Tips on Songwriting Step #3 - THE LYRICS
- THE THEME
- THE TITLE
- THE LYRICS
- THE VOCAL MELODY
- THE ARRANGEMENT
- THE PRODUCTION
A good lyric paints a picture, it says things in a new and unique way whilst dealing with topics that most of us can relate to.
Country music often has fantastic lyric writing. One clever technique is to create a story that suddenly flips and means something completely different the moment you hit the chorus. This is just one technique for engaging the listener, or keeping them on their toes.
Another is to word things in a new way, like the song we mentioned earlier "Un-break My Heart".
Keep the chorus lyrics the same so as it remains easy to remember. You could also keep the pre chorus, or bridges the same too.
Avoid too many words such as "Love, Baby, Girl etc". If used too often they can sound shallow and cheesy.
Keep your rhyme patterns equal and intuitive. Too many rhyming words can be off putting. For example:
"Looking at you, I see the truth, baby it's true, there's only you"
This sentence is smothered in rhymes and sounds clumsy.
The following would work better:
"Looking at you, the truth I see, there's no one else, you're all I need"
If using this rhyme pattern with the second and fourth lines rhyming, you should keep the same pattern in verse 2 so that your song lyric has a continuity throughout.
Another popular rhyme pattern is to match the 2nd and 4th lines, along with the 1st and 3rd lines:
"Read my mind, and you will know, the love inside, will never go"
A good place to start your lyric writing is to scribble down lots of words and phrases that are relevant to your song theme. Use this as a kind of pallet from which you can draw ideas from at a later date.
For example, if my theme was about feeling like a star, I might start by writing everything that comes to mind about being famous or rich ...
celebrity, fame, money, limousine, jewelry, car on cruise, back at the pool, diamond, gucci etc etc.
Anything at all to get brainstorming. These can then be mixed up and called upon when you are forming your lyrics, just like you would use colours when painting a picture.
A good tool to use is a rhyming dictionary. Here is a good online rhyming dictionary http://www.rhymezone.com/
Go to the next part: Tips on songwriting - The Vocal Melody
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