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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Any lyricists among us?
Any lyricists among us?
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Preston
339 posts
May 12, 2009
6:00 AM
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I use to try to write songs before I got into the harp. I only came up with one song I really thought was anygood, though. Two days ago I found a new riff on the harp that I feel is catchy and interesting. Lyrics automatically filled my head that fit the riff. Problem is I only got two verses and then the lyrics stopped. Where ever the words were coming from they decided not to give me a chorus.
Anybody have any formulas for songwriting that might re-spark the creativity?
I tried co-writing one time with only one guy, and I found that if I started the idea, I didn't like it when someone else added lyrics to it. It was never what I wanted to say or where I wanted to go. Either I'm too protective of my own ideas or I picked the wrong co-writer.
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jawbone
29 posts
May 12, 2009
10:27 AM
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"Who wanted to play blues harp so badly...
He blew and he blew, he blew all day long,
'til someone said "No son, you suck it!!!"
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If it ain't got harp - it ain't really blues!!!!
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XHarp
54 posts
May 12, 2009
10:44 AM
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I wrote a few, not to many but a few.
Co-writing has to have patience and no ego. Both are tough to find so you may want to stay your present course for sure.
As far as writing a Chorus, the verses should be telling a story. Find that common thread and a chorus will appear.
You won't find a Chorus to work around a standard verse lick (well, not usually) so try to find another lick or run in the same key that will spark the chorus.
I always find its best to even try to change key for the chorus or perhaps run from another mode of the same key.
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"Keep it in your mouth" - XHarp
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oda
96 posts
May 12, 2009
11:48 AM
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Are the lyrics easy to remember? What would the listener think? What's the hook? is it catchy? What sort of structure can you put the lyrics in, to keep the listener there until the end?
A good way to juice up the creativity is to set a TIME (say 8:00 am) and everyday sit your keester down and write something -- anything.
I once had a story that was jiggling around my head and I couldn't figure out how to put it on paper. So I used that technique, everyday forced myself to sit down and do nothing else but write AT LEAST 100 words at 8:00AM. Even if it's crap.
Eventually this technique really worked for me, it was like training my creative juices to flow whenever the clock hits 8:00 AM, I sit at my desk, put on some coffee, blast "Erbarme Diche" and let things roll.
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MagicPauley57
18 posts
May 12, 2009
5:20 PM
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I try to write when i can , only th best ideas are when I'm trying to get to sleep , then can't sleep because my head is buzzing , so i get up and try to get it down , only trouble is i can't harp when i get in from work , I'll not have many neighbours left .
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jbone
69 posts
May 12, 2009
7:51 PM
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hey pauley,
that's very close to how i used to and sometimes still do write lyrics! you have to be there when your muse nudges you.
i would go out and play at a jam or a gig, and when i got home, many times i couldn't sleep, so i'd take a legal pad and just write stuff that popped into my head.
it got so i'd be walking around at work and something would hit me- a line or even one phrase, and i'd write it on the first piece of p[aper i could get hold of. i would toss these bits into a box at home and ignore them, yet someplace in my subconscious i'd be sorting andf processing them. then at some point- late at night when i was wired from playing music earlier- i'd sit at the table with all those scraps and a legal pad, and play mix and match. i got several songs that way, some of them pretty good.
these days i have moments when some cliche or phrase hits me and i do sort of the same thing. at some point i start scribbling lines and when i have something down, i work with it, add, subtract, and end up with a song.
this is like anything else we can choose to do. i have to believe in what i'm doing, and know that i can make it work. i trust my voice and my skill at doing a call-and-response type blues song. once i have something i like, i sit down with a partner and lay it on them, and we start getting the chords together. often i have likened a song of mine to something familiar, like "it starts like so and so, then it goes to such and such, then for the chorus....." and so forth.
a few years ago, post-katrina/rita, we had all that coverage on the news. and we had a relief center here, about 200 miles north of the gulf of mexico where most of the damage was. so we had people here that had barely gotten out and were just hanging on. i saw a couple at the bank doing funds transfers, piling up some money to take with them back to their home. i asked the guy how bad it was, and he told me it was bad, very bad. i offered sympathy and he said something like, "what else do ya do? we're gonna go start over on the foundation the storm left us". it was that sort of inspiration that led me one night, at a jam, to announce that i would write a song on the spot. i cued the band to do a kind of swijng-y swampy reggae rhumba thing, and they took off. and a song was born on the spot. "katrina blues" which i later recorded.
in blues, if you take from your own experience, it is much more real. you can really feel it and own it. and i think that's where the successful writing comes from. and i also remember, i have to trust my audience sometimes more than i trust my own self. i am often my worst critic, and if i listened to that negative voice that pops up sometimes, i'd never do anything worthwhile. instead, i will go on and write the thing, work it up, even if i just get an idea about tempo, key, etc., and then hit a jam and try it out live on stage. if it comes off badly, so what?
a few years ago a good friend and i both wrote several songs separately. we then got together and worked out the music and ended up recording. we did this twice and i have 2 cd's to prove it. they were never actually released or picked up by a label, but for me it was a step in the right direction.
these days my wife and i co-write a lot. our next cd will be all originals. we've been learning a lot the past few years. and i can't imagine stopping now no matter what!
so you got my 2 cents. write it down. write more. grab that one line before you forget it! keep all the scraps in one place and play jigsaw puzzle. you will find your way into a song or 2 or 3 or......
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Preston
342 posts
May 13, 2009
5:25 AM
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Thanks for all the advice. I've done the jigsaw puzzle deal too.
The nantucket stuff was cool too.
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geordiebluesman
179 posts
May 13, 2009
12:14 PM
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Hey Preston,Here's some advice i wish someone had given me 20yrs ago Get a small note book for your lyrics and keep it with you always!, I used to write stuff on bits of paper and then loose them and a wasted origonal thought is a tragedy! Listen to people talking conversations can be very lyrical, Use your eyes, The world is full of stories and the blues is the musical equivilent of the kitchen sink drama so watch what the ordinary folk say and do and put it in your songs. If a phrase grabs your attention repeat it over and over to yourself sometimes it will loose context and suggest something entirely different which says the same thing but in a more interesting way, Use word play get a rhyming dictionary, Get a copy of song writing for dummies it's so much better than you might expect and most important of all try to create a regular oppertunity to think about lyrics when you can be alone without stress or guilt about not doing something round the house! I write 99% of my stuff when i'm dog walking Enjoy
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MagicPauley57
20 posts
May 13, 2009
6:29 PM
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Hey Jbone
keep it uP man , nothing like personal experience, so many people , sing blues and then they are only singing someone elses life , I7m from england , not the deep south , i'm not black , and so on , but if you have personal trials and ups and downs( don't we all )
then anyone can have blues , and sing about it that's what7s so good about it.
I find rockablliy easier to write , usually comes down to women ,cars and booze ! but in a simple way, a rocking one.
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MIKE C.
1 post
Jun 20, 2009
9:43 AM
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Get hold of the book "The Craft Of Lyric Writing" by Sheila Davis. It is by far the best book ever written on the subject.
Last Edited by on Jul 10, 2009 8:28 AM
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nacoran
69 posts
Jun 20, 2009
12:21 PM
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ABAB rhyme with enough syllables per line for whatever time signature your in, but when you break the rules it gives you an opportunity to do some neat stuff with rhythm. I have a lot of lyrics where I come in on the four beat instead of the one.
Everyone says write about what you know, but if you want to write about something you don't know, at least spend some time daydreaming about the topic. I had a creative writing teacher who was writing a story about someone being attacked while getting into their car, so he had a friend attack him while he was getting into his car.
I also like to find a central metaphor and adapt it throughout the song, so if you are talking about how beautiful the sky is in one stanza you could have another stanza about watching clouds and a third about watching the stars. There can be some progression from what the situation is in the beginning of the song to the end.
As for collaborating, it's hard. Make sure you alternate between songs you started and songs they started. Remember, even if they change your song it doesn't mean you can't change it back. Sometimes it's best to just brainstorm a bunch of ideas onto paper with the other person. At the end of the session you both get a list of all the ideas and go off to work on it separately. You come back and compare what you have. I have a couple lines I've used in more than one song. It's also good to get feedback on what you have, even if you aren't planning on an actual full fledged collaboration.
Sometimes collaborating with another musician who isn't actually helping with the lyrics can help. I've written a couple songs while my band was just jamming. I sing a few lines, keep the ones I like and sing them again. Eventually I find enough lyrics and I have a song.
Be careful of being heavy handed. If your song has a moral point, it's better to describe the situation and let people come to their own conclusions than to tell them what to think.
When you need a rhyme, you could go to a rhyming dictionary, but I prefer to write out a list in the margins. I work my way through the alphabet to find as many as I can. Alliteration can help create catchy lines. Strong consonants like T's and K's are great to create a sharp sense of rhythm. If you want to make the song sound fast stuff some extra syllables into the line. Just make sure whoever is singing it can say it fast enough. I once wrote a song for our guitar player to sing and he couldn't annunciate the lines quickly enough.
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mickil
260 posts
Jun 20, 2009
1:51 PM
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I've only ever written two songs that I think are really bloody good; the rest are crap.
One of them I started in 1986 and it's still not quite finished yet.
I suppose that for most people, it just means doing a really hard slog.
I read somewhere that it took Leonard Cohen over two years - if memory serves - to write his master piece Hallelujah. He wrote over eighty verses, but discarded most of them.
Brahms once said that genius is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration. Sounds about right.
There are literary devices you can use, but I found I was using them anyway, before I knew that they had a name.
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'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchen; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty' - Frank Zappa
http://www.youtube.com/user/SlimHarpMick
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ElkRiverHarmonicas
21 posts
Jun 20, 2009
9:44 PM
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Hey Jim, don't forget about the girl from Seville, who took the atomic pill! Or how in the days of old, when Knights were bold and no one was particular...
Essentially, a good lyric should be able to stand alone as a poem and you can look at poetic vehicles, etc. You can use many of the same rhyme schemes as in poetry, all pretty much work except visual rhyme. You want to avoid rhymes that the mind expects.
Here's a part of one of mine, that doesn't use a conventional song rhyme. I'm not saying I'm a great lyricist, which I'm not, I'm just illustrating a point.
First, I'll use a more standard rhyme. When you restrict yourself to those, it's like your shackled to a millstone, the rhyme controls the lyric, not you.. This is NOT the lyric I wrote:
"I remember when you promised that you would always be mine
Now I hear your sweet voice whisper through the mist so fine.
Oh, Green water, I hear you calling,
That same water, that sucked her down.
It wants me to join you, it calls from across town."
That, of course, sucks. It sucks less with non-conventional rhyme, such as this, the lyric I actually wrote:
"I remember when you promised that you would always be mine
Now I hear your sweet voice whisper through the echoes of time.
Oh, Green water, I hear it calling,
That same water, that sucked you down.
It wants me to join you, in the Echoes of Time."
Another point the above brings out, is I don't say "my woman drowned in the ELk River and now I wanna kill myself." Instead, the words paint a picture, that when it all comes together, it's clear that's what the song is about.
One of the best examples of picture painting is Hank William's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." In the song, Hank never reports on his own condition, except with the title words... That's it. What he does is describe his condition by simply describing how he interprets the world around him.
But that's not to say you can't just come out and say what's going on, if the story is compelling enough... you can use simple words and simple rhymes, but it needs to convey a strong image, as in this little nugget from Jimmie Rodger's "Gambling Barroom Blues:"
I kept on drinking liquor, to way out in the night
My pal came into the bar room and we had an awful fight
I reached down for my razor and then we knocked around
But when I drew my pistol, I quickly smoked him down.
Study Jason Ricci's lyrics. They would usually would stand by themselves as written poems.
Last Edited by on Jun 20, 2009 9:49 PM
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lintos1
1 post
Jun 22, 2009
2:29 AM
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Preston,
Remember what the lyrics were telling you when you first heard them in your head. Think on that topic. Play the riff over and over. Push it around and try other words that rhyme. Dont force it. BE patient and if they are good lyrics and its a good song, then it WILL happen.
good luck
Lefty
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