Fingerpicker
Does anyone write their own songs? Are you a music first, lyrics first or all at once kind of person?
Have you performed them in public or recorded them?
I do the song all at once, don't perform them in public because they are either very private, corny, or sound vaguely familiar. After a few times through the song, it feels familiar and you wonder is it because you are plagiarising some tune in the back of your mind, or just becoming familiar with your own tune.
I do home record my songs but never seem to know when to stop adding stuff to them.
The ideas for the songs come in various ways; eg
I made contact with an old friend on Facebook and 20 minutes later had a completed idea with lyrics down called "Meet me in Chicago."
I wrote a song, TJs Boogie, with which I always open my nights at TJ's with and vary the words to include who will be playing on that night.
When reminiscing about old friends, I always link them to some style of music and events that we shared.
The most difficult thing about writing songs is variation. Some local songwriters sound brilliant on the first song, but 5 songs later with the same strum it gets a bit tiring. One guy I heard had 5 songs about the same chick, how he met her, how they split, how the made up, how he hates her etc.
The nicest thing about songwriting is that it is like a photograph, a snapshot of your thoughts at a point in time, all rolled up with a particular emotion which you can mould it until you are happy with it.
I have a friend who I can ask for input if I am stuck, and he always seems to find a simple solution.
Any other songwriters out there?
MIKA-the-better-one
I usually get a catchy bunch of notes, or feel, I prefer to build off the drums......... it often gives the song you planned a twist to pare it with something you didnt intend to fit.
Then I often just find myslef humming a melody, lyrics may come 5 to 6 times after i gig it, they sorta just comeout and grow into the lyrics by "oooh ile keep that line"
recording is way funner to me though (funner is not a word) you dont let the drummer here the full song just the beat and your quick explanation, the bassist then has a few minutes to match up his bassline,, the whole time they dont know how the song is, just simply a motivation........ then next timethey see it, its mixed and mastered.
Manfred-Klose
I try and write one song a week, but sometimes i dont have any inspiration for weeks, and them bam all songs are flowing again.
Some i write for my band, the others i write just becuase i have to get it out, some of them are hit song material, most of them are corny and suck.
But i have found with trial and error of writing lyrics you get the hang of it after awhile.
Bob-Dubery
I have a couple of half-finished songs lying around, and another partially written in my head. In each case it's been words first. I get a lot of tunes popping into my head but I need to find a way to record them. One came into my head whilst I was going down the corridor to the small room at work. I thought "that's quite good, not a WHOLE tune but a good start, I bet Keira could so something with that and she wouldn't schnaai me on the royalties." After I was finished the... err... task I'd forgotten it.
I haven't finished the songs because I think they're not much. A bit petty, a bit me me throwing my toys. The one floating around in my head even has a title. "Brainsucker". It's about driving whilst talking on a cell phone. It's a bit juvenile. I suppose I might get a laugh in the first verse but the idea will be getting tedious by the 3rd.
But I should finish them, as an exercise, to see what worked and what didn't.
I think perhaps you need to go through that. All the great songwriters had to make a start. Dylan's early songs weren't that great. Simon Nicol of Fairport Convention said that most people start writing songs. realise the songs are crap and stop. He said that the difference between him and Richard Thompson was that he stopped at the crap songs, Thompson kept on going and got all the crap songs out of his system and then the good ones started coming through.
MIKA-the-better-one
My phone deapite its crappyness, gets all first rough ideas on it......... about 10 secs er idea so its like "verse........." Chorus........."
singemonkey
My problem is that they either come in one big rush, or I sit with a few verses for months/years. It comes from not spending enough dedicated time sitting down and working on them. Songs take practise.
It's important, imo, to have a wide enough range of influences that the stuff that comes to you can't immediately be pinned down to one or another. If you listen to 3 artists 90% of the time, it's going to be hard not to just follow them along. But when you listen to a lot of very different stuff, you'll hear an idea that no-one's used in 50 years - a little howl at the end of the verse say, or an unusual change in rhythm - and you can use that as the basis for a whole new song idea.
2 things: Listen to a lot of people and think in terms of song-writing - not just how they make you feel and,
Practise. As Bob says, it's a myth that people are brilliant song-writers from the cradle. This is a craft, just like guitar playing, and you learn it.
DonovanB
Fingerpicker wrote
The most difficult thing about writing songs is variation. Some local songwriters sound brilliant on the first song, but 5 songs later with the same strum it gets a bit tiring. One guy I heard had 5 songs about the same chick, how he met her, how they split, how the made up, how he hates her etc.
This is why I play in a few bands, it services different creative outlets and inspires in new ways.
I find a lot of people write songs, then can't perform them. Or bands refuse to perform someone else's song. I am keen on that cos it takes someone elses view, and if they can't perform it themselves, gives them an outlet even if it's one song.
MIKA the better one wrote
My phone deapite its crappyness, gets all first rough ideas on it......... about 10 secs er idea so its like "verse........." Chorus........."
lol, I do the same. I reckon I have come up with some of my coolest hooks in the strangest places. So I find somewhere quiet and sing it into the phone's voice recorded and deal with it later.
Juvenile eh Bob? as opposed to Kevin Bloody Wilson or a whole dollop of Disney artists?
Sean
I've not yet written one single song. I've written down a bunch of ideas for lyrics on scraps of paper (which I've all managed to save somehow) and I've also occasionally hummed a melody into my phone (which if I lost and the sound clips somehow ended up on a public forum I would relocate to another country). What stops we from doing anything about them is knowing I have to practise the concept before I get anything decent. Guess like a most, I wish I could simply get it right from the start ?
PeteM
I've been writing songs forever - melody and lyrics. I've also done many collaborations with lyric writers because, even though I've been an advertising copywriter in my time, I think that lyric writing escapes me a bit and I tend to write hard-sell stuff rather than social comment stuff.
Publishers have shown interest in my work in the past to the point of one of them sending a number to Lionel Ritchie, but alas to no avail.
The biggest problem is my lack of follow through, since, in my experience, you need to be knocking on publishers' doors all the time to be noticed - they see/hear a lot of work and generally they follow the easiest route to make a buck. If you sit on them regularly, they will send your work to artists and producers around the world just to get you off their back. I'm afraid, I have neither the time nor the disposition to constantly nag them.
I reckon my stuff will sit in files, cassette tapes, CD's and hard drives until I shuffle off this mortal coil - something for my great, great grandchildren to chuckle over. ?
BMU
I write and record to have something to show for the 20-odd years I've been stuffing around on guitar now. And it's fun. But also it's damn hard work 'cos I want to make the kind of complex, heavy yet melodic music I myself love listening to.
It's a fantastic way to learn; what I have in my head is often beyond my abilities at the time. And you don't know your own limitations until you measure them against the merciless precision of a click track!
