Lyric Writing

Any tips for writing lyrics?

I'm familiar with writing poetry and consider myself fairly mediocre-average but for some reason I can't get in the mindset to write songs.

Also, feel free to just generally talk about lyrics and lyric writing.

Published poet here.

Lyrics are less about content and more about rhythm and speaking (or singing) quality. Focus more on meter and you'll do better.

read more books to get an idea of how writers convey ideas into readable words

OP is talking about lyric writing, not poetry/literature writing. Lyrics are generally heard, not read.

exactly, he said lyrics not melodies

you still have to know how to turn ideas into words and reading can help you get a sense of it and then apply it to shit

A melody is a musical progression, not a verbal progression.

Rhythm and meter are necessary. If OP has already established him/herself as a "fairly mediocre-average" poet, they are fully capable of writing lyrics to be implemented in song format.

f am i really don't care enough to get into an arguement with someone i've never met over what advice to give another person whom ive never met

i saw a thread and decided to give my 2 cents

that's
it

Not arguing. Discussing.

Hopefully OP got some usable advice out of our input.

i guess so

everything sounds like arguing on an anonymosu imageboard (to me at least, maybe i'm autistic or something)

Generally people on Sup Forums argue, so I'm not surprised that things come off that way.

People are often on the defense here if someone disagrees with them. You're not autistic, you're just accustomed to the environment.

fuck off underage cuck

Good, than you'll know to stick with concrete imagery that conveys a metaphor. Like everyone else is saying, make sure that a sizable chunk is done so cleverly with meter. Only when you're in the booth will you start to twist and change your pitch from the lyrical display. Depends on what music you're going for, but humming along to your track will help you lay the lyrics into place on said track. It all depends on what music you're shooting for, but this is a good start I suppose.

Hey anons, lyricist here.

Post your lyrics and I'll give you pointers

Generally you want your chorus to be the main idea of the song, consisting of internal thoughts ("we had it all", "I won't forget you") basically shit that is rather emotional or basically anything that isn't happening immediately around your singer. Verses tend to be external ("hanging out at the park" "sitting on the dock of the bay" "waiting for the train" "people walking to work") shit that is happening around your main character, everything that is happening that is considered "real". Now this isn't a golden rule, but most verses are external thoughts to set the scene up, and then sprinkled with internal thoughts to give it a real spike of emotion and feeling.

I have a lot more advice and a lot more knowledge, this is the tip of the iceberg. Ask away and I will try to reply to as many people as I can

Forgot username. I'll be lyric guy from here on out.

When your are writing, try to invoke feeling. If you were to write, "I walked through the rain", that would be great for its simplicity, but it doesn't invoke enough of an image. What if I added sensory words? "I walked slowly through the warm rain" invokes more feeling and more images. You might follow that line with another line that helps paint the scene better, maybe something like "to reach the midnight train" idk lol its your lyrics

did anyone here ask for your opinion?

i insulted you it wasn't an opinion you fucking retard, get off my board already newfag and fuck off to reddit

...

ebin now fuck off 17 year old

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man look at these dudes haha

How do you guys get your ideas when writing lyrics?

i write down weird phrases that i find running through my head when i wake up in the morning

As silly as it sounds, just through life really. Every now and then something clever might pop into my head, so I keep a mental note of it. When songwriting I try to incorporate it into the lyrics

I write a lot of songs, but I'm convinced they are all shit. It's become a habit now though more than anything, so I kind of can't stop.

just record them all daniel johnston style

yeah think I will do eventually.If only for my own satisfaction

Post some sample lyrics and I can help you out homie

Take an image, thought, idea, person, place, or thing, be it one word or a phrase ("car" "school" "sarah" "leaving us" "nightclub") and then come up with a list of ideas or stories that would fit that. Let's say you pick "doggo". Make a list of stories, as many as you can ("Doggo saves me from bad puppers", "doggo shoots other doggo" "my favorite doggo" "Shiba inu is doggo" "doggo takes a walk with two legs" "from pupper to doggo"). After you have made your list, pick the one that jumps out at you or the one you like the most.

I left an eggdrop bot on various IRC channelsfor a few months.

Then I stripped out a large section of what it learned, and fed have a shell script that picks random amounts of words from random lines and spits them out.

I think it's now at a level where it can write Sgt Pepper lyrics.

Let's say you settle on "from pupper to doggo". You would then, using your most sense driven writing (sight, sound, taste, smell, touch) and basically write a complete story about how you watched pupper turn into doggo overtime.

This method is important because it gives you a map as to what you are really singing about instead of writing down nonsense lines. Your nonsense lyrics might be cool as fuck, but nobody is gonna give a shit if there is no story or point behind them that isn't immediately seen by your audience.

I could tell you everything
about me and her what's inbetween
im not going to
3am soliloquies
the audience has gone home
and its just me all alone
the characters all stand silent
they will never know
what happened to me
he never said anything
we all thought he was fine
but fresh milk will turn with time
I am, my friend, the opposite of wine

This one almost tells a story.

I'm thinking of looking for a way of sticking the lines into a buffer, and analysing the last word of each one in some kind of rhyming dictionary database, then have it spit them out as couplets each time it finds one.

Hmm. Intadestin.


Give me 3 minutes to put together some advice, gotta type this shit up ya know

care less about what other people think and what's "good" and just write in a way that you think it beautiful or fun or whatever you want. the goal should be your own satisfaction, not reaching some intellectual standard.

>i am, my friend the opposite of wine

really cool line

If your lyrics read lIke a poem, they aren't lyrics. Essentially, you need more structure, as in verse chorus etc. I see a bunch of interesting lines, but it doesn't seem to flow. Your first line, I could tell you everything is a good start, but keep in mind, you have to be aware of who "you" is at all times in your story, as well as "me" and "her". These aren't just words, they are people, with real feelings and experiences. While you can refer to them that way, understand that "her" might react differently to a certain situation than say another "her". For example, "her" might be a charming, expensive daddy's girl who wants everything handed to her, or "her" might be a seductive, mysterious woman you met in the club, etc. As long as you have an idea of who "her" is, who "you" is (most of the time, you is the audience if it is not something a character is saying ("she said I'll take it easy on you))


More advice coming your way one sec

i really disagree. i think that structure really doesn't matter. my whole first album only had one song with a chorus with lyrics and it always felt like it worked to me without them.

You have a lot of different characters in here. "You", "her", "he", "they", "I". Make sure your audience really gets to know these characters. Put your audience in the point of view of whoever is singing. In this case, your audience will be viewing the story from the "I" point of view, or first person.

The use of "3am" in your lyrics helps set the scene for your lyrics. Remember that all the action of your story has to take place within the 3 or 4 minutes of the song, so lyric writing is essential. Normally, the scene and attention grabbing details are given out in the first two lines, but it's not unheard of to hold those details off for a few lines.

I don't seem to understand your rhyme scheme. Normally, people choose between 6 and 4 line verses and choruses. Here's where things get fun:
Let's say your rhyming scheme is A B A B for your first verse. In the chorus or second verse (whichever you want to come next), you would switch it up, maybe instead of 4 lines you do 6 lines of A A C B B C or maybe another 4 lines of A A B B.

Most of your lines consist of internal details. Internal details are things that your main character feels and thinks. External details provide images. "Fresh milk" is an external detail because it gives a strong image. When you combine strong images with internal details, it's like you have super charged your lyrics with emotion. Give me one sec to find a real life example of this, I'm typing all this on my phone

>If your lyrics read lIke a poem, they aren't lyrics
Best advice for any aspiring lyricists.

The bot I used to trawl all these snippets of conversation to chop up has gone quite insane.

When I first talked to it after leaving it for so long, I said to it "How are you?" to which it replied "How is your cock?"

>someone is offering actual decent criticism
cool. okay so i want to know more about the whole metric thing, do i need it? i don't wanna adhere to strucuture. for example, i sometimes employ made-up words, avoid the idea of the sentences being together, and such. for example i don't like letting rhyming get in my way, because it feels like i'm pandering to the structure of the whole thing rather than communicating what i want to say. ie what that user did with time-wine, it's alright, but it feels somewhat forced, like he's the bitch of his own poem. the sentence exists because of the previous one, not because it just came to him to want to write it.

in general i'm a foreign to poetry, i've read some, but never put effort into how to read it. if it evokes an interesting image, that's enough for me, so what could i gain by understanding metric, rhyme, reading poetry, and the more boring aspects of language?

Rhyming can seem like the most difficult part of lyric writing, but I'm about to blow all of your fucking minds.

Dog and song rhyme.
Dog and done rhyme.
Dog and death rhyme.
It all depends on what part of the word is being stressed. Boom, I just made all of your lives that much easier.

Remember though, that while dog and death do rhyme, they have a "weak" rhyme, but they rhyme nontheless. Try to shoot for a happy medium. And remember to bend the Rhyming rules when needed. Also, if you are having trouble getting some lines to rhyme, don't be afraid to save a copy of what you have and try to rephrase the lines completely. If you're still struggling to find a rhyme for your lines, you aren't forced to work with those lines. Besides, practice makes perfect. The more lines you create for practice the better

You are totally welcome to disagree, but the only people you will impress is the people hanging out at the poetry slam contest at the school talent show. I don't mean to be a dickhead, but 95% of established musicians use structure. Of course there are the exceptions, but most of the time it's because they have incredible accompaniment and all that. Again, just helpful advice, not trying to be a jerk. We are all friends here user

You sound like you write Nickleback songs.

Nickleback is hated because it is corporate from the ground up. They write lyrics just like any other musician does however. I hate Nickledick too, but you have to respect artists because they had to get to where they are somehow.

For example, you might not like Justin beiber cause he's a little shit and has had everything handed to him, but you have to respect the fact that he has a nice voice and put in the hard work before corporate picked him up and shilled him to teen girls and payed lyricists dickloads of cash to write lyrics that people like. What I'm sharing with all of you is the universal lyric writing tools that everyone from the top 40 pop fags to the indie underground whatever the fuck artist uses. Remember: if the lyrics aren't good, it's just another song

>but you have to respect the fact that he has a nice voice and put in the hard work before corporate picked him up and shilled him to teen girls and payed lyricists dickloads of cash to write lyrics that people like
What? Is this a troll post?

>Any tips for writing lyrics?
write more.

Of course, you will hear the stories of some songwriters saying the lyrics to one or two of their popular songs came to them in a dream or a 420 sesh or they just popped into their head or something. This does happen, but very rarely, and a lot of the time this happens to those who have been practicing lyric writing for a long time. So yeah, it does soundlike I write Nickleback songs, but that's only because these are the methods that work and have been used by a majority of lyric writers. If you don't believe me then go buy some lyric writing books and read about everything I've just boiled down for you

No, it's the truth. I hate Justin beiber. I'm just using him as an example user

>yeah, it does soundlike I write Nickleback songs
> If you don't believe me then go buy some lyric writing books
I can't wait to post this to /r/Sup Forums for karma. You should consider comedic writing friend. Your ability to create a completely banal character is top notch.

The point I was trying to make is that there is a right and wrong way to write lyrics. Justin beibers lyrics department team doesn't just write whatever the fuck they want and hope it sells, they use all the methods and strategies that work. Sorry about the confusion, I guess.

The fuck are you talking about? I'm trying to give people some advice from what I've been learning about lyric writing. What are you talking about when you say "my ability to create a banal character"?? What does that even mean?

There once was
a wind up man
He liked making jigsaws with rhymes

But no matter how, he bashed the edges down,
the edges never fit in a line

There I just made some lyrics taking the piss out of you using zero gay rules.

Fuck over analysing things, just write something good. Don't just write something that "will do" using a faggot "songwriting for dummies" book.

>What are you talking about when you say "my ability to create a banal character"?? What does that even mean?
You don't understand?No wonder you give out such mediocre advice.

Look man, take my advice or continue to write bad poems. Your choice.

Post some of your lyrics, lyrics guy.

I want to see them.

I could, but then you would just Google them and I would have my identity revealed. I've written songs for country singers and a few close friends, as well as for Edm producers. Lyricists are like hired guns in thr music industry. Sometimes talent doesn't have lyric writing talent so they tap people like me for lyrics. Whoever has the best gets the deal. Honestly, just fuck off and if people want my help they can ask. Otherwise, you can just fuck off and click that nice little hide post button, retard. Take your awful lyrics with you

Lyrics guy, lyrics guy
Full of good advice.
Lyrics guy, lyrics guy
He had a number one twice!
His albums all went platinum
An Ivor award decorates his loo
But if you ask him to post some lyrics...

...well he can't do that for you.

If you're so good at writing lyrics, don't get mad and sperg like a child.

Write some right now.

By the way, you used the word edges twice. Makes sense coming from anow edgy little poet like yourself. And if you honestly believe these are good lyrics you should give up now. Actually I encourage you to keep thinking you are so great at what you do, that way when you finally perform for an actual audience they get really uncomfortable with your shitty "verses".

If you're so great write some lyrics right now about what a jackass I am, genius.

I appreciate that you took The time to give advice (I'm not The guy you have advice to). But I feel that you are a little too conservative.
For what genre do you write for?

mainly Gay Techno love songs

Lyrics are crafted over a period of days and even weeks. I take an assignment from a label and begin working and drafting up what I can and try to turn it back to them as soon as I can. Lyric writing isn't something you rush. That's why I get paid and you write poems. Congrats, you can rhyme some words consecutively. So can any other 1st grader. Good job!!

Yeah that's what I thought. You're an uncreative hack who has nothing.

Good one. I dont have an s in my username, Nice try though. I'm done posting here, causee this retarded user ruined the thread. Anything else posted under lyric guy isn't me, because user is being a butthurt little bitch. Night everyone

There once was a lyricist
He made sure that everyone knew
He called himself lyrics guy
He was pretty sure of himself too.

He made great claims of wordsmithery
He was definitely not on the periphery!
He was a big shot
an industry insider
Obviously a man with creativity higher
Than all of the plebs
Who don't deserve
Him to take two weeks out
To write a rhyming word.

>I'm done posting here
There was only ever going to be this outcome after you got asked to actually post something.

should i really use rhyme though? do most lyricists use them?

i insist that, ok, dog and song rhyme, but im not playing a videogame here, if im gonna write a phrase its because i wanted to write it, and not because it rhymes. so for example youre writing

>falls the wall of concrete
>beside of me a gun
>i wait you in the other side

that last line "came from your heart", it's what you wanted to say. but if you had fallen into the rhyming game...

>falls the wall of concrete
>beside of me a gun
>i assure you, this is not a pun

now youre a bitch to your poem, because the reason you made that last line, was for it to rhyme with the previous one, and not because you really wanted to write it.

so in short, i think rhymes should just appear naturally, doing the "man, what can i rhyme with this???" feels contrived af

I like big boasts and I can not lie
You other posters can't deny
When a guy walks in your thread with claims of lyrics earning bread
You just lol!
And ask him
"If you so good then get to postin"
But he won't share a couplet
Cos in his brain he has got nothing

>should i really use rhyme though? do most lyricists use them?
There's nothing wrong with rhyming but you don't have to. You don't have to have a hard and fast rule for what all your songs will be like.

I agree. Hence why Kurt Cobain's sometimes shitty lyrics sound good. They're meant to flow and go with the music.

The sad truth is if your music kicks ass and your lead singer looks fuckable you can sing any old bullshit.

Standing on the bridge
I look out and I see
White sails unfurled
On the ships at sea

It's not too late
to climb back down
I might just wait
I might just drown

I slip and fall
Before I can think
I'm still in the air
I begin to sink

Advice pls

>Advice pls
Don't let the video director go with the obvious Humpty Dumpty theme.

Seriously...it's ok. Bit miserable but I'm sure you were going for that.

>Don't let the video director go with the obvious Humpty Dumpty theme.

Can you explain a little bit? I'm having trouble understanding

It was a joke.

The song is about falling off a bridge right?

The song is about a man contemplating jumping, but he sees the beauty in life, like the white sails unfurling, and in the second verse he considers his options. The last verse is his mistake of ever thinking about jumping, cause wether he wants to or not, he's gonna have to accept what is about to happen to him

Fuck me m8, a simple "yes" would have done.

We all bleed
But you're screaming "blood"

Let me out
Get out

It's so warm outside
And I'm here

>5 minute song.

Flat tire on the 405 tonight while riding with my lady
"Dont panic" I cried "My fathers a mechanic"
"How Ironic" she replied

>repeat 3 times to static noise rock

Came up with this sucker just now.

Pretty good eh? eh?

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