Musician Forum - Band Discussion Board - BandMix

Eh... I would say make up jibberish as you feel out the chord progression / sing a melody first. Then make up words and sylables to match the melody.

Thats one way to avoid writing poetry that you just cant seem to fit with music, or make work with a song.

Using a thesaurus can help, as can making lists of rhyming words when you haven't anything better to do. You'd be surprized at the ideas that can come from this alone.

I play with words all the time, though, & I know there are lots of ppl that don't.

Any exercise you do to improve your vocabulary, or to assign various meanings to words, or even change the pronunciation, can help.

For example - "again" is usually pronounced "ah-GEN," but in some songs it's pronounced "a-GAIN." Same with "been" - it can be spoken as "bin" or "bean."

As with anything else - if you want to get better at writing lyrics, you gotta work on writing lyrics. When you hear something unusual that catches your ear, write it down. Later, try to work something around it.

I heard one the other day that sticks in my mind - "She's so skinny she has to tease her hair to keep her pants up!"

I'd love to fit that in a song...but it seems a little long to me.

There are lots of tricks in the lyracist's BIN (LOL). The more you play with wurdses, the better you'll git.

Gud luk.

KLUGMO wrote:Tank, this may sound pretty fundamental but it works. Decide on the subject you want to write about and write it in the center of a piece of paper with a circle around it. Now draw 5 lines out like rays from the sun. At the end of each line write a single word that relates to the center subject. For example Love is subject and related is emotions, sex, family, security, trust. Now from each of these related words write 3 extentions like from trust would be 3 short phrases will she cheat on me, will temptation ruin it, I like trusting somebody. Do this from each word. You can continue this until you have exhausted your thoughts about center subject. At that point you will have a pretty complete reference to draw from when writing your song. Now juts look for the cadence in words and rymeing potential. I believe this is called a vinette.

There You Go, thats a start.

excuse mispelled words

Klugmo,

I read this suggestion from you before, on another thread quite awhile back, and I should have told you then, that.... This is a GREAT suggestion, and one I plan on incorporating myself.

First . . .
Listen to the music in the song.
Just listen.
Ok, now . . .
Don't think about it. Instead - how does it make you feel?
.
Ok, now you're feeling happy, angry, disappointed, elated, horny, pissed, in a dark mood, in a hopeful mood . . . whatever.
.
BUT - you SHOULD be feeling something from the music.
If not - then skip that song - it sucks - go on to your next song, until you find a song which really makes you feel something.
.
Then think of 3 things, or 3 events or 3 people who have (or could) make you feel the same way as the song.
You've got to fit the message to the song.
Then write about it, to someone who doesn't even know about it.
.
Add rhymes when you think of it, but get the message out there, first.
.
When you find something that really seems to say it best - make that the chorus.

I like Klugmo's idea, too.
For me, I like to use word association.

I have a song called "Pluto". In it I reference all things Pluto: The planet, the Greek god, the cartoon dog...it's kind of neat how they all tied together:
"Once upon a time, he was a god.; Times have changed, erased his pedigree.; Distant and silent-a sentinel, a rock.; Now forgotten in the realm of history.

Oh well, I like it anyway.

Actually I wanted to post on this a while back. I do remember some kind of chart that would help with lyric theory being posted on here? Perhaps I could be mistaken?

philbymon wrote:Using a thesaurus can help,

Here's a link to a rhyming site my buddy sent me, i haven't used it too much yet but it works, and can be funny! Enjoy!

rhymezone.com

I've used rhymezone.com
.
I endorse it; it's been handy.

I usually keep a small notepad handy, in the truck or car, especially in my guitar case, and i jot down things I hear when Im out and about, or random ideas that pop in my head, or something someone says that catches my ear, seems goofy, but after a week or so I had tons of stuff to work with and use, works well because its already been filtered by yourself and gets you in the frame of mind. After a year it gets like a time capsule, i find stuff that I wonder where the idea came from when i wrote it, so make memo's when you do, its cool.