stephaniewazhere wrote:Gildermershina wrote:stephaniewazhere wrote:Mt. Epic wrote:Yeah, I knew the lyrics were terrible. I'm trying to change them. I already have the instrumental part written out, and it's slow, almost ballad-like, so I want the lyrics to rhyme a little bit, cuz the song sounds kinda 80's ballad like, and some of them rhymes.
Well that's a first. Usually a person who writes a song, they develop a sound after they are done writing, not during. You are thinking to much at the moment and it will most likely make it harder for you to write a song. When writing a meaningful song, you should focus on what you are trying to express lyrically rather than musically. Unless you want to write a song, that would most likely end up in a Hannah Montana soundtrack.
What on earth are you talking about? The VAST majority of songwriters start with the music, the lyrics come later. Or else they come at the same time. It's a lot more difficult for most songwriters to write a melody to fit some words than to write some words to fit a melody.
What are YOU talking about? I am talking about people who write music for other people.
Huh?
stephaniewazhere wrote:Also the writing process allows you to go take it one step at a time. If you write music for others you do have to a have some sort of flow with you lyrics, but obviously developing a sound along with your lyrics would be very difficult unless you are right there at the recording studio.
Also its very different if you have experience in recording music. If you know what your sound is like or what sounds you can possibly develop with your lyrics or if you have a vision that's different. But if you are an amateur at this than how can possibly come up with a "sound" while you are writing.
I'm talking about writing a melody, a chord sequence, a rhythm. These are all fundamental to a song. You don't just write words and then somebody else adds a tune later, because that'd be an absolute disaster. And people don't usually do that in a recording studio. They do it with a keyboard or a guitar, or singing a tune. Some people do it programming sounds on a computer. The arrangement may happen in the studio, deciding to give this melody to a guitar here, or putting in a little synthesizer pad there, but by this point there has to be a tune, or you'd be randomly throwing stuff at it to see what works, and that is just not how it works. It'd be like if somebody wrote a movie script that was just the dialogue, so nobody knew who was in a scene or where it was supposed to be set.
Maybe this is your perception of pop music, but a song is not just words and then some background music. Or at least it shouldn't be. Musical structure, rhythm, melody, harmony, these are things that are, if anything, more important than the words. All these elements can be changed and tweaked in recording, but realistically speaking you cannot just make it all up then and there to a set of words. A proper melodic song should be identifiable from it's melody alone, and if you don't write that in the first place it's hard to fit one around the rhythm of the words. Like, if you use a three-syllable word like "disaster", then your melody more or less has to have three beats for that one word, and then if your next line or next verse doesn't have any three-syllable words or a group of two and one or three one syllables, then that rhythm doesn't repeat, and the whole structure falls apart.
It seems like you think a songwriter just writes words, but that's utter nonsense. That's a lyricist. And actual lyricists don't just write words to nothing, they write it to a melody, to a rhythm, to a communicable idea so that it is actually a song and not just a bad poem. You can sit and write lyrics all day, but unless these lyrics are part of a performable song, then they're not songs, and you're not a songwriter.
