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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
your method of writing songs
your method of writing songs
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walterharp
17 posts
Aug 09, 2009
6:47 PM
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Hello,
This is a curiosity question, cause i figure if the songs are flowing, then why impede the current? How do you write songs? I get a good (to my ears) hook on harp and develop into a chord structure. Then, put a lyric hook to the harp hook and go from there. This usually happens walking to work in the morning, but sometimes a song plants itself in my brain and goes around and round, even in my sleep (did i dream i wrote that?), till it pops out or i get worn out.
anybody else???
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LAGUNA SLIM
4 posts
Aug 10, 2009
10:10 AM
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similar stuff happens to me. when i get harp hook in my head, it usually comes with rythum (some kind of beat) and a vocal sound at the end of this imaginary first phrase (eg., "o", "u", "_et")...something that is rhymeable. then i decide what i want to sing about.
then i write a poem.
to me, the lyrics are less important than the rythum.
hope this make sense
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nacoran
151 posts
Aug 10, 2009
6:30 PM
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I haven't actually written any lyrics to anything I've composed on harp. I have a much longer singing and writing background than harp playing so I usually do it the other way around.
I have basically three different ways I write songs. The first, and simplest, is just writing words on the page in meter and then setting them to music later. A lot of the time I'll have my friends start jamming. I'll have a stack of song lyrics and I'll keep trying until something sounds good.
The second way is I'll listen to someone else's music and write new lyrics for it, and then write new music afterwords.
The last way is in my car, or out riding a rider mower. I just sing lyrics as loud as I can over and over until I get them the way I like. Since I don't have an easy way to write them down I have to remember them. To do this, I repeat it over and over. This method probably produces the most complex lyrical melody, since I sing it over and over so many times I start adding a lot of flourishes.
I do write melodies on the harmonica, but so far I haven't written any lyrics to them, and more often I'm adding a harmony part on the harp.
Laguna Slim- I kind of do it the other way around. I tend to focus on the lyrics first. I have a lot of weaknesses vocally, but the one thing I'm really good at is enunciating a lot of syllables quickly. I can fit a lot of syllables into a measure. If my singing career doesn't take off maybe I can become an auctioneer.
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walterharp
20 posts
Aug 11, 2009
7:25 PM
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nacoran,
i have done it that way too, sort of, get what i think is a great hook and groove, write lyrics to fit. band plays the song and don't like the music part, but then or later something comes up that the lyrics work better with.
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Randy G. Blues
63 posts
Aug 11, 2009
9:11 PM
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Back in high school I was in a group.. sort of. We were rehearsing in the den of the drummer (the usual place) and the vocalist leaned into the mic, and I swear, an arc jumped from the mic to his nose, it was blue white, and about an inch long. I saw the arc from across the lit room! it nearly knocked him down.
A few years before that my dad brought home an amplifier chassis he picked up at a garage sale. I had it on the floor of my bedroom and was trying to figure it out when I made a discovery- the chassis was charged. I remember that I was crouched, knees into my chest while I was working on it, and then I remember hitting the wall six feet or so behind me, back first, and then sliding down the wall to the floor.. can't really remember the milliseconds between those moments. I waked back around it, carefully unplugged it, and walked it out to the trash.
I could also relate the images from the slide show I was shown by the local utility company when I was training as a firefighter, but let's just say that it was all pretty ugly.
The point is, and the comments are not aimed at any specific participant here, is that electricity is dangerous stuff, and can kill you dead.
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jbone
121 posts
Aug 12, 2009
4:16 AM
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sometimes some event in life will spur me to write a song. like a tree coming down in high wind and nearly killing my wife, or of course a heartbreak or other traumatic event like that.
i will lose a best friend before long to cancer. he deserves a song and when it comes to me it will just be there. i'll get the lyrics down and wife and i will find the chords to put to it.
many times i will just have a scrap of a lyric, a line or single idea and i'll jot it on something and keep it. when i have a pile of these, some night when my muse is keeping me awake, i will arrange the scraps of ideas and lines on the desk and mix and match them, and write out what i see there on a legal pad. recently i've taken to using the computer too. much easier to arrange lyrics that way.
we just had a big weekend in clarksdale mississippi, and my wife wrote a song about it yesterday. usually our songs are in a couple of categories. one is just cool stuff that we hear people say which turn into lyrics, another is more on a theme, like leaving him or her, losing the job, a friend, like that.
the most important part of songwriting, to me, is that you own what you write, you have some feeling about it. the music can come later but the lyrics are the core.
i used to carry a small cassette recorder with me and on road trips by myself, i'd just talk into it. this produced a few songs too.
one night with a band i was with, we were on break. i had an a capella tribute i'd written about the early guys who initially shaped what blues is today, and i got in front of a mic and was reciting it, like a poem more or less. halfway through, the drummer and bassist slipped in behind me, playing soft. the guitar joined in. by the time it was over we had a new song.
sometimes synergy just happens if we're there to witness it.
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XHarp
123 posts
Aug 12, 2009
6:39 AM
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Inspiration comes from many things. Personally, I need some kind of event to trigger my writing skills. I haven't written anything for the harp specifically but I have written tunes for solo and band performance.
The first drummer we had ran an interesting yet fully complicated life. Went through many women and drove about 80,000 miles a year just to visit people. Gave up drinking, took up Coffee on a regular basis etc. His rogue lifestyle inspired me to write the song on our Myspace page " Coffee's On".
While working in another business I ran accross an old friend that I hadn't seen in a long while and he related that a common friend of ours/Good friend of his drowned while out on a sailing vacation. The only thing he had to remember this friend was an old Yamaha guitar that he had been given just before the sailing vacation took place. The tale behind that inspired me to write a song I titled "Dead Man's Guitar" which I perform occasionally and have recorded for him to have.
Electronic lifestyles that we all lead, blackberry's, pc's text messaging etc. all fill our lives with complications and intrusions disguised behind the term freedom. This has inspired me to write and perform a tune called "Blackberry Blues" a few years ago. I perform it acoustically only as a solo piece.
The tune "Storm Inside" was written while working at a job that had me responsible for 125 people over roatating shifts. It always seemed to me that a certain percentage of each shift had individuals with large life altering bad habits or addictions. In this case I had one who came to me seeking rehabilitation. I worked with that person to get them into rehab, get the needed phsycological help, and redirect their energies into improving their personal life. That successfull story prompted me to write that tune. Its also on our MySpace page. In that one I co-wrote the lyrics with another band member by relating the events, applied the chord progression and the lead guitar player worked out the arrangement. A true group effort.
All of the tunes I wrote started as a concept idea and got the words down long before I applied the chords or key. The chord progressions are simple and usually are secondary to the lyrics but have to fit the desired cadence of the song and the emotion. Sometimes, it takes a long time to fit them together, well, except for Dead Man's Guitar. That just came to me driving home after having him relate the story to me and I sat down that night, played it out, recorded it and gave it to him the next morning. It kind of just came together like jbone's song did.
Cool Topic. Let's hear more.
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"Keep it in your mouth" - XHarp
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congaron
33 posts
Aug 12, 2009
8:07 AM
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I just wrote a song called "Electrocution Blues" based on my electrocution as a teenager and how it is affecting me now as an older adult. Life...music...two great tastes that taste great together. For me, the lyrics are the most important ingredient. The music just carries them out to the audience. Lyrics are the only thing i could be original at anyway. Everything else pretty much follows established music rules and rhythmic patterns.
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Kyzer Sosa
29 posts
Aug 13, 2009
9:32 PM
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before i picked up a harmonica, well, one of my reasons for doing so, in fact, was that I could always skat...humming, beatboxing, just making audible noises...very bluesy. no matter the beat or genre, i could make it work. it has blended well so far with my playing, so...
Id have to say lyrics are never a factor when thinking of fresh tunes. I just do my best to remember the key parts of the ditty... words? not my bag just yet... but if a divorce, losing my house, my job and most of my freedoms cant pull a blues song out of me, i dont know what will.
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MIKE C.
14 posts
Aug 15, 2009
9:09 AM
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I always start with a title. The title triggers a melody and then I write lyrics to the melody.
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