Useful Web Links

A few internet tidbits for the week:

Jodi Krangle's Reference Guide for Beginning Songwriters [ Muse's Muse ]
The articles are a good place to start

Harmonic Progression of the Beatles
An extremely in-depth academic analysis of the innovative and distinctive harmonies underling the songs of Beatles and how those innovations are a key part of the songs

Songwriting articles at TAXI

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)

Songwriting Links for the Week

A collection of links to chew on for the next week or two:

Creative Writing Resources
Groups of links for writers, such as character name generators and writer's tools.

Beatles Songwriting Database
Album by album annotated recollections by John and Paul, mostly about who wrote what and how they felt about each song.

Lyrical Ling Songwriting Articles and Songwriter Community Web Site
Several useful songwriting tips articles

Irene Jackson's Songwriting Tips

Lifehacker: Why Ryan Adams is so Prolific

Songbridge
A Canadian organization that puts out a weekly pitch sheet of songs needed

Submit your CD for review by the Muse's Muse

Common Song Structures

It never hurts to have a quick refresher on possible song forms. Today, I wrote a song (Soliloquy) and began by first writing the three verses. The first verse sets the stage and touches on the idea of an imaginary epic LOTR-esque narrative:

An illuminated manuscript, A sword of the finest steel
A mission fraught with peril, as I savor my last meal
And it feels to me It feels like my last
Breath should really be an endless soliloquy
So I better write it Better write it down

The second verse initiates another similar imaginary and equally familiar spaceman narrative, carving out the start of a larger context for the parallel verses:

The stars look so peaceful As I glide along through space
Looking for a planet That might save the human race
But it’s been years since I’ve been gone From the planet I called home
I miss my wife and family I wonder if they still remember me

For the third verse, I opted to be less "particular" and also to blur together the different references to narratives and performance:

The stories have no endings The speakers have no lines
The costumes all are borrowed and the music’s out of time
And when the final dancers stop to take their bows
It feels like that should be my final soliloquy
So I better write it Better write it down

Repeating the eponymous concept of the Soliloquy as a unifier. At this point, I considered making the song with only the three versions (at just under 3 minutes and with some instrumental extension ending each verse) but decided for the sake of contrast to add a bridge between the second and third verse, taking the oppotunity to mirror the parallel of the initial verses and refer somewhat subtly to the Soliloquy:

Someday I’ll go home
And when the dragon’s dead
I will let my weary feet head to the road

Someday I’ll breath that air that I need
And slowly start to read aloud
The words that for so long have been my silent reverie

Rewriting clinic: the double meaning love song

I thought I'd record here the process in generating a song I wrote yesterday and today. I began by leafing through my book of songs and demos, and looking at one older song (a popular live number many years ago) that I did a quick demo for that clocked in at a weighty five minutes in length ( AABAAB format ). I began singing the first line in an improvistory manner which led to the first few lines sung in a much slower tempo, and I worked out new chords behind what I was singing, taking some care to make them extra colorful using a droning open G string throughout a descending chord sequence (C minor, C11 no3, Bdim +6, A/F add2, F add2, Gs4->3).

I wound up with a somewhat depressing and cryptic first verse after banging on the words for a little while:

There’s a dark stain on the windowpane
That you can not wash away
Some thing in the morning light
That makes you turn and say
It makes you turn and say goodbye

Not wanting to write a downer song I came up with a more optimistic easy to get along with refrain:

But suddenly there’s a reason
Everyone seems so alive out on the road
If I knew what I could believe in
Could be my comfort someday when I grow old?

Though with a little unnecessary doubt in the third line, an unanswered question in the second (why is the person out on the road? this rates high on the cliché meter as well...). Proceeding along I wound up with the stock formal dilemma of what do about another AABAB song.

First I added a bridge, originally after the 2nd refrain. This came out as:

Every night I fall down on my knees
And slowly breathe
I can’t keep they sky from falling
I can’t improve on make believe
Every day I’m dreaming when I call you on the phone
When I listen to your message
And I know you’re not alone

Putting some deliberate double meaning in the verse. Being a big fan of Nabokov's Pale Fire, I continue to debate the idea of a narrator who is not what he seems at first, not a romantic pitch but possibly someone who just doesn't interpreting rejection properly. Is the woman not alone because she is with someone else or with the narrator per his feelings and imagination?

I made a few refinements to resolve the formal dilemmas:
- Bridge after the third verse and before the final refrain
- An extra line tacked on to the first verse that partly anticipates the bridge
- The intro is connected to the song by being used before each verse and is also the 2nd chord
- The outro Csus -> C at the end of the refrain is in a different meter
- The 4th line of the refrain contains a perfect cadence back to C, speeding up the harmonic rhythm of the last 3 chords

and then rewrote the song as a love pitch with points of double meaning intact:


There’s always hope in wanting
Always waiting on a dream
Some things I trust you’ll never understand
Always waiting patiently for our lives to agree
That you and I will make the perfect team

In your ten dollar shoes and your fifteen dollar hat
The world is yours to lose
But you never think like that
You never think that the world will happen to you

But suddenly there’s a reason
Everyone seems so alive out on the road
You are the truth that I believe in
So won’t you be my comfort when I grow old?

I often seem to change my mind
Refine my point of view
And some times when you speak to me
The words just sail through
But give me one more chance so I can make it up to you

Every night I fall down on my knees
And slowly breathe
I can’t keep they sky from falling
I can’t improve on make believe
Every day I’m dreaming when I call you on the phone
When I listen to your message
And I know you’re not alone

But suddenly there’s a reason
Everyone seems so alive out on the road
You are the truth that I believe in
So won’t you be my comfort when I grow old?

Now, what should the title be? The working title is "Be My Comfort" or just "Comfort".

Video Songwriting Tutorial

Larry Seyer, who has been writing songs for along time, decided to document his process of putting a song together by video recording himself in what he calls "Song Birth". Worth checking out...

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