Song starters: Straw Man

I worked out a basic musical idea for a tune this weekend and started floating around for words and a narrative idea. I don't think I'll be going in the 'story song' direction necessarily, but that's what came up first:

The straw man boarded a bus in the winter of '85
With a pint of jack, a pack of smokes, and a little girl by his side

A do kind of like opening a bunch of narrative possibilities like this, despite some of the obvious clichés involved. I was looking into how to connect the idea of a Straw Man logical fallacy with this possible title for the song. Perhaps studying some Dylan lyrics would help.

Normally, I would probably reveal the singer as the little girl some time later, and try to find a perspective where some positivity can resolve the initial tension of a deadbeat kind of Dad going off on a journey with his young daughter. Overall, though, I would find it very hard to write a song like this because of the immense number of narrative pitfalls to be avoided. Perhaps the 'Clark Rockefeller' story is a bit too fresh at the moment.

On the other hand, who knows? Maybe they would up world famous playing in a band together...

This week's handy web links:

Tips for Songwriting - How to Write a Song
Andrea Stolpe: Where Did Our Craft Go?

50 Great Lyrics Writing Resourcs

From Joel Falconer [AudioTuts]:


Tools

1. Rhymezone is a rhyming dictionary and thesaurus that sorts its search results by the number of syllables.
2. An online dictionary, since Rhymezone is bound to give you results that might work, but you’re unsure about.
3. If you’re not interested in using Word to write lyrics, there are dedicated apps like MasterWriter out there that integrate rhyming dictionaries and the like.
4. For singer-songwriters in particular, this tool page may beat all the others since, alongside the rhyming dictionary and thesaurus, it has a chord finder.

Photo by BdwayDiva1

How To

5. This Hotsource article gives some basic pointers for getting started with a lyric.
6. Robin Frederick’s How to Write a Song is one of the very few similarly titled articles out there that actually touches on all the basics.
7. Quamut offers an introduction to basic song form and structure.
8. Carla Starrett goes into adapting poetry into lyrics.
9. Berklee Shares has a free PDF on Basic Lyrical Elements.
10. This series of videos teaches you how to write an alternative pop song—some videos are about composition, but there are several on lyrics.
11. The BBC presents a page on lyrics in its songwriting guide, including interviews with successful lyricists.
12. Rock Guitar World gives an overview of the entire songwriting process with a focus on lyrics and structure.
13. Ken Hill has 21 tips on songwriting at Music Biz Academy.
14. The Muse’s Muse, a songwriting site that’s been around for ages, has an extensive beginner’s resource section.
15. If you like online courses, SongU.com has several on lyric writing.
16. There’s a selection of similarly priced songwriting courses at Musician University.
17. Lyrical Line has an extensive set of articles on the topic.
18. Music Radar has a piece suggesting 24 lyric-writing tips.
19. The page may still bear a design from the 90s, but Charles Wolff’s article is a fairly long and extensive introduction to the craft.
20. Your attitude to songwriting is just as important as your technique—Andy Roberts talks about which attitude is the right one.
21. And of course for the ultimate guide to songwriting, Scott Adams shares his advice on the Dilbert Blog.
22. This article is on dealing with rhythm in your lyrics, though I suggest copying it into Notepad to read it (the colors are terrible).
23. Berklee Music Blogs has an interesting career songwriter blog.
24. Performing Songwriter has a bunch of case studies looking at how hit songs were developed.

Photo by SAM_FORD.

Communities

25. Great Songwriting has a community for songwriters who wish to have their lyrics critiqued by other songwriters. The cost of entry is to critique lyrics for other songwriters.
26. The Hip Hove Ave forums are a place for rap and hip hop lyricists to improve their skills, critique work and engage in online battles (doesn’t that take the fun out of it?).
27. Here’s a free songwriter’s forum with a particularly active lyrics section.
28. The Songwriter’s Forum has a wide range of message boards ranging from lyrical technique to lyrical business, and has a contests section in case you feel competing with other writers will help you improve.
29. The SongStuff Music Resource Web site has a forum with an active lyrics and songwriting board, and this one may be a good choice to get involved with over the others if you want a community that will cater to lyricists while giving you a place to talk about studio gear, instruments, synth design and so on.
30. The Just Plain Folks community claims to have a membership of 51,000 songwriters and music industry professionals.

Photo by Sister72.

Books

Sometimes reading articles on the web isn’t enough—you need an immersive, in-depth and comprehensive book to get you started. Here they are.

31. Lyrics: Writing Better Words For Your Songs by Rikky Rooksby
32. The Frustrated Songwriter's Handbook by Karl Coryat & Nicholas Dobson
33. Songwriting For Dummies by Jim Peterik, Dave Austin and Mary Ellen Bickford
34. The Craft & Business of Songwriting by John Braheny
35. Songwriters on Songwriting by Paul Zollo
36. Songwriting: Essential Guide to Rhyming by Pat Pattison
37. The Business of Songwriting by Jason Blume
38. Popular Lyric Writing by Andrea Stolpe

Photo by [nati]

Inspiration

It’s often said that one should learn from the masters of a given field, and this is especially true of songwriting. You should dissect and rip apart every hit song you can get your hands on. To get you started, take a look at the lyrics of some of these songwriters, who are considered among history’s best. All the masters give this advice: study the greats. Nobody takes it seriously because it seems like a cop-out answer, or because it’s too hard to get out a lyric sheet and analyze it for yourself when you could simply read an article.

Take this advice seriously, and do it.

These are links to lyrics sites; if there’s a small child sleeping in your house, watch out for the noisy banner ads!

39. Prince
40. Joni Mitchell
41. Elvis Costello
42. Brian Wilson
43. Leonard Cohen
44. Paul McCartney
45. John Lennon
46. Tom Waits
47. Bruce Springsteen
48. Neil Young
49. Bob Dylan
50. Billy Joel
51. Eric Clapton
52. Jimi Hendrix
53. Bernie Taupin (Elton John’s lyricist)

Lyrics: Something Else

I've been working on three new songs in the last few days, one of which I just recorded a quick demo of and is of the poetic abstract sort. This second one is more of a character study / story about a girl returning home to her parent's house after many years when she left to the big city to pursue her dreams. Not exactly the most original story, I realize, but certainly one that is easy to relate to.

I've just been working with the lyrics somewhat and here is the current draft:

SOMETHING ELSE

Walking down that old dirt road
To the house in the woods
You remember from so long ago
Where you grew up fast and full of soul

Traveling home is a simpler thing
When your hands are empty, when all you bring are
Memories to the door
Though long forgotten everyone still adores you
In spite of what you put them through

You think you might say something
About a friend who lived near by
As you help them put their dishes on the shelf

Now fences are for mending
Not to keep the world outside
When you’ve left it all behind for something else

It’s nineteen years ago today
That you made your mind up and said OK
The city is the place to be
it’s everyone you want to be with
When you’re famous everyone will know why
You left, will they understand you best?

You think you might say something
About a friend who lived near by
As you help them put their dishes on the shelf

Now fences are for mending
Not to keep the world outside
When you’ve left it all behind for something else
For something else
When you’ve left it all behind for something else


July 16, 2008

Recording the Revision Process: Baby

I wrote a song called "Baby" over the weekend and I thought it might be insightful to record the revision process I went through between the song initially coming out and the final draft, which you can listen to a demo of here for reference.

Here are the lyrics as recorded:

Baby, I think I’m tired
Baby, I think I’ve tried to say that
I can’t stop thinking about
I can’t stop thinking about you

Baby, is it too late?
Baby, am I made to break?
Your heart all over again
It’s so hard just staying a friend

So don’t think it’s true baby
That everything is maybe in my heart

Is it wrong to think I’m wise
I’ve lived too long to be surprised that
I can’t stop hoping now
I can’t stop the way that I’m the way that I’m
Running away from the things that I can’t change
The way I’m trying to feel about half my age

So don’t think it’s true baby
That everything is maybe in my heart
Everything is maybe in my heart

and the form is intro-V1-V2-Riff-Refrain-Riff-V3-extension-Refrain-RepeatedLine-Riff-Outro

In the first verse, I made the following changes:
- 2nd line "tried to tell you" -> changed to "tried to say that" which seemed stronger
- originally the 3rd and 4th lines were just"I can't stop thinking now" twice which was a bit meaningless. I really wanted the song to have an optimistic edge and be more about falling in love than out of love so I added the "you" to "I can't stop thinking about... you" in the 4th line
- originally the verse had a 5th line similar in format to the end of verse 3. I cut it for conciseness.
- I'm still playing with the arrangement, but I opted to add a lower harmony to the 2nd line and a doubled higher harmony to the 3rd line where a piano, vibraphone, and accordion all play sparingly (A guitar and upright bass play from the beginning).

Verse 2:
- The 2nd line was originally "Baby, I think I'm made to break" and the 1st line was "Baby, I think it's late". These felt too weak despite their strong connection to the opening of verse 1. Instead, I used a timeworn strategy and changed them to questions which increased their impact.

Verse 3:
The 4th line was originally "I hope you'll see that I'm too blind to be ... " which I changed to "I can't stop that way that I'm the way that I'm". This meant I could use the repeated initial phrase "I can't stop" in both the 1st and 3rd verses making the 2nd line of the 3rd lead coda-like to the extension which is based on the refrain but adding more resolution (back to the tonic D) as well as a new passing chord sequence (Bm - A). I'm also playing with repetition at several levels - I've always been one to avoid repeating phrases but after working out songs like Company in My Back which is filled with repeats, I thought I'd try and borrow some of Mr. Tweedy's techniques - the held out initial words are similarly inspired by the video of "Sunken treasure" which is the initial point of departure for the song.

Asking Questions: Songwriting Zen

From Songwriting Zen:

John Cowell blogs on asking questions to improve your lyrics and get people more involved.

Free online rhyhming dictionary

I sometimes use a free online rhyming dictionary like Rhymer / WriteExpress. The desktop version I have (it came with Finale) allows one to constrain the syllables of the results as well.