Collaborate with a partner if you work best this way. Gilbert and Sullivan, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe are collaborations made in heaven. Choose wisely - the two key requirements are creativity and personal drive.
Step5Select a form. A working knowledge of form and structure is an absolute necessity for composers, arrangers, orchestrators and lyricists. (See "How to Study a Lyric's Form," under Related eHows.)
Step6Work out your rhyme scheme. The most common practice is to rhyme the last word of each section, but the better lyricist will display his or her skill with a generous helping of interior rhymes as well.
Step7Write. If you wait around for divine inspiration to drop the completed product in your lap, it's doubtful you'll ever write a note. Put something on paper. Word by word, note by note, change by change, your ideas will gradually take shape.
Step8Be disciplined in your work habits. In the musical comedy "No Strings," Broadway composer Richard Rodgers penned this phrase: "The sweetest sounds I've ever heard are still inside my head." Without a solid, sustained effort to get it on the page, your "sweetest sounds" cannot become a reality. Best wishes and welcome to the club!
Step2Select your approach - compose your lyric and melody simultaneously; write the lyric, then find a melody to fit; or fit your lyric to a melody previously written.
Step3Write both the lyric and the melody yourself if you possess the musical skills. This may be the most advantageous route. Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim and Irving Berlin, for example, worked more productively alone.
Step4Collaborate with a partner if you work best this way. Gilbert and Sullivan, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe are collaborations made in heaven. Choose wisely - the two key requirements are creativity and personal drive.
Step5Select a form. A working knowledge of form and structure is an absolute necessity for composers, arrangers, orchestrators and lyricists. (See "How to Study a Lyric's Form," under Related eHows.)
Step6Work out your rhyme scheme. The most common practice is to rhyme the last word of each section, but the better lyricist will display his or her skill with a generous helping of interior rhymes as well.
Step7Write. If you wait around for divine inspiration to drop the completed product in your lap, it's doubtful you'll ever write a note. Put something on paper. Word by word, note by note, change by change, your ideas will gradually take shape.
Step8Be disciplined in your work habits. In the musical comedy "No Strings," Broadway composer Richard Rodgers penned this phrase: "The sweetest sounds I've ever heard are still inside my head." Without a solid, sustained effort to get it on the page, your "sweetest sounds" cannot become a reality. Best wishes and welcome to the club!
How to Write a Song
Things You’ll Need:
Musical instrument
Step1Get inspired. This is hard to do consciously, but it's how every great song gets started. Start with a catchy or meaningful lyric that you can't get out of your head, a haunting emotion, or a melodic hook that you can't stop whistling. Get something pure and inspired to begin working with.
Step2Play with your idea. If you play an instrument, try jamming around the melody or finding a chord progression that fits the lyric. If you have a beat or a groove in mind, have someone else play it over and over in the background while you riff over it. Explore the possibilities in a free-form fashion until you start to feel something that works.
Step3Record your initial progress. Great ideas are fleeting, so when you have something that you can keep, even if it is just a couple seconds long, either write it down or get it on tape. You can even call your voicemail and record it. Don't let it slip away from you!
Step4Expand upon what you have. Start developing your idea. If it is a chorus or a verse, think of an intro to lead into it. If it is a lyric or a thought, continue from that thought. Think about what was working during a jam or improvisation and try to recreate it.
Step5Keep generating ideas. Go back to Step 1 and start thinking of lyrics on the same theme, riffs or melodies in the same key. Don't worry about where these new parts will fit yet.
Step6Put it all together. Once you have all the essential parts of a song—a beat, a chord progression, a melody, lyrics (verses, refrain)—start putting them together.
Step7Play it through. Play, sing or record all the parts in sequence. Take notice of rough parts or awkward transitions.
Step8Put on the finishing touches. Smooth out any problem areas in the song, add vocal harmonies or extra flourishes.
Musical instrument
Step1Get inspired. This is hard to do consciously, but it's how every great song gets started. Start with a catchy or meaningful lyric that you can't get out of your head, a haunting emotion, or a melodic hook that you can't stop whistling. Get something pure and inspired to begin working with.
Step2Play with your idea. If you play an instrument, try jamming around the melody or finding a chord progression that fits the lyric. If you have a beat or a groove in mind, have someone else play it over and over in the background while you riff over it. Explore the possibilities in a free-form fashion until you start to feel something that works.
Step3Record your initial progress. Great ideas are fleeting, so when you have something that you can keep, even if it is just a couple seconds long, either write it down or get it on tape. You can even call your voicemail and record it. Don't let it slip away from you!
Step4Expand upon what you have. Start developing your idea. If it is a chorus or a verse, think of an intro to lead into it. If it is a lyric or a thought, continue from that thought. Think about what was working during a jam or improvisation and try to recreate it.
Step5Keep generating ideas. Go back to Step 1 and start thinking of lyrics on the same theme, riffs or melodies in the same key. Don't worry about where these new parts will fit yet.
Step6Put it all together. Once you have all the essential parts of a song—a beat, a chord progression, a melody, lyrics (verses, refrain)—start putting them together.
Step7Play it through. Play, sing or record all the parts in sequence. Take notice of rough parts or awkward transitions.
Step8Put on the finishing touches. Smooth out any problem areas in the song, add vocal harmonies or extra flourishes.
How to Improve Your Songwriting Skills
Step1Compose something every day. It doesn't need to be extravagant or even complete.
Step2Put your first thoughts down on paper, tape, disc or whatever. Not everything you do will be good, but the exercise will yield some bits and pieces that you can later turn into something special.
Step3Listen to music every day. Listen carefully and then apply what you learn to your own work.
Step4Imitate other composers by writing in their style. Imitation is critical to improving your composition skills.
Step5Pick artists you admire, and compose in their style. To imitate without directly copying is harder than it sounds.
Step6Try other styles and forms of composition that you usually ignore. Just because you don't like or aren't comfortable in a particular musical genre doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a whirl.
Step7Choose a simple tune like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and try to write multiple versions in various styles like hip-hop, jazz, orchestral, New Age and so on. Without having to worry about the melody, you're free to experiment with structure, chords, countermelodies and so forth.
Step8Record and play your pieces for friends and associates and ask for criticism. Find someone whose opinion you trust, and play your music all the way through. Then ask open-ended, leading questions.
Step9Play the track again and analyze it in detail. Once you get opinions and advice, go back to the drawing board and put all you've learned to work.
Step10Evaluate your past work. Don't let your old music fade away. Dust it off and give it a critical listen. When you let music sit for some time, the warts really stick out. Use this distance from your work to improve your past, present and future music.
Step2Put your first thoughts down on paper, tape, disc or whatever. Not everything you do will be good, but the exercise will yield some bits and pieces that you can later turn into something special.
Step3Listen to music every day. Listen carefully and then apply what you learn to your own work.
Step4Imitate other composers by writing in their style. Imitation is critical to improving your composition skills.
Step5Pick artists you admire, and compose in their style. To imitate without directly copying is harder than it sounds.
Step6Try other styles and forms of composition that you usually ignore. Just because you don't like or aren't comfortable in a particular musical genre doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a whirl.
Step7Choose a simple tune like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" and try to write multiple versions in various styles like hip-hop, jazz, orchestral, New Age and so on. Without having to worry about the melody, you're free to experiment with structure, chords, countermelodies and so forth.
Step8Record and play your pieces for friends and associates and ask for criticism. Find someone whose opinion you trust, and play your music all the way through. Then ask open-ended, leading questions.
Step9Play the track again and analyze it in detail. Once you get opinions and advice, go back to the drawing board and put all you've learned to work.
Step10Evaluate your past work. Don't let your old music fade away. Dust it off and give it a critical listen. When you let music sit for some time, the warts really stick out. Use this distance from your work to improve your past, present and future music.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Tips on writing rhymes
• Forget the vocabulary you most readily associate with the hip hop genre. Open your mind to all vocabulary. There is no established protocol of acceptable words in rap. Rap is poetry and poetry is literarily infinite.
• Be patient. If there’s something you want to express that is complex and difficult to realize, work through it. Take it one line at a time and make it happen. Do you want to be the rapper or the fan? The fan waits around for the rapper to articulate what he himself cannot.
• Avoid committing to a phrase or word choice immediately after you write it. While looking for its rhyming counterpart, a better option may emerge. Always be willing to revise your work, both for the sake of discovering which words sound best together and maximizing the originality of your choice of words. I can’t tell you how many times I wrote ‘beautiful’ for lack of a more creative choice, then later replaced it with either a better-sounding or more unique adjective:
Example:
Lay upon my mattress beautiful Catholic actress (rhymes better)
Girl with the beautiful musical face (more original)
It’s all true if it’s according to you, but you should always use a mirror look at your reflection when you think things through (more accurate – self-evaluation was what I really meant when I initially wrote ‘use a mirror’)
• The punch line of a joke is more satisfying when everything leading up to it is funny. The setup of a joke is part of the punch line. In the same way, every word you write is part of the rhyme. Alliteration increases the momentum of the rhyme and makes the words sound like they belong together. Many rappers give you one rhyme for every two bars, as in the classic, “My name is Chris Burns and I’m here to say, I rock the microphone in a major way.” Why waste two bars on one rhyme when you can use alliteration to create a sea of similar sounds?
Example:
Bar 1. thank God I don’t stutter, my words are butter, a plethora of odd
Bar 2. utterances, sentences with a penchant for senselessness,
Bar 3. it’s my sensible nature I’m sensitive and simply a hater,
Bar 4. I tend to degrade that which was meant to be greater.
• Visualize that the set of words in a line you wrote is a city skyline. Each sound is a different-sized building. When you write the next line, try to build an equal skyline:
I like you like like like you like high school
you’re bright &cool like white Nikes & ice cubes
• By no means does a rhyme need to be written linearly. If you have a specific phrase in mind that you feel is the perfect way to end a verse, write it down. Then go back and decide how you can set it up to rhyme. Below, I’ve numbered the order in which I wrote each of these rhyming phrases. Note the contrast between the origin of the content and when it appears within the verse:
1. lower-back tattoo
2. at or too
3. new latitudes
4. bad achoo
The eventual structure:
I resent sentences ending with at or too, bad sneeze is a disease, it’s called ‘bad achoo,’
girls keep getting the same lower-back tattoo, I keep liking them, no, I’m not mad at you, I breathe in and ascend to new latitudes
• The beauty of writing before you record is that you can rhyme retroactively, and that is truly a gift.
Tips on recorded rap:
• Resist the temptation to inform a girl* that she is your muse or source of inspiration. If you’ve written a song for a girl, tell her you want her to hear it and give her a copy. Let your music do the talking. If she doesn’t realize it’s about her, she doesn’t deserve the song, I mean, she doesn’t even know you for gosh sakes.
*feminine gender randomly used
• Don’t release a song to your friends or fans when you know it can be improved with a couple more days’ or weeks’ worth of work. You want nothing more than to share your finished product with others – the praise, the acclaim, the feedback – but it’s always worth making it as good as it can be before you take that step.
• Be aware that listeners generally accept the content of a rapper’s lyrics as his personality. If you can’t beat up the biggest bully in school then don’t say you can in a rap, because you won’t be able to back it up in reality. It’s far more effective to acknowledge that, of course, he is physically stronger, but you’re smart enough to destroy his credibility with your vocalized, poetic thoughts.
• Part of the reason the rap genre is considered so ‘real,’ aside from its rough inner-city origins, is because rappers usually express themselves in a way that is stripped of these literary devices (such as metaphor and symbolism) so frequently found in rock & roll lyrics. The result: as listeners we know a lot more about Eminem’s family life than we do of U2’s Bono. Rap lyrics are traditionally very personal. Protect yourself – spitting 16 bars about your significant other, your parents or your best friend is an excellent way to increase the vulnerability of those relationships.
• Be patient. If there’s something you want to express that is complex and difficult to realize, work through it. Take it one line at a time and make it happen. Do you want to be the rapper or the fan? The fan waits around for the rapper to articulate what he himself cannot.
• Avoid committing to a phrase or word choice immediately after you write it. While looking for its rhyming counterpart, a better option may emerge. Always be willing to revise your work, both for the sake of discovering which words sound best together and maximizing the originality of your choice of words. I can’t tell you how many times I wrote ‘beautiful’ for lack of a more creative choice, then later replaced it with either a better-sounding or more unique adjective:
Example:
Lay upon my mattress beautiful Catholic actress (rhymes better)
Girl with the beautiful musical face (more original)
It’s all true if it’s according to you, but you should always use a mirror look at your reflection when you think things through (more accurate – self-evaluation was what I really meant when I initially wrote ‘use a mirror’)
• The punch line of a joke is more satisfying when everything leading up to it is funny. The setup of a joke is part of the punch line. In the same way, every word you write is part of the rhyme. Alliteration increases the momentum of the rhyme and makes the words sound like they belong together. Many rappers give you one rhyme for every two bars, as in the classic, “My name is Chris Burns and I’m here to say, I rock the microphone in a major way.” Why waste two bars on one rhyme when you can use alliteration to create a sea of similar sounds?
Example:
Bar 1. thank God I don’t stutter, my words are butter, a plethora of odd
Bar 2. utterances, sentences with a penchant for senselessness,
Bar 3. it’s my sensible nature I’m sensitive and simply a hater,
Bar 4. I tend to degrade that which was meant to be greater.
• Visualize that the set of words in a line you wrote is a city skyline. Each sound is a different-sized building. When you write the next line, try to build an equal skyline:
I like you like like like you like high school
you’re bright &cool like white Nikes & ice cubes
• By no means does a rhyme need to be written linearly. If you have a specific phrase in mind that you feel is the perfect way to end a verse, write it down. Then go back and decide how you can set it up to rhyme. Below, I’ve numbered the order in which I wrote each of these rhyming phrases. Note the contrast between the origin of the content and when it appears within the verse:
1. lower-back tattoo
2. at or too
3. new latitudes
4. bad achoo
The eventual structure:
I resent sentences ending with at or too, bad sneeze is a disease, it’s called ‘bad achoo,’
girls keep getting the same lower-back tattoo, I keep liking them, no, I’m not mad at you, I breathe in and ascend to new latitudes
• The beauty of writing before you record is that you can rhyme retroactively, and that is truly a gift.
Tips on recorded rap:
• Resist the temptation to inform a girl* that she is your muse or source of inspiration. If you’ve written a song for a girl, tell her you want her to hear it and give her a copy. Let your music do the talking. If she doesn’t realize it’s about her, she doesn’t deserve the song, I mean, she doesn’t even know you for gosh sakes.
*feminine gender randomly used
• Don’t release a song to your friends or fans when you know it can be improved with a couple more days’ or weeks’ worth of work. You want nothing more than to share your finished product with others – the praise, the acclaim, the feedback – but it’s always worth making it as good as it can be before you take that step.
• Be aware that listeners generally accept the content of a rapper’s lyrics as his personality. If you can’t beat up the biggest bully in school then don’t say you can in a rap, because you won’t be able to back it up in reality. It’s far more effective to acknowledge that, of course, he is physically stronger, but you’re smart enough to destroy his credibility with your vocalized, poetic thoughts.
• Part of the reason the rap genre is considered so ‘real,’ aside from its rough inner-city origins, is because rappers usually express themselves in a way that is stripped of these literary devices (such as metaphor and symbolism) so frequently found in rock & roll lyrics. The result: as listeners we know a lot more about Eminem’s family life than we do of U2’s Bono. Rap lyrics are traditionally very personal. Protect yourself – spitting 16 bars about your significant other, your parents or your best friend is an excellent way to increase the vulnerability of those relationships.
Adding rythm to your lyrics.
People often ask me when we will start to discuss putting words to music. I always answered them it would come in later lessons and that was true, but in fact in all of the lessons we were already busy with it. Writing lyrics is part of writing music. Try to put a short story to music and you will find out it's impossible. Try to put a poem to music and you will be surprised how easy it will be. How is that possible?? When you start to write lyrics for a song and you don't have any music for it yet you are in fact doing nothing more or less than writing a poem. Most rules that apply to poems also apply to lyrics. There are certain similarities:
- Most poems and lyrics use rhyme
- You will always find a certain rhythm in poems as well as lyrics
This lesson I will try to make you see that writing lyrics is in fact composing music or at least part of it. I will do so by discussing the influence of rhythm on a song. In the upcoming lessons we will discuss the use of rhyme and style in your lyrics.
These elements of songwriting have been mentioned earlier in the first lesson but this month we will dive deeper into it.
So put on your bathing-suit and lets dive!!!
Rhythm
In my opinion the most important element of a song is the rhythm. If the rhythm isn't right, the song is nothing more than garbage. Rhythm is the first sort of music ever produced by human beings. Long before Jimi Hendrix made his guitar screem and howl like a haunted ghost the drums were echoing around the world. Rhythm can be found in many things: ever had the strange experience you heard a song in a running engine? That rhythmic humming sound can stay vivid in your head like the latest hit-song you heard on the radio.So there must be something about rhythm that is so strong it can almost wash your brain. What would that be? It's obvious not it's melody because it's simply not there. And certainly not it's changing of patterns. Almost everybody knows a song with too many changing rhythmic patterns won't work. So it must be that repetetive, hypnotic pattern that is present in almost every rhythm. Listen to a reggea-song: the first thing you encounter is the rhythm, bringing you in an extatic mood. Listen to a heavy metal-song: the hectic rhythm is THE element that brings metal-worshippers to extacy and metal-haters to madness.
So rhythm is a very powerful thing in music. But not only in the musical part of a song. Rhythm plays a very important role in lyrics too!
Adding rhythm to your lyrics
Most songwriters struggle with their lyrics. Most songwriters also struggle with their music. What a horrible job.... But let's discuss the struggle for good, rhythmic lyrics!How do you write lyrics that fit into a song??? The most important thing is that the lyrics should go along with the music without sounding out of pace, or even worse: hasty to keep up with the music. The trick to accomplish this is adding rhythm to the lyrics. This brings us to an important issue of writing songs: which should I write first, the lyrics or the music?
The answer is simple: there is no answer to this question. Some like to write the music first, others like to write the lyrics first. It really doesn't matter much and you should decide for yourself what's best. But keep in mind the following remarks:
- If you write the music first, keep the music initially simple
- It's much easier to write lyrics on a simple theme. You won't get distracted by all those freaky breaks so you can concentrate more on the lyrics and the interaction between music and lyrics.
- If you write the lyrics first, concentrate on one part at the time
- Don't try to write the whole song at once; try to work out one verse or chorus first. Try to make this sound rhythmic before you proceed with different parts.
First the music?
Writing lyrics on an existing musical piece can be very hard. There is already a rhythmic pattern so the lyrics should be adjusted to that pattern. Unless the music is very basic it's very hard to find the right words to fit the rhythm. So try to make a simple, basic version of your new song and make a recording of it. Then learn that part by heart as much as possible. Try to hum along with the music to find the pattern. After that, you should be able to hear the rhythmic pattern of the words almost automatically.Or first the lyrics...
If you write the lyrics first, you have much more freedom to write what you want. But you must avoid the risk of writing too much and loosing the rhythm. You could easily, struck by one of those delightful moments of inspiration, end up with one large piece of text, with no obvious distinction between verses and chorus. If that happens, you must rewrite it to divide the song in workable parts. That is, parts which you can write music on.So it's better to write piece by piece, beginning with the chorus or a verse. That way, you can build that piece carefully, considering that important rhythm-pattern. Of course, there's nothing wrong with writing down your thoughts quick and without thinking too much about it, but for beginning songwriters that method often proofs to be too much when it comes to rhythm.
Working piece by piece makes the job much easier because when you have finished one verse you have an example for the other verses you are going to write. That first verse can be used as a reference for the other verses when it comes to the rhythmic patterns. Think of the various verses as some sort of mirrors of each other. "Mirroring" the rhythmic pattern of the verses makes the song sound much more sturdy and consequent. That way the listeners will remember the song easier.
Building rhythmic patterns in a line
As stated before, it can be very convenient for both the composer and the listener to use the same rhythmic pattern throughout a song. Of course the chorus could use another pattern but that's why it's a chorus. But how do you build all those rhythmic patterns? After all, a songtext usually has many lines so keeping up a certain pattern may sound easier than it is. Here are some tips on how to achieve those patterns.As you could expect there are as many different patterns as there are songs... You can use or build whatever pattern you like. The only hard rules that apply are that the pattern must be rhythmic in a logic way and that it must go along with the music. I will discuss some sorts of patterns to show you some possibilities. There are three kinds of patterns that can be considered the main patterns. Most other patterns are derived from one of these. These are:
I will discuss these kinds of patterns using examples from some songs of mine.
The simple, regular rhythmic pattern
This pattern is a very basic one. Advantage of this is that it's rather easy to use. But the big disadvantage of this one is that your lyrics may become quite boring and predictable when you misuse this pattern-form. This pattern can be described as words written in a very steady, regular rhythmic pulse. Rap-artists really love this pattern and use it a lot. If used correctly it can achieve a very hypnotic or hectic effect. It can make your lyrics sound like a machine-gun! Therefor, this pattern is used most commonly for uptempo songs and/or lyrics, like rap. But it can also be used for less fast songs.Let's take a look at "Talent Scouts Watch Out!". It's a song I wrote in 1991 for The Stag. It was released on the cassette "Reset", which can be ordered using the form, but this recording was the original demo I recorded myself using my 4-track cassette-recorder. It was written as a comment on all those bands playing mixtures of rap and rock and winning all contests. At some points in the song the lyrics have a very regular pattern, making it sound like a MG45, especially in the chorus. The regular pattern is used to fill up the spaces that exist in the music: each verse is kind of a question/answer-play between music and lyrics. Listen to this excerpt of a verse of Talent Scouts Watch Out! (80kb, 10 secs.) and notice that the lyrics fall in the gaps left by the music. Because the lyrics are so regular, those parts of the verse sound very tight.
The chorus goes even beyond that! It's a school-example of music and lyrics going along in the same rhythmic pattern: listen to the rhythm-section accompaning the vocals in the chorus of Talent Scouts... (142kb, 18 secs.) and I guess you'll know what I mean!
The regular, but broken rhythmic pattern
As I said before, you must take care with using the regular pattern too much. You might begin to sound predictable when you use that pattern too much! This is where you can start using the regular, but broken rhythmic pattern.Basically it's the same as the pattern we discussed first, but it's kind of cut in pieces. The lyrics use a regular pattern but every now and then rests, accelerations and stuff like that are built in. The trick is not to do it too much so that the lyrics sound as if they don't have any rhythm at all. The effect, if done properly, is that you keep a very rhythmic songtext that doesn't sound to dull or stiff.
Listen to this example (200kb, 26 secs.) taken from my song "The Last Unicorn", also released on "Reset". It's a long song with lots of different rhythmic patterns, but in the second verse you can hear a clear example of what I mean. It goes as follows:
We're paranoid and think the monster is near
We kill the killer, we spy the spies
We burn our hope with our selfmade lies
The sluggish, loose rhythmic pattern
The third pattern is different from the first two in a way that this pattern sounds rhythmic in a more poetic way. The rhythm seems to flow along the lines and is already very obvious while only reading the lyrics, as is the fact with good poetry. This pattern tends to be more connected to the melody and feel of a song rather than the rhythm of the music. It's often far less mechanical and much more fluid, thus demanding fluid, less harsh music.As I stated before, you can find rhythm in everything and so also in poems. While reading a poem you actually are forced to read it in a certain manner, a certain rhythm. If you ignore that "force" the poem sounds very clumsy. This is also the case with the sluggish, loose rhythmic pattern. Because it's rhythm resembles that of a poem, it forces you to obey to it's rules and follow! If you don't, the lyrics will sound hopeless out of pace with the music...
The next piece of music, taken from the song "Too Late", which was the opener of the second side of The Stag's cassette "Winds of Pain", demonstrates the use of this pattern. Notice that the lyrics of Too Late by themselves allow you to read it as if it was just a poem. Listen to the sound-excerpt (225kb, 29 secs.) by clicking on the picture and you will hear that the music is totally in service of the lyrics; the rhythmic pattern of the lyrics force the music to stay on the background and follow. The result is a mellow, easy piece of music, which can be heard best during the verses.
TOO LATE
Lyrics and Music by Rein Menke
Memories, please don't haunt meLyrics and Music by Rein Menke
Stop haunting me.....
Leave me alone.......
Silver bird, you blind my eyes
with your shiny skin
Reflections of those who've been delivered
and of those who've never been
The tide runs fast some didn't last to see for what they've paid
'cause they're too late
while I want to celebrate
You make me dwell in those early days
when we all suffered from the chill of hate
Can't live in glee now that I'm free, the past will never rest
The tide runs fast some didn't last to see for what they've paid
'cause they're too late...
'cause they're too late...
This pain is a reflection
and reflections never live
so why is this one living in my mind
Torn apart between two senses
fear and pain when daylight fades
Happyness when we see a smile
but we'll always live with the ghosts we've made
Can't live in glee now that I'm free, the past will never rest
The tide runs fast some didn't last to see for what they've paid
'cause they're too late......
fear and pain when daylight fades
Happyness when we see a smile
but we'll always live with the ghosts we've made
Can't live in glee now that I'm free, the past will never rest
The tide runs fast some didn't last to see for what they've paid
'cause they're too late......
This kind of rhythmic pattern is best for improvising. Because of the loose feel of it the singer/reader can feel invited to give the lyrics his own interpretation. A good improvisor can thus give the song an extra dimension. But it's very important that the improvisor doesn't loose track of the pattern.
To make things more clear I've made a table where you can see most of the information about the most common rhythmic patterns I've given you in this lesson at a glimpse.
| Common Rhythmic Patterns | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Type of rhythmic pattern | Advantages | Disadvantages | Remarks |
| Simple, regular | Easy to use | Danger of becoming boring and predictable | Suitable for fast songs. Hypnotic, mechanical and tight effect |
| Regular, but broken | Not too difficult to use, refreshing | If used too much rhythm disappears | Creates illusion of different patterns while using just one |
| Sluggish, loose | Pattern already interesting without music, good to improvise on | Pattern possibly difficult to interpret by reader | "Takes over" the song; music must follow the lyrics |
Finishing the rhythmic feel of the song
After all your efforts to build rhythmic patterns in the lines of your songtext, you definetly don't want to ruin it by loosing track of the overall view of the lyrics. Rhythmic patterns are very important but they don't stand to themselves; they are part of the total lyrics and they can only play their role if you manage to organize all those patterns in such a way that all those rhythmic pieces come together.As I stated before mirroring can come in very handy when writing lyrics without knowing the music yet. But mirroring is also a useful tool to give your song that finishing touch when it comes to rhythm.
It's very important that the audience recognizes parts of your song. Most of the time they will hear your song for the first time or during difficult conditions, for instance during a concert or a noisy party. So if you bomb them with pattern after pattern they will soon loose track! Mirroring your verses can help avoiding this. When you build a pattern in the second line of the first verse, and you use the same pattern in every second line of the other verses, the audience will recognize it and thereby get the chance to appreciate it more.
Using this technique brings a distinct structure to your song. This structure is very important to make your song actually a song instead of a collection of lines, rhythms, riffs etc. etc. This structure is also important to make composing the music easier; a songtext which lacks a certain structure is a horrible thing to put on music!
Conclusion
As we saw in this lesson rhythm is very important in lyrics. It can give a song a certain feel and bring structure to it.Don't make the mistake to think rhythm is only a matter of music; lyrics do play an important role when it comes to putting rhythm in a song. Remember: not only drummers need to be rhythmic. As all other musicians, singers and songwriters need to be rhythmic as well! And this brings us to the end of the third lesson of the Online Course in Songwriting. I hope you enjoyed it and that you learned something from it, or at least that there were some moments during reading this lesson that you thought: "Well, maybe he's made a point, let's try that out!". Remember, this lesson is only meant to help you make writing songs easier, NOT to tell you to do it my way. After all, you're the songwriter and you'll have to do it yourself.
Learn how to write lyrics?
he story goes like this: I was reading Friendfeed and came across a link to a site about How to write Lyrics and thought to myself “Well that’s a bit presumptuous isn’t it?” On visiting the site I found advice which seemed to recommend ‘tuning in to the music of the spheres’. Bah humbug said the little critic sitting on my shoulder, so I left a terse drive-by comment and moved on thinking no more of it. Then the original author read it and called me out, so good for him. We’ve had a good chat since during which I realised that I’ve never written down my own story about getting to grips with the songwriting process, so here it is as promised.
My problem with writing lyrics
I picked up a guitar and learned to play when I was about fourteen, mostly devising my own versions of favourite songs by ear. Songs by people like Loudon Wainwright who is possibly the greatest lyric writer of all time, are 
usually pretty simple in terms of the chord structure and I’d always loved to sing. Very soon I wanted to write my own songs because that’s what any musical artist seemed to need to do in those days, and it’s still the case today, if not more so. I found that the music came pretty easily, just out of experimenting with the sound of new chords and progressions, jamming with myself for hours on end so to speak. The lyrics, on the other hand, were problematic. I kept a notebook with two ends. At one end I wrote down rough drafts and odd verses, full of crossings out and rewrites. Then when I thought I had a finished song together with music I’d copy it to the pristine end and feel pleased with myself for having completed one. The trouble happened within a few days or weeks when I’d try to play the new song again and decide that it’s rubbish. Often the crossings out and rewrites had made it worse, or the original material was based on a really bad concept in the first place. Part of the problem was that I hadn’t fully understood that song lyrics are not poetry, and many of the most sucessful songs look pretty awful if you try just reading them as cold print. And teenagers are always very self conscious, so amongst all of this, just a handful of songs emerged which stood the test of time. “Hold on Below” is one of those from my early teenage period, together with Puddles and The Show Carries On.
The theory of idealism
Because I didn’t understand why sometimes, rarely, I was able to write lyrics that I was happy with, while at most other times nothing good would come out, I began to entertain the theory that the inspiration was coming from somewhere “out there” rather than from within. That fits with a philosophy of idealism which is common enough in our society, and prevalent amongst artists but which I now view as particularly unhelpful. I could go for months and even years at a time with writing a single song, waiting for the right conditions in which the muse would arrive. I even wrote one about that very idea which contained the line “I’m just the man who held the pen that wrote it down” which is very similar to the concept at the How to write Lyrics site where it says “I don’t write music, music writes through me”.
My new approach to songwriting
If you have ever read published authors advising hopeful writers on how to write a novel, the advice usually comes in the form “Sit down at a desk and start writing. Then continue writing every day for at least eight hours until you have written the first draft”. They have to treat it as any other job, otherwise it will never get done. So I decided a few years ago to try the same approach to songwriting. I knew I had a song which I wanted to write, a ballad about a journey I had made. I planned myself a day to write it, and decided that I would spend the day on a river boat cruising up and down the Thames, making good use of the all-day ticket.
I took with me paper and pencils, and maps to remind me of the journey. There was a convenient table on the boat so I installed myself there and got eveything out, knowing I had all day to get the song lyrics written. I love being on boats so this had been a great idea, and within a couple of hours I had about eight or nine verses written so I could afford to take an enjoyable lunch break. That song remains unchanged (well, apart from the pronunciation of Ugijar) as “Winter in Andalucia” for which I get requests from time to time, and it’s a nice one to play if I ever feel like quietly fingerpicking and can remember all the lyrics.
Intentionally writing song lyrics
So this was nothing short of a revelation. If I set out deliberately to write a lyric, I could do it!
Songwriting trip
A few years later, I was badly let down by a companion with whom I’d planned a holiday. I decided to go anyway, as the flight and car were all booked up, but instead of trying to have a holiday by myself I would treat it as work and do lots of writing. I said I would write a CD, which meant writing enough songs so that maybe ten or twelve of them would be worth keeping. Eight would do it at a pinch, and I had a week, so one song a day seemed reasonable.
I started writing the day before, and made good use of the time on the plane. After a day or two on the road I didn’t restrict myself to writing sat at a desk. In fact I often started composing a first verse or so while walking.
Creative Walking
Zoom back a few years and during a sparse phase for songwriting there was one song which emerged from out of a camping trip. Filling two large water containers then tramping back downhill, the rhythm of my gait started me off humming and then I shut myself away for half an hour and wrote some lyrics to the new tune. That’s Mondura Dam.
So during my deliberate CD writing trip I fell back on the creative walking technique once or twice, and then made sure I memorised the verse or two composed in my head, so I could write them down and elaborate after I got back to the hotel. Incidentally I don’t think I could do that with a companion.
How to Write Twenty Three Lyrics
By the end of that trip I had no less than twenty three new lyrics which I’m still using as base material. Gernika, Cormorants and The Wreckers Prayer all came from then, and there are a few more which may also represent some of my best work. So I’m definitely convinced now on the question of how to write lyrics, that the deliberate method is the best one for me. The same philosophy probably stands for other forms of writing and creativity as well, like this blog post for example, which I planned yesterday and then got out of bed this morning with the deliberate intention of getting it written and published.
The use of Repetitions
Ever wondered how all those singers manage to learn all those lyrics by heart??? Well, one thing's for sure, you don't have to be a graduate to be a singer, but a good memory can come in handy! But fortunately there are some tricks to let that singer sing the lyrics you want! In this month's lesson I'll try to explain how the use of repetetive parts in a songtext can help remembering a song. We will see that there are two sorts of repetitions:
These include:
- Lyrics will be easier to learn by heart
- It's easier to write lyrics
- Lyrics will be more easy to recognize for the audience
- And so on...
Now don't you all start yelling at me saying: "Man, go to kiddies class!" I know there are plenty of people perfectly capable to write good (and complicated) lyrics, in fact I'm one of them hahaha but this course is supposed to learn you all some tips and tricks to make the job easier...
So now we figured this out I guess we're ready know to dive deeper into this material. Put on your helmets, fasten your seatbelts and GO!!!
Literal Repetitions
The name says it all: Literal Repetitions are literal repetitions of a part of the lyrics. One very much used example is called the Chorus. It's one of those old-fashioned elements of a song which hardly no-one dares to let go. I wonder why (NOT!!). The chorus is the most important part of the song, whether you like it or not. It's that part that will almost always be first remembered of a song. Notice that all the classics are songs built around a good sturdy chorus. They can come in all kinds of forms: a chorus doesn't need to be very complicated at all. Take a look at the lyrics of one of the most catchy choruses ever: the one of the song Child in Time by Deep Purple. Gillan probably took a day off when the lyrics of this chorus were written but it sure proofs the fact that a chorus is good as long as it's recognizable throughout a song.
Usually a chorus doesn't change during a song, and if it changes, it only changes slightly and it will probably be at the end of the song. An example of this can be seen in the song Autumn which we discussed in the first lesson. Notice that the last chorus has changed, but very slight: "they" changes into "we", that's all. A chorus shouldn't change too much, otherwise it won't be recognized as the chorus anymore.
Of course, the music is an important factor in recognizing a chorus, but remember that a good songtext is still interesting and meaningfull without the music!!
Remember when you start to change a chorus, be sure the change is logical. You can change a chorus more drastically without sacrificing the link with the other choruses, but you will need to use the so-called seemingly repetitions for that. I will discuss that later....
It is also possible to use literal repetitions in a verse. A lot of the advantages will count for this option too. By repeating lines or parts of lines it will be much easier to build a complete songtext and it should enhance the logic of the lyrics. But watch out for the pitfall of making your song too simplistic!! Many songwriters make the mistake to repeat large parts of text, and thus making the song dull or even worse: hard to understand. This trick might work in a poem but it usually doesn't work in a song, and certainly not a rock-song. Use it sparsly and subtle.
An example can be found in the following exerpt of the song "Live it Up" which I wrote for the second cassette of the Stag, named "Winds of Pain". You can view the complete lyrics of this song by clicking here. For a 47 seconds sound-sample of it please click here. The file is recorded mono in 8 bits PCM-format so downloading-times should be reasonable... For tips on saving the soundfiles on your local harddisk visit the information-page.
The life you live, just seems alright,
but if you bust the shell, you can smell the stench inside.
you're just filled up, with all your happy memories,
you're living in the past, but you never get yourself released.
3)
The life you live, just ain't alright,
and you know, you rot away inside.
Just enjoy all your happy memories,
but don't forget to live your live, and never get yourself released.
As you can see, there are quite a few literal repetitions! I coloured the repetitions for convenience. Some parts of lines from the first verse have been copied to the third, after a slight change. Take a look at the tails of the lines of these verses: they are almost identical. This is a dangerous trick because the result might be you ending up with a song which seems to have nothing to say. To avoid this, keep in mind the following rules:
- Place the repetitions as far away from each other as possible.
- For example, use the last verse to copy parts from the first verse as in the example
- Try to avoid copying whole lines.
- Your verse might become a fake-chorus.... Use single words or parts of lines instead.
If you do it alright the audience/reader wouldn't notice at all the verses are almost identical. They will only think the last part sounded familiar (if they aren't drunk, stoned or deaf of course!!!) and that was just your intention, wasn't it???
Using literal repetitions in a verse can be okay but it's better to use seemingly repetitions. As you will see later, the above example also contains examples of seemingly repetitions. So I guess it's time to tell you more about that now!
Seemingly Repetitions
As you could see, literal repetitions aren't very difficult to use. In fact, everybody is using (or misusing...) them. Choruses will be the main part of a song until another Beethoven stands up so we will be using it in some form for decades to come. How different are seemingly repetitions... These aren't as easy to use as literal repetitions! As you could read between the lines above, seemingly repetitions have the same effect on a song as literal repetitions, but this effect is achieved in a different and much more complicated way. This kind of repetitions come in the class of "things that spice up lyrics", if you know what I mean.The problem with seemingly repetitions is that they must be used very, very subtle. Use them too much and they will become just plain literal repetitions. I'll try to explain what I mean with seemingly repetions.
A seemingly repetition is a style-form used by a songwriter to make the audience/reader "feel" te relation between two (or more) parts of a songtext. Was this relation rather clear when using literal repetitions, using seemingly ones results in far less clear relations in the songtext. This is due to the fact that seemingly repetitions hardly (or not at all) use copied parts of a songtext. The relation exists because the contents of the text make out the repetetion and thus makes the relation between the text-parts.
Tough eh?? Well, not as tough as it looks. I'll try to explain it using one of my songs. This one is previously unreleased. You can hear a sample of this song by clicking on the picture below. It will download a soundfile recorded mono in 8 bits PCM-format. I chose this format to keep downloading-times within reasonable limits while enabling you to hear a large part of music. I wrote this song in the "dying days" of the Stag and it's the original demo I used on my 4-track home-studio, which I always use to give the bandmembers an idea of a new song. I'm not a singer so pardon me for that; but after all, we're talking lyrics now...
1)
In the darkest hour, I hear a voice calling me,
a soothing sound from a world beyond, it calls my soul and makes it free.
Whispered promises of heavenly peace, seducing me to believe
there's love in the voice that's calling me.
When she calls my name, I feel like riding the rainbow.
Dazing trough the skies,to get to her and drown me in her eyes.
2)
When the sky turns red at the break of day.
I feel a pain deep down my soul, but it fades away.
And while the sun shines down on me, she seduces me to believe
there ain't no voices calling me
When the sky turns red at the break of day.
I feel a pain deep down my soul, but it fades away.
And while the sun shines down on me, she seduces me to believe
there ain't no voices calling me
When she calls my name.......etc.
3)
When the night comes down, I fear the voice to call me.
There's something deep inside of me, that stands up to this slavery.
But when the winds carries out her voice, and my fear parishes in lust,
I betray the one I love, and deny all that I trust.
When the night comes down, I fear the voice to call me.
There's something deep inside of me, that stands up to this slavery.
But when the winds carries out her voice, and my fear parishes in lust,
I betray the one I love, and deny all that I trust.
When she calls my name.....etc.
4)
When the nightwind reeks the fire, the other side just takes control.
Offering me the chances I've missed, all the love I've ever sold.
I relive the past, and fear to let it loose,
but the blackbird sings his warning: Don't choose.
When the nightwind reeks the fire, the other side just takes control.
Offering me the chances I've missed, all the love I've ever sold.
I relive the past, and fear to let it loose,
but the blackbird sings his warning: Don't choose.
Chorus:
Dreams are illusion, tell me why you're calling me.
Dreams are illusion, tell mee why you're soothing me.
Dreams are illusion, tell me why you're hurting me.
Dreams are illusion, don't want the morning dew to moist my eyes no more.
Dreams are illusion, tell me why you're calling me.
Dreams are illusion, tell mee why you're soothing me.
Dreams are illusion, tell me why you're hurting me.
Dreams are illusion, don't want the morning dew to moist my eyes no more.
For this example I used the entire songtext because you can only "feel" the relation between different parts of the text when you read the whole song. The seemingly repetition is very subtle here and is achieved by using equivalents. These equivalents are the words (or strings of words) that make the link(s) more clearly; without them it would be more difficult to recognize a seemingly repetition. Mind that I use the word equivalent a little free: an equivalent usually is a word that has the same meaning as another word, like for example dog and hound. Here I mean with equivalent a word or string of words that point to the same subject. Let me explain by some examples from Demon Dreams:
- Example 1:
- At the beginning of each verse, you see a simple form of a seemingly repetition. It is used to show a relation in time, in this case, the night. This example is shown in red.
- Example 2:
- The second example shows how a seemingly repetition is used to link parts of the lyrics which are about the feelings of the "I"-person. These feelings don't have to be the same: the link can be laid between to opposites as well, just as long as the subject is the same. These examples are shown in purple.
I hope you have an idea now of what seemingly repetitions are and how to use them. As you can see, it's sometimes hard to tell where a literal repetition ends and a seemingly one starts. As a rule of thumb: as soon as you "feel" the repetition (and the link established by it) rather than you "see" it, it's a seemingly one.
Advantages and disadvantages...
We're almost at the end of this month's lesson. I know this one wasn't easy but songwriting usually isn't easy at all, except for the lucky few. To make it up to you I made a tabel where you can see the advantages and disadvantages of the forms of repetitions I discussed in this lesson.
| Sort of Repetition | Advantages | Disadvantages | Remarks |
| | | | |
| Literal Repetition | *Easy to use *Makes lyrics easier to remember | *Danger of looking "cheap" *Commonly used | *Used most commonly in choruses *Often misused by lack of writing-skills |
| Seemingly Repetition | *Helps reader to understand difficult lyrics *Adds structure to lyrics | *Difficult to use *Danger of "falling back" to plain literal repetitions | *Makes you "feel" the link between textparts |
As a final bonus, here's a link to the full lyrics of another song of mine, which is called (The Square of) Heavenly Peace. It's full of literal and seemingly repetitions as you will see. Just read it and try to find them.
Choosing the subject and keeping it simple.
As you can see this is the first lesson! That's why it starts with the boring part.... But if you came this far, you probably won't be bored to death by reading the rest too!
This month I'll start with explaining the importance of choosing the right subject and keeping things simple! The song that will act as an example is "Autumn" which I wrote back in '89 and was one of the first songs I wrote for The Stag. It was eventually released as a track of the "The Last Season"-cassette, which can be ordered by emailing me or using the form.
Let's kick off!
The next points must be kept in mind while writing lyrics:
- The subject must be of universal interest
- It must be easy to understand yet leave room for the listeners/readers own thoughts
It can be a difficult task; in fact, I think it's half the work of writing lyrics! Sometimes I can't find a good subject and my production in writing lyrics completely stops. But if I have found one (inspiration!!!) I often write the lyrics for a song in about 15 minutes. But if you can't find a subject and start writing anyway it might take days to get something appropriate, 'tough it will never be as good as the lyrics that "struck like lightning!Another advantage of writing your lyrics on the moment you have inspiration is that you will write your lyrics as if you are speaking . I come back on that later while discussing how to keep your lyrics simple.
Universal interest
When you write a song you intend to draw attention with it: you don't want to bug everybody with uninteresting and unimportant things. But on the other hand, a songwriter is always convinced of what he writes (otherwise: DON'T PUBLISH IT!!!!!!). So you can do as follows:
Play it save and keep it non-personal
Do it the hard way and try to make your personal statement interesting.
Don't think a non-personal subject is allways interesting. Choose something that afflicts many people. But DON'T use a Hot Item: they will pass and your song will become outdated. That's the worst thing that can happen to a creation, wether it's a song, a movie, etc. For instance, think about the 70-movies with their outdated clothes. I mean: a good song with good music can become outdated just because of the lyrics. Take a timeless subject!
The funny thing is that Autumn is an exception to this rule: the subject may be from a long-gone past but it afflicted so many people that those echos of the past will be heard forever!
It's no crime to write personal lyrics. In fact, many famous lyrics are very personal. You can even write lyrics that are interesting only to yourself, but you'll have to compensate on that by e.g. very good music, image etc.. But let's focus on writing interesting personal lyrics.
It's very important that you make your personal subject (look like) a subject of universal interest. The most popular and therefor(?) used personal subject is LOVE . And here we have THE BIG MONEYMAKER: Love is the most universal thing, it's very personal but also very timeless and it afflicts everyone in a certain way. So, if you really want to play it safe, write love-songs! But:
- Always keep it recognizable and exeggerate (pain or joy) while writing love-songs.
- Compensate the fact that you chose the most used subject with other strong points: good style in writing, good music with feel!
Autumn is an example of a song which handles both a subject that's of universal interest as well as a personal subject. It's very important that one of the subjects must be clear right away or at least, must give the reader a clue about that subject. We don't want to talk abacadabra. That "main subject" as we will call it requests an easy written text. Which leads us to the next important issue in writing lyrics:
Keep it easy yet leave room for the readers' imagination!
It's very imporant to keep a songtext (seemingly) simple. You want your lyrics to be universally written, so don't forget not everyone is as good at english as you are! That's not easy 'though! There are many pitfalls and here are some tricks to avoid them...
- Use simple words...
- Long, difficult words distract the attention: people only wonder what you mean with them. A songtext should give a clear picture at first glance. (That of course doesn't apply to the underlying meaning of the lyrics!). Note that Autumn lacks words with 3 syllabils, except for some verbs and the word "ultimate".
- Write if possible the way people speak
- The most used form of communication is talking. If you can manage to write your lyrics as if you are speaking, it will make your songtext much more easier to read. To obtain this, don't think too much during the writing. Just let your pencil go and don't pay attention to mistakes. Don't look in dictionaries and don't use a neat note-book: A dirty piece of paper will do perfectly. To show you what kind of rubbish my songs first are, take a look at this....
- Use rhyme with care...
- Rhyme (like it or not..) is very important in songlyrics. It makes lyrics earier to read and remember. But avoid using a predictable form of it: your lyrics might sound like children's songs! Try to avoid the aabbcc-pattern.
In Autumn, I did use the aabb-pattern sometimes, but I "broke" it down by placing a section (like the leaves...) without rhyme at all, so it doesn't hurt the song.
Another rhyme-trick is making a word rhyme on a word way back in the song. See for an example of this the last verse where the last word rhymes on the last word of the 2nd verse. - Don't forget the rythm!
- Now don't go yelling: That's where our drummer is for!! You're right in your own way, of course, but I mean the rhytm of the lyrics. A good song-text is already interesting when you only read it if the rythm is good.It's kind of a pace which can be very hypnotic. Poets seem stuffy guys, but many drummers could learn something of them when it comes to rhytm!
Watch out for the pitfall of attacting the attention too much to the underlying subject. Leave the meaning of it obscure; it will make the lyrics more interesting because the readers can think about what you mean and use their own imagination. You'd be surprised how many people have a perfect explanation of a songtext which you never intended but of which you say: yeah, I could have ment that!.
A songtext with a second meaning which is too obvious is likely to become to obstrusive to the reader: maybe he/she doesn't want to be bothered with your philosophical thoughts!!! In other words: don't push it through their throats!!!
But how do you make it clear that you mean more with your lyrics? After all, you want SOME people to think about your lyrics! The trick I used in Autumn is the last verse: it changes 180 degrees: past becomes future, they becomes we! And the text becomes much more obscure, just as a sign that there is more beyond the surface. Just try to tickle the readers' curiosity by giving a turn on your lyrics. This can by enhanced by making a dramatic turn in the music: By the moment the underlying meaning of the text needs attention, the music in Autum drops to an almost absulute minimum during the third verse, to burst into te climax of the following chorus. Compare these fragments with each-other by clicking on the tree. Note that the third verse has a different kind of feel than the second, which can be played by clicking here.
Conclusion
So far for this first lesson! I hope you enjoyed it and will be back for the other lessons. Next month, I'll talk about using tricks how to use repetitions in lyrics to make writing and remebrence easier. For now, enjoy the lyrics of Autumn and of course the other html's. I'll conclude this lesson with the following: Just for the fun of it (and a little to proof that I may be right) email me at menke@euronet.nl and tell me what you think Autumn is really about. I'll email you back to tell you if you're right.
AUTUMN.I'm very interested in your comments. Also, I would like to know if you decide to follow my course. If you want additional information, or if you aren't able to download the included sound-files or previous courses, than send a request by email and I'll send the files to you.
Snow falls out of a deep gray sky
Covering their bodies, and I wonder why.
They'll never wake up in the morning sun.
Sitting bull lies on his worn out back,
watching with his dead eyes for another attack.
His frozen fingers clinging to his gun.
Chorus:
Like the leaves they're falling,
in this autumn of the world.
Down, down, down they go.
Gas flows into a full up room.
Killing man and children, it's the ultimate doom.
And a cloud of smoke rises in the sky.
Millions of people, killed by one word,
spoken by satan in a night black shirt.
Still I don't know why they had to die.
Chorus.
Like the leaves they're falling,
in this autumn of the world.
Down, down, down they go.
Bright lights blanches the sun,
it's the angel of death who has just begun,
to tell us all about the reason why.
Chorus.
Like the leaves we're falling,
in this autumn of the world.
Down, down, down they go.
I don't know why they had to die.
Why the smoke rises in the sky.
Why they had to go in the morning sun.
I don't know why, there falling,
in this autumn of the world.
I don't know, I don't know
but down we go.
Clicking the tree downloads a sound-file which plays 46 seconds of music (46 KB), while the other soundfile plays 30 seconds (30 KB). To enable you to get a clear picture of the song and keep downloading-times reasonable the sound-files are recorded mono, 8000hz in 8 bits PCM-format.
I hope you will enjoy the samples!
Write a hit song
Recently I discovered I am a talented lyricist. This came as a big surprise to me.
It all came together when I realized most songs I enjoy are gibberish. I can TOTALLY write gibberish!
For decades I believed my favorite songs revolved around deep thoughts artistically embedded in metaphors and allusions. It turns out they were gibberish.
My first hint came after reading an interview with Paul McCartney. He admitted that most, if not all, Beatles songs were random words and thoughts strung together. I refused to believe it. So I checked online and read some of the Beatles songs. Holy crap! Gibberish! See for yourself:
http://www.beatleslyricsarchive.com/songs.php
Let's see if we can write a gibberish hit song together. Here are the rules:
1. Write no more than two lines.
2. Your lines should be grammatically correct.
3. It should sound like it might have deep meaning to someone else.
4. Avoid klunky sounding words. Velvet is good. Cholesterol is bad.
5. Specify whether your lines are a hook or just part of the regular lyrics.
6. It should seem to be part of a story about life or love but not too specific, so they can all be strung together later.
I'll kick it off with the first two song lines:
“She had runaway eyes and marshmallow kittens.
My heart heard a dream like ten thousand gay mittens.”
Go.
CHARLES' SONGWRITING NOTES
I've been writing songs since I was about sixteen - almost thirty years now. In this file, I've made some notes about some of the tricks and techniques I've learned along the way - hope they're helpful!
INSPIRATION
Obviously, the first step in writing a good song is just getting started writing any song at all. We all get hit with writer's block from time to time... here are some of the things I turn to when I'm in need of ideas:
- A lot of my current writing is "praise and worship" songs, most frequently based on Psalms or other scripture. Open up the book, pick one, and write! But: don't just pull lines at random and call it a song. Spend a moment figuring out something that this particular Psalm says that you want to say - a "theme" for your song - and then develop that theme, using the text of the Psalm to suggest ideas.
- Did this many years ago, but haven't done it in a while: pick up a magazine or two, cut out all the headlines to the articles, then chop up the headlines into one or two word pieces, and then put them back together in the strangest combinations you can. Every now and then, pick one out, decide what the phrase means to you, and write it into a song. "If I was going to write a song called The Long Words Passenger, what would that song be about???" Even if you wind up tossing out your original "weird" phrase - if it got you started writing, it did its job!
- Another thing I've realized is that there are several "steps" to my own songwriting process - that initial inspiration is one step, but there are lots of others. When inspiration hits, I try not to let myself stop with one lyric, one idea. Write five or six rough lyrics, even if they're not that great. Take advantage of inspiration when it hits.
- Part of this whole process of taking advantage of a creative mood when it strikes is "forcing" myself to keep writing, even when I think what I'm coming up with stinks. There have been times when I was ready to go do something else after the first three attempts were really awful, but by pushing through, maybe number seven and number twelve will work out. I just keep telling myself: "okay, I wrote fifteen lyrics and thirteen of them suck. That means I just wrote two good lyrics!"
- What all this does is: it fills up my songwriting notebooks with lots of ideas, lots of song starts. On days when I'm not feeling particularly idea-filled, I'll just sit down and look at some of the rough drafts - do the same sort of critiquing process on myself that I do on others' lyrics over on Glade's board. Or I'll pull out the guitar, find a rough draft lyric that shows some promise, and try to turn it into a "finished" song.
- Other thoughts: I've frequently found that hotel rooms are good places for me to write, if I'm alone. There's something sort of inspiring about hotel stationery :-) Another thing that seems to help get my creative juices flowing is simply the process of playing music. I'll pick out a few songs that I wrote years ago, and go in my studio and put together multitrack versions of the songs... I frequently find that, after I've put a couple "oldies" on tape, I start getting ideas for new stuff to write.
GUIDING THE LISTENER
The first few lines of a song are particularly important, because they tell the listener what the rest of the song is going to be about. If you misdirect them in these first few lines, they'll be confused all the way through the song. If the song is about a single mother, but you start out with several lines about the husband who walked out on her, the listener will think the song is about HIM. A good trick: type out the lyric, and then slide a piece of paper down the lyric, exposing one line at a time in the order the listener will hear them. Read the lyric this way, and keep asking yourself, "does the listener know everything they need to, at this point, to understand this line?"Generally, in every song, you are creating a "character" who is singing the song. That character may or may not be like the songwriter who created them, but the character needs to be consistent. The listener has to believe this character who is singing, even if they don't agree with what the character is saying.
Starting with the chorus: usually, the chorus of a song is where you make it most clear what the song is about, what you're trying to say in the song. If you start with the chorus, then you're establishing right away, "here's the message." If you start with a verse which leads up to the chorus, you can establish some suspense, some mystery, first, and then resolving the listener's questions when the chorus hits.
Obscure words and references: it's usually unsafe to assume that the listener is going to understand obscure words or references - you can't say "the seventh commandment" and assume they'll know that's the one about adultery.
(One exception: when you're using these words just to establish an atmosphere, but understanding the specific meaning isn't critical to understanding the song - for example, I wrote a song called "The Long Words Passenger" where I referred to this guy talking about " sanctified, justified / trinity, divinity / sacraments and evidence / of scriptural inerrancy...." The listener doesn't need to know what any of those things are - just that this guy I'm singing about uses words like that.)
Emphasis - De-emphasis. An important part of guiding the listener through a song lyric is giving them little clues as to which parts they should pay attention to, which they can, for the most part, ignore. Referring to a character in a song by their name will emphasize their importance; mentioning some unusual characteristic of that person will emphasize them. But sometimes you want to de-emphasize a character; for instance, in a song about a single mother, you don't want the listener to be too interested in the father who is out of the picture.
Loaded words: there are certain words which trigger a lot of associations with the listener, some of them the wrong ones. For example, the word "free" gets tossed around a lot in relationship songs; someone will say "I want to be free," meaning "I want the feeling of 'flying free' that being in a relationship brings." But we're so used to "free" referring to "I want out of this relationship," that it can frequently misdirect the listener if it's not used carefully.
SONG STRUCTURE
The song needs to be ABOUT something specific. This tends to be a problem especially with Christian songwriting, where someone says "this is a Christian song" and then proceeds to string together a bunch of unrelated thoughts about God. Say something specific about God - write a song about God's "grace." I've also seen songs where the verse is about one thing, but the chorus is about some other topic entirely. Each part works ok on its own and is well written, but it feels like two separate songs have been forced together against their will.Frequently when I'm first writing a lyric, I will actually write out a few notes about the song structure - what I want the first verse to say, the second verse, etc. This can be helpful later when I'm revising - it lets me look at a lyric section and ask myself, "did I say what I meant to here?"
Past, present, future: not always, but frequently, the structure of a song is expressed in terms of things that happened in the past, are happening now, or that we hope will happen. It's frequently worth a pass through your lyrics, looking at the tense of each line - when you're talking about that thing that's happening now, don't refer to it in past or future tense, even if it's happened before and will probably happen again.
Song structure basically consists of understanding where a character is coming from, where they are now, and where they're going. And then arranging those different bits of information in a logical - not necessarily timeline - order. For instance:
- my wife just left me (present)
I treated her bad (past)
but I'm gonna get her back (future)
I treated her bad (past)
so she left me (present)
but I'm gonna get her back (future)
I'm gonna get her back (future)
I treated her bad (past)
but I'm gonna get her back (future)
she just walked out (present)
but I'm gonna get her back (future)
I treated her bad (past)
I'm gonna change my ways (future)
but today, she's gone (present)
Another element of song structure and timing: every song has a point that it "turns" on, and if you introduce that point TOO early in the song, you leave yourself with nowhere to go.
Click here for another really good article on song structure and plot development.
RHYMING & PHRASING
Establishing your rhyme scheme: I'm not opposed to using rhymes that stretch the rhyme scheme a bit - rhyming "go" with "more" - but in the first couple sections of the song, it's important to be a bit more strict; establish the rhyme scheme in the listener's ear and then you can get away with stretching it. Equally important at the start: don't leave any "accidental rhymes" lying about that will cause the listener to expect rhymes later on where you didn't put them...The "anacrucis": I'm not sure this is the right name for this, but what I mean by anacrucis is the words which you squeeze in before the main downbeat of a line. Take a line like "every time I talk to you" and imagine singing it with the "1" downbeat coming at different points:
- (1) Every time I talk to you
Every (1) time I talk to you
Every time I (1) talk to you
Every time I talk to (1) you.
The word that falls on the (1) beat is going to be emphasized to the listener - so it makes a difference where you put it.
"Bury the Baddie" - one of the signs of a "beginning" songwriter is that there will be rhymes where the first line of the rhyme is strong and clear and well written, and then the second line of the rhyme is weak, just so it will rhyme. For example:
- Every time I talk to you
You tell me what I wanna hear
Every time I look at you
You look so pretty, dear.
- Every time I look at you,
You look so pretty, dear;
Every time I talk to you
You tell me what I wanna hear.
I also find that thinking of rhyming lines in terms of flagpoles is helpful, because it's a reminder that, if I just can't come up with two flags that fly nicely on my particular set of flagpoles, I can always put up TWO entirely different flagpoles. If you just can't say what you want with "way" / "day", maybe you can do something with "bed" / "red".
Clever rhymes draw attention to themselves, and you don't always want that. There's really nothing wrong with rhyming "day" and "way" in a lyric, as long as you're saying something important in the lines that lead up to them. Bob Dylan is a master of writing up to the rhyme: going back to the flagpole theory: he doesn't necessarily put up a lot of great flagpoles, but he's flying some of the best FLAGS you'll ever see.
Longer Phrases: one of the things I realized about my own writing, as it got better, was that I was able to work longer and longer phrases into the lyric. A short couplet went from four individual five-syllable sentences to something like:
- I go out to see a movie,
Run uptown to catch a play;
I watch the plot develop
In the lines the actors say.
THEM TINY LITTLE WORDS
First, second, third person: particularly in Christian songs. Although there are exceptions, I've always felt like one of the signs of a poorly written Christian song is that it starts out talking about God as "He" and then, suddenly, it's referring to God as "You." This happens elsewhere, too: "She's so fine, she's so fine, she's so fine, that's why I love you, baby."When you're working on a lyric, it can help to make notes off to the side: who is "he" in this song? Who am "I"? Who does "you" refer to? If there is more than one "he" in the song, is it clear every time you encounter a "he" who it is that it's referring to?
Conjunctions: these are little words like "and" "but" "or" "until" and the like that songwriters use to connect parts of a song. And I've seen a number of lyrics where the wrong conjunction - one little word - can derail the song.
Consider how different the meanings of these phrases are:
- My baby left me, BUT I'm smiling...
My baby left me, SO I'm smiling...
My baby left me, BECAUSE I'm smiling...
My baby left me, EVEN THOUGH I was smiling
My baby left me WHEN I was smiling...
My baby left me AND THEN I started smiling
One more comment on conjunctions: a "double negative" can work sometimes, but a "double but" is a sure sign of trouble. "My baby left me, BUT I'm smiling, BUT she'll be back..." Generally, if your lyric has too many "buts" it's a good chance you're trying to say something too complicated for a three minute song... or that the thought could be expressed more clearly. Even the example sentence could be rephrased as "My baby left me, BUT she'll be back, SO I'm smiling..."
Highbrow / Lowbrow - this relates to the concept of the singer of the song as a "character" - I read a lyric one time that was supposed to be a down & dirty & angry guy singing - but right in the middle, he uses the word "whilst." Make sure EACH word in the song is consistent with the character of the singer.
TRICKS & TECHNIQUES
When I'm working on the very first draft of a lyric, I make a point of not giving it a song title, even if a particular line seems like it's obviously going to be the title. The reason is that, once I've titled a song, I become very resistant to throwing out or changing the line that contains the title - and sometimes, that's the line that needs fixing.Cut, cut, cut. During the initial writing of a song, I will frequently write about twice as many lyrics as the song actually needs; then, when I'm finishing the song, I can pick and choose what works best.
A general rule: if you feel the need to explain what a song is "about" before you start singing it, it's usually a clue that the lyric isn't doing its job.
Another interesting way to judge whether a lyric is working or not: give it to someone else, without any explanation, and ask them what THEY think it's about. Remember - regardless of your intent when you started writing the song, whatever gets across to the listener is what your song is REALLY "about."
"PRAISE AND WORSHIP" SONGS
The last three or four years, I've been writing some P&W songs to use in our church contemporary service. A few notes on writing P&W songs:
- set the tempo of the song so that the WORDS go by at a comfortable rate - not too fast, but not held-out either. P&W music is meant for the congregation to sing, so it needs to move at a comfortable speed for them.
- be sure to leave plenty of "breath breaks" in the song. The people in the congregation aren't trained singers who can squeeze in a breath. At the same time, don't leave TOO big a pause between phrases, or they won't know when to come back in.
- keep the vocal range of the song limited - in general, from middle C up to high C. As soon as you go outside that, you'll start losing people.
- let me re-emphaisze: decide whether you're singing ABOUT God or TO God, and keep the pronouns straight! If you refer to God as "you" in the song, don't start referring to God as "he" later on. (But don't be afraid to try re-casting the text you find in Scripture: a psalm that sings ABOUT God might make a better song if it were addressed TO God). As a very general rule, songs where God is "you" tend to be slower, "worship" songs; songs where God is "he" tend to be faster, "praise" songs. But there are lots of exceptions.
- frequently, I'll begin the process of writing a "praise and worship" song by looking at one of the Psalms or other scriptures and paraphrasing / rewording that. Something I've learned to do as part of that process is to try variations on the "casting" of the psalm. For example, several psalms talk about the virtuous man (person) and all the things "he" does. I've developed a couple of songs based on those sorts of psalms by reworking them so that they are about the kind of person "I" want God to make "me." Putting them in first person instead of third person.
Another comment on writing from the psalms: you don't have to include everything that a given psalm talks about in order to write a song. Choose one idea which is stated well in that psalm, and use that as the theme for your song; use other lines from the psalm which support that central theme - but pick and choose. For example, many songs based on Psalm 51 talk about "create in me a clean heart," but there are plenty of other ideas in that psalm you could base a song on - the song you write might not have anything about "clean heart" in it at all!
STEREOTYPES / INCLUSIVENESS
Inclusive Language: it's a big deal with some people, a non-issue with others. Most commonly, the issue is male/female imagery: using "Father" or "He" or other male terms to refer to God. But it can be more subtle, too: a lyric which sends a message that, for a person to be a good Christian, "he" must be xxxxx. Other physical limitations - blindness, deafness, and so on, are frequently used as symbols of ignorance or rebellion; look at your lyrics and ask how a person who is literally blind or deaf might take them.At the same time, though, there are a lot of "stereotypes" that people keep in their minds, and if your song lyric goes against one of those stereotypes, the listener's attention will be drawn to that. A major example: when someone tries to get around the exclusiveness of referring to God as "Father" by referring to God as "Parent" or "Mother" or "Father/Mother"... unless it's handled very carefully, the song is no longer about God, it's about inclusiveness.
MY SONGWRITING PROCESS
For me, lyric writing definitely comes first - sometimes I can "hear" a melody while I'm writing a lyric, but I generally don't even try to capture it at that time. I have a notebook where I write the first draft lyric (or paste in a copy if it was written elsewhere). The goal here is just to capture inspiration, and leave the details for later. If I can't come up with a particular word in a line, I'll just leave a blank rather than putting in something that's not the right word. Or I'll write the line that came to mind, but out in the margin I'll write "boo!" or "yecch" as a reminder that I probably need to fix this line before I make a song out of it.Although I usually resist the temptation to try to capture a melody right away, I frequently will add some notes about the general musical feel I think a song should have - "upbeat and bouncy" - "slow and thoughtful". I've even been known to change my mind about these notes later on, but they do help prevent taking a nice lyric and a nice tune that don't work together, and force-fitting them.
Every now and then, I sit down with my songwriting notebook, and thumb through looking at rough draft lyrics. Frequently at this point, I'll spot a line that could be improved, or realize that a song is structured wrong. Sometimes I'll fix things, sometimes I'll just add a note - "this is way too scattered" or something like that. A given lyric may go through three or four separate sessions like this, where I just look at it and see if anything strikes me as needing work.
Eventually, I have some time available to work on music. At that point, I pull out the notebook and a guitar and just thumb through the book, looking for a lyric that I think is ready. If a melody seems to be working out for a lyric, I'll write it out on staff paper in rough form - just enough that I'll be able to recapture the song later on. Still very open to changing things - a section that was going to be the chorus might become a bridge; lines from two different verses could become the chorus, order of verses switched, parts of verses recombined.
The "anacrucis" thing mentioned earlier is an important part of melody writing for me, too. Even before I'm working out what the NOTES will be, I'm frequently trying out different ways of phrasing lines rhythmically - how many words should I push out before that first beat, which words need to be held the longest or emphasized the most?
And, finally, it will be time to go into the studio. If I've got a bunch of rough lead sheets for new songs, I'll look those over and see if any of them strike me. If not, I'll thumb through the lyric notebook.
For me, the recording process is where things start to solidify. Once I have a version of a song that I like down on tape, the song is probably not going to get changed much beyond that, but I still try to remain open to changing things all through the recording process - words, chords, melody...
A LITTLE BIT FURTHER...
I've been a regular participant in Glade Hoffman's Songwriter Message Board for some time now, and in the process of commenting on others' lyrics - and having my own commented on - I've learned a few new tricks here and there. This last section is dedicated to passing along some of the latest things I've learned!
When You Say It Like That...
I worked on a song with someone from Glade's board; the song started out (and stayed) in second person most of the way through. "I know of a love, a love that lifts you up..." My suggestion to him was to recast the whole thing in first person - "a love that lifts me up." When he went through and made those changes, it seemed to me like it just lifted the whole song up to a higher, happier level. Instead of talking "Life Theory 101," the singer was now telling a story about his own life - it made it a lot more interesting to listen to!So: when I catch myself writing a song in second person, I'll stop and see what would happen if I rewrote it in first person. Make it about "me" (even if it isn't about me, the songwriter, the singer who is telling the story is now telling it about themself).
Top to Bottom...
I included some comments earlier on reading a song from "top to bottom," the way a first-time listener would hear it, and making sure that, at each moment, they have all the information they need to understand where the song is going. In the process of critiquing songs, my sense of the importance of the opening lines of a song has grown even more.In the opening verse of a song, several things get "established" in the listener's mind. One of these is the rhyme scheme. While I'm as accepting of "near rhymes" ( for example, rhyming "feet" with "need" ) as the next guy, it helps if you can stick to perfect, or near-perfect, rhymes in the opening verse, so that it's clear to the listener what the rhyme scheme of the song is. And it's just as important to avoid accidental rhymes that might throw them off. For instance, one person posted something like:
- We're upon the rocks again
Baby, how long it has been
Since we held each other all night?
We were the best of friends.
When I heard "again" and "been" in the first two lines, I expected the third and fourth lines to rhyme - that is, I expected line four to rhyme with "night." But it turns out that it's an ABCB rhyme scheme throughout the rest of the song - the second and fourth lines rhyme, and that's it. The fact that "again" and "been" rhymed was just an accident, but a confusing one. My suggestion: change that first line to anything that doesn't rhyme with "been."
The opening verse of a song also tends to set up the whole story line of a song, and clues the listener into what to watch/listen for in the rest of the song. If there is a reference in that first part to "what you said to me last night," the listener will expect to find out later in the song what it was that was said. If that's not what you want them to be listening for, then don't mention it. They'll be listening for "what got said" and miss whatever it is you want them to hear.
Similarly, you need to get your "imagery" working for you right away. If a central theme of the song is going to be how the singer is "addicted" to a relationship, then include some sort of reference to that early on, so that the listener will be listening for further development of the image. If they don't hear anything about "addiction" until the second or third verse, they may think that it's just a passing reference and not pay attention to it at that point.
Part of the job of a songwriter is to build a story, or a feeling, or an idea in the listener's head. The opening lines of a song are the foundation for that idea. The story, feeling or idea may not be expressed in that opening section, but the opening lines create the "starting point" for the song. If you can't get from that starting point to what it is you really want to say... the rest of the song is a waste.
Another thing the opening lines of a song do is to set the whole mood of the song. I wrote a lyric called "Rewrite," all about the struggles we poor songwriters go through. The song is meant to be humorous, so I started off with a deliberately awkward couplet:
- I was walking my dog Kelly / at about quarter to six;
When inspiration handed me / some clever new lyrics.
Vague Lyrics and Double Meanings
One of the things we run into occasionally on the Lyric Message Board is a lyric which is "intentionally vague." The main comment that comes back is, "I can't figure out what this is about..." This doesn't necessarily mean that the lyric couldn't be turned into a hit - witness R.E.M. - but, of course, it's difficult to critique a lyric that doesn't "make sense" to the person hearing it.Regardless, there are things that "work" in a vague story and things that don't. If you've ever read any Jung, or even Joseph Campbell, you'll have some understanding of the way certain great themes work on the subconscious, even if the conscious mind can't say just what they're about. A lyric can consist of a number of disjointed phrases which invoke feelings of, say, "loneliness," and it will work, even if it's not specifically "about" something. The songwriter can still look at the lyric, line by line, and ask themselves, "is this line working for me or against me?"
Somewhat akin to vague lyrics are lyrics which work on more than one level. The Beatles' song "Julia" was written about John Lennon's mother, but it works as a normal love song just as well. It makes the song more meaningful if you know the "subtext," but it doesn't prevent the song from working for the person who is hearing it, unexplained, for the first time.
Occasionally, I'll write a song where the "real" meaning of the song is never stated, but at the same time, I'll try to make the song work on some more "obvious" level. Maybe the inspiration for the song was my favorite sports team losing a big game, but I'll try to write it so that it also works for the listener who thinks it's just one person consoling another person in a time of trouble.
I remember one song with a "double meaning" like this that I wrote many years ago - our church was doing an Easter musical, with various different people who had known Jesus singing to him as he was being crucified. There was this girl I was sweet on, who was going to be moving out of the area in a few months; I wrote a song for her to sing in the show, as "the woman at the well", coming to say goodbye to Jesus, but the song was also about how I felt about her leaving. She understood both meanings. Unfortunately, her dad (who wasn't that wild about me) did too...
More About "You"
One thing that turns up frequently in all sorts of writing, including songwriting, is the use of "you" as part of an expression of some sort of general applies-to-most-everybody idea; sort of a "platitudinal" use of the word "you." A singer who has just been laid off will sing, "When you lose your job, it makes you feel so small." The sense is that he's expressing some truth that applies to all of us, including the listener.As I said, this is widely used, but there are times when it doesn't work so well - in particular, in a song where the singer is singing to a "you" character. "That's what I like about you," or "Baby, don't you want me, too?" I've come across a number of lyrics (and I've caught this in my own lyrics as well) where the singer is singing to some specific "you," and they make one of these general platitudinal statements, but it's a statement that does not apply to the "you" in the song. For example, in a song where the (male) singer is trying to convince "you" (female) to stay with him, or come back to him, and somewhere along the line, he makes one of these platitudinal statements like, 'when it's late at night, you need someone to hold onto.' Well, if she left him, apparently she doesn't feel that way. He's making a statement about how he feels, and he's using the platitudinal "you" to imply that (just about) everybody feels that way. But in the context of the lyric, anything he says about "you" is going to be interepreted by the listener as referring to "you," the character in the song.
Platitudinal "you" statements can work in a song, but be careful about using them in a song where "you" has been defined as referring to a character that the singer is singing to. Once you've ( :-) declared who "you" is, any statement in the song about what "you" think or how "you" feel will potentially be interpreted by a listener as referring to that same "you" - and if it's one of those platitudes that applies to everyone but the "you" of the song, it's going to weaken the lyric by diluting the character.
Praise and Worship Song Titles
An thought that came to me while I was critiquing somebody else's praise and worship song: for this kind of music, it's useful to make sure the title of your song somehow suggests what your song is about. In this particular case, someone had written a rather nice "call to worship" type song, but they called it "Changed By Your Grace." The phrase "changed by your grace" did appear once in the song, but that was really the only reference to being changed, or to "grace" in the lyric.As a worship team leader, who has spent many hours poring through Maranatha, Vineyard, Integrity, and other songbooks: the reason it helps if the song title matches the song content is this. Let's say our minister is going to preach on the topic of "changed by grace" and asks me to find a song that fits that topic. I'd see this song title, "Changed By Your Grace," and think, "hey, this might just be the song I'm looking for!" But after digging out the songbook and looking at the lyric itself, I'd go... "no, this would work as a call to worship, but that's not what I need for Sunday." On the other hand, if I was going through all my songbooks looking for some new "call to worship" songs, I probably wouldn't look at one called "Changed By Your Grace," because I'd expect it to be more of a worship / dedication song.
So - praise and worship writers, think about whether your song title matches up with what the song is really about!
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