Ideas and Advice for Real Songwriters (formerly songwright.co.uk)
Category
Lyrics
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08.25.09Songwriting isn’t lyric writing, even for BowieThis morning on the today program I heard an interview with Nick Troop, a songwriter who claimed to be doing a psychological study of songwriting to investigate psychological health or... something. A brief investigation took me to Nick's websites, and the first thing to point out, as Nick does, is that his analysis is not supposed to be scientific, and not supposed to be taken to seriously. It's a bit of fun, although I'm sure it would be interesting to genuinely investigate the interaction between psychological health and songwriting. His website 'The Gospel According to David Bowie' analyses Bowie's songs ...
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08.12.09Songwriting Sketches – The Exorcism of Marjorie GraceFor the 50/90 challenge I'd thought I'd try something different and write a set of lyrics before I composed any music. Usually, I write lyrics and music at the same time, starting of with melody ideas and a mixture of possible lyrics, nonsense verse and random 'la' and 'doo' sounds. This time I forced myself to write lyrics to 'The Exorcism of Marjorie Grace' before I sang a note. I haven't finished yet, I'm about halfway. However, I've recorded some sketches, so I thought I'd share the process with you. Sketch one - The chorus melody Something interesting happened as I was ...
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06.01.09Ultimate Songwriting Lessons – Songwriting Hooks and Songwriting MeatI just stumbled across this video, via this post. It's from this website. First off, let me make clear that I have a very low opinion of sales pages like this one. I know they've been shown to work, that they're 'good marketing,' but I really don't like them. However, don't take that us an opinion of the book, as I haven't read it, I've just seen the video. A few thoughts occured as I watched, and I made some rough notes: The narrator equates artistic worth with 'lyrical depth'. Personally I would argue that lyrics are not the main conveyor of meaning in popular ...
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06.01.09Quick Tip – Don’t be a Slave To Songwriting ConventionMarking students coursework at my school, I came to a song that I gave almost full marks to. One reason for the high marks was the song's fantastic, subtle playing with songwriting conventions. - The Bridge - The bridge happens after the second chorus, right? Not according to my student. Instead she put it between the 2nd verse and 2nd chorus. Right at the point I was expecting to hear the chorus again, I instead heard a contrasting minor key and a new bridge I hadn't heard before. This the effect of creating a pleasing, balanced feel despite it being a short ...
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11.09.083 Great Songwriting PostsThere are plenty of good songwriting bloggers out there, so I thought I'd share some of the good writing out there. I've been known to complain about songwriting er... writing. My biggest gripe is those posts that confuse songwriting with lyric writing and imply that all you need think about are the words you use. But of course lyrics, while not the whole thing, are very important. So here's a great post about rewriting your lyrics by Andrea Stolpe Post 1 - Quick Rewriting Tips I particularly like her advice on using specific, interesting verbs, rather than generic ones. On the subject of lyric writing, Gary Ewer has some ...
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09.04.08Songwriting by Numbers part 1 – Title and LyricsWelcome to the first in a series of articles in which I'll write a song 'by numbers'. What do I mean by that? I'm going to write a song as an exercise to illustrate a lot of common songwriting points. I'm going to go through it step by step, one element at a time. Now, songwriting is supposed to be a challenge to discover something new and different. But not this time. This one's going to be an exercise and nothing more. It's going to be cheesy, it's going to be one huge cliché, it's going to have bad lyrics and an ...
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05.03.08Songwriting WorksheetsIn my everyday life as a music teacher, I tend to design quite a lot of worksheets. In my online life trying to share songwriting ideas, I've never put this skill into use. Until now, that is. You see, a written worksheet can be a very useful thing. As songwriters we're often scribbling on random bits of paper. A worksheet, properly designed, can give order to the chaos of our ideas, doodlings and scribbles. It can help us make sense of what we're writing. Worksheets for the Songwriting Guitarist That's the working title for my new ebook, which I'm going to gradually publish over the ...
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02.03.08Second FAWM song'Black water' [audio=http://www.wellwrite.co.uk/songwright/tomslatter_blackwater.mp3] First draft lyrics: Treading water, wound in my side Overboard in the dark of the night grinning faces threw me to my doom and now my arms and legs burn with the strain Threw me right in, cursing my sins here alone, I'll admit that they're right All the traces, the things that I've done I thought I'd get away with all that pain Black water, Floating out on the tide Salt water, filling me up inside Once a while ago, thought I might stop Though I'd sinned there was time to make right And now pace has, become too much, as I go under I begin to pray Black water, Floating out ...
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01.20.08Stealing songwriting techniques from Cole Porter’s Anything GoesI briefly mentioned this song in a recent post. This isn't the best performance of it, but it will do for our purposes (here's another recording). There are some songwriting ideas worth pointing out (and stealing). 1. The lyrics In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking, now heaven knows Anything goes. Do I really need to say anything about these, other than to mention that they're brilliant? 2. The choice of scale That verse melody only uses a Major pentatonic scale. That, combined with a three note pattern over a 4/4 time signature, followed by a high-note climax and you've got a ...
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01.19.08How to write a melody that worksEveryone composes from different starting points, whether with chords, melody, lyrics or a tiny snippet of an idea recorded months earlier. Sooner or later you are going to need a melody, but thankfully there' a suprising consensus on what makes an effective melody. So much so that it's possible to list common features: 1. Note choice. There tends to be a good balance between stepwise motion and leaps - too much leaping from one note to another can sound disjointed, but well judged leaping in pitch can be wonderfully expressive. Interesting non-chord notes are also often emphasised. 2. Rhythm first. try this ...
