I usually start writing a song when a hook pops into my head, usually consisting of just a few words sung to a particular melody. I'll drone on about this some more at a later date.
But when I don't have a hook to build from I tend to write the music to a song first, and add the lyric later. This can be a problem. I'm hard to please when it comes to writing my own lyrics - for me, the line between too cheesy and too obscure is very fine indeed. It's an aspect of my songwriting I really need to improve, and so for this next song I'm going to try writing the words first, away from the music.
I don't think I've tried setting words to music since I was doing my A-Levels. It might work; it might be a total disaster. WE SHALL SEE!
6 comments:
How interesting, I often start with the lyric. Not usually the whole thing, just a verse or chorus. I find that the words present their own rhythm and sometimes suggest a melody. Then I grab the guitar and let one influence the other. I used to start with music, because I felt that as this was my background I should, but it has almost never worked for me. So now, it's always lyric first. Good luck!
I always imagined that writing the lyrics after would be more tricky. Do you carry a dictaphone to capture phrases on the hop?
Alex - that does surprise me. I look forward to seeing how this works. How do we do the Fat Pigeon stuff? Mixture of the two really, isn't it?
Kat - always have my trusty Moleskine with me. Trouble is I end up scribbling things down in there and then forgetting about them. When I find them several months later they don't seem as exciting!
Work with them. What might seem uninteresting could spin into something remarkable. It was the only way I could work when I had scripts to write at Uni.
Snippets of overheard conversations/random thoughts transformed into poems or lines for my characters.
Yeah a mixture.
An unholy mixture!
Also, if I start with music i never come up with anything new - I churn out the same tedious riff/chord progression that I've been trying to shoehorn into a song for ten years!
Now, seeing as I'm on the internet I'm going to order a motherfucking pizza.
I have that problem too when I start writing on the piano. Mathematical was written on the bass; Country Life on the CBG... Need to do one on the Otamatone, I think.
Post a Comment