Sunday, June 28, 2009

Lyrics - Tips on Writing Effective Lyrics

Writing songs for some can be one of the toughest parts of being a musician, especially if you have'nt been able to complete your first song. Its like being a virgin and not knowing exactly what to do, but of course, over time, the more and more you pound away at it, the better you get. Check Spelling

Lyrics are the part of the song most listeners identify with, it can make or break your song. Some songs start with lyrics, and the music is added later, which in my opinion is more difficult than those that start with a musical arrangement adding lyrics later. For this example I'm going to assume you have the musical part of the song written and its time to start writing lyrics.

There are many ways of accomplishing the lyrical content of a song, different things work for different people, so I'm going to give some tips I personally use when writing lyrics.

Once I have a song arrangement and all the pieces put together and recorded I will start playing a piece of the song over and over, either the chorus or the verse, and I will start humming a melody as a start point. Sometimes it takes a few runs through, but the basis for this is I'm humming a melody to see how many syllables i will need in each lyric phrase. Its the same idea as poetry. Once Ive established how many syllables are need I start filling in the blanks.

Now many you have a subject idea for the song, maybe you dont, but something that works for me is just opening the mind and once Ive got that melody I just start singing one liners until something clicks, usually the one liner will direct me in a direction as far as a subject. Once that subject of the song is established you have a platform to start writing on.

Now of course you want the syllable content to match in each line of the verse or chorus, as well as the last word of each phrase to rhyme. Come up with words related to your subject and find words that rhyme with them, a dictionary or thesaurus is a good reference point as far as word usage goes.

Now remember that your lyrics need to tell a story, and they need to be organized. If you have 3 verses in your song like a typical song does, your first verse needs to be the start of your story, your 2nd verse needs to tell the story, and your 3rd verse needs to basically end your story.

This is just a basic layout for those of you who might have never written a song, those of you struggling to write lyrics, or those looking for different ideas. There are many ways to write lyrics, music has no rules, Make it YOURS. This basic idea has worked for me many times over, and I hope for those of you struggling it gives you an idea of somewhere to start. If anyone else has anything more to add, please feel free to post. I will be back with ALOT more on the subject of songwriting and lyric writing that get more indepth, I wanted to have a starting point here for those having trouble. Hope this helps, Keep Rockin!!!!

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