Come on, write me a song!
Where do lyrics come from? Do you need a particular place/situation to be able to write good lyrics?
Usually my words and music come together as I write things on my guitar. I start by picking some good chords either on the guitar or the piano and then I immediately think about a fitting melody. Then I start to sing gibberish trying to get a feeling of what it could all sound together. I slowly transform the gibberish into words that have the same lenght or "resonate" with what I'm singing.
If you start writing a song, you probably already have something on your mind that needs to get out so you just have to translate this buzz you are hearing. That's why I almost always start by choosing a theme, then a title and what the story/feeling of it will be.
Bad things happen when this doesn't work...! Like right now, but I'll get through it :)
Comments
it end to agree with the glitch...... but my tracks always come out how i feel....... the song flows from my emotions....... but i do love listening to music which others have made and then i love to add the melody and lyrics....... on my page on vox i have a track which one of my friends in the states sent to me....... i would listen and close my eyes to the music........ and it worked...... i came up with the melody and lyrics for Pandoras Box....... music to me is soooooo important....... emotions and feelings...... songwriting to me is storytelling...... bev xxx
You know, sometimes it works like what I said in my post, others just like you said in your comment and just recently I discovered writing by "feelings". I start by choosing a general idea of what the lyrics will be about (it could be an abstract concept, it could be just one word), then I think about the structure of the song and what particular emotions I am trying to express, in which section and by using which words and sounds. Our new song is growing like this, and it's got so much potential :)
Hi The Glitch! I shall share with you one of my songwriting techniques.
Firstly I rarely write the lyrics in one go. Instead, I always have a notebook to hand and write down any words that interest me. For instance, I might be watching TV and a character will say a really cool phrase or an advert might have an interesting slogan, if so I write it down.
Often I just make phrases up, stray sentences that I like the sound of. Just before I go to sleep,I find is a good time to write.
A good technique is to just write whatever comes into my head on bit of paper and when I've filled a page I read it all and pick out any lines that sound cool, adding it to my notebook. After a while I end up filling a book with pages of lines. Then whenever I've written some music that needs lyrics I always have a huge backlog of words to draw from!