"Song-Writing", Eh?

[sassymarvin]

As I, like many of you, am trying my hand at some amateur songwriting, i was just wondering what people have to say of the whole process.

For example, what do you find comes first more often, the words or the music? Does one method produce better results over the other?

I heard Pete Murray writes all his music first. I guess if he wrote the lyrics first, he wouldn't bother writing the music as he'd realise they are significant enough in themselves as breath-taking poetry.

[hydrus]

Or if he wrote the music first he'd just get too depressed and give up.

In answer to your question, I can only write music, lyrics are not my thing.

[equalheights]

I have to say, besides a few gems Pete Murray's lyrics really do suck incredibly. I didn't realise until a friend pointed it out a few months back, and now I can't ignore it.

I find it really hard to write music after lyrics, so music pretty much always comes first for me. It makes it harder to then write songs about certain things if thats what's on your mind, so if you can write lyrics and then write music that fits it perfectly, thats a definate bonus. I imagine that takes a bit of skill.

[sassymarvin]

Yeah, Pete Murray is insipid crap in my opinion.

Yeah, writing lyrics is really quite hard, well for me anyway. I find that whenever i force it, only shite comes out. It's when i just blurt something out of my head that i become mildly happy with it.

The music comes first for me most of the time, and if i have the lyrics first it gets quite tricky to put some music to it. I find if i try and put it to some music i already have, i end up changing the music to something i don't really like very much.

[sheeps]

I hate lyrics.

I always write music first, and I try not to force it.

[sassymarvin]

Yeah, i'm not too fond of lyrics either.

Any lyrics i do write are more just short thoughts.

[bluehighlighter]

I come up with ideas first. A thought pops into my head. It can be a short string of words, a beat, a riff, a title, a noise, it could be anything really.

I was down in Melbourne on business about 3 weeks ago. I was walking along and saw something in a shop window. The thing reminded me of a person I know (an ex-girlfriend actually) and then that lead to me thinking about how so many things remind me of other things.

I have a great memory and my brain tends to think so fast and uploads everything about someone as soon as 1 thought about them is produced. (Truly, it shits me, but I can't hlp it).

That thought gave me a few lines, the lines gave me a direction.

I flew back to Sydney that night and was due to get home at about 9pm. Turned out all flights were running late. I got home about 1am Saturday morning. I was tired but really wanted to work on my idea. As I sat down to think i fell asleep.

It's strange but while I was asleep the song wrote itself. Saturday morning, in 1 take and without having any prior riffs or chords structures I put down the whole song in 1 take on my home studio. For some reason the feel of the beat came to me just like that (clicks fingers). The music came to me.

The lyrics flowed through my mind, down my arm, and the pen guided itself accross the page. I didn't know what it was saying.

Some how my subconscious mind knows things that I don't know on the surface (and let me add that except for Panadol, there's no drugs involved with this situation).

After I finished writing the lyrics I sent them via text to a friend. She thought they were great so I knew that I was on to a winner. (Long text as well, should have just phone it through).

While I was typing them up so I could sing them (my writing was shocking, but it was writing faster than I was thinking), the final line that I hadn't yet written and that summed up the whole song perfectly came out. It gave me shivers, and yes, I'm man enough to share that it brought a tear to my eye.

Turns out the song is too personal to share with anyone now because I analysed it and it dawned on me that what I had just written was a summary of the last 12 months of my life and it scared me to know that I might not have been that impressed with (a) certain aspect/s.

Ouch.

But on more occasion than not, the music comes first. But often the music is sparked by an idea.

I had a thought about "wishful thinking" and it has dumb founded me as to what sort of song it should be. That's the first hurdle to get over. Should it be fast, should it be slow? What sort of timing, what about the feel?

But yeah, that's all a little bit forced and the best stuff comes from a place I can't explain.

It always amazes me how a thread can start off so innocent and yet spawn a debate about a particular thing like whether Pete Murray has any credabilty. All I know is that if I had written the line "the game you're playing is just a game" or whatever he says, I'd have given up on the whole song writing thing.

Other ideas he could have gone with;

The car you drive is just a car.
The house you live in is just a house.
The hamburger you're eating is just a hamburger.

They're all pretty obvious, and just as obvious as a game being a game.

And I'm spent.

[Another Matt]

I reckon it's better to write the lyrics first. that way you can say whatever you have to say (sing) without having to make your lyrics fit to the beat, rythm or whatever.

I guess it's about what you think is more important, the lyrics or the music.

[Ollie]

Id guess your thinking about it too much, it should ideally flow out, and not really be so mathodic all the time, sometimes its good, but sometimes youd want it to just hit you in the head

[sassymarvin]

The hit-in-the-head stuff is always better i be reckoning.

[hydrus]

Mathodic? I think you just invented a cool new word. Bandname.