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Lyrist 101
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Focused on songwriting, lyric writing, melody, song structure, critiques and basic song development theory.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'songwriting lesson'
Project Song: Chris Walla & J. Robbins
Chris Walla, founder of Death Cab for Cutie, and J. Robbins of Jawbox create "Mercury," a song inspired by the word "cerebral" and the photo Black Dog's Retreat by Tom Chambers (2002).Watch the song being created. ...
Melody And The Lyric
A songwriting pal in Orlando, Sheryl Olguin, passed along a link to several Pat Pattison tutorials on melodic rhythm and lyric rhythm.The videos give you an idea of how a song critique focused on these elements might change not only how the song is d...
NPR Project Song: Stephin Merritt
This was NPR's first project song. Stephin Merritt is amazing to watch. His song creation process begins with a photograph of a man in a full body suit covered with baby dolls. The line "a man of a million faces" is his immediate response. How he c...
Drinking Songs (Part 1)
A great exercise is to pick a topic, find some examples, and look at not only the similarities, but the differences created using songwriting techniques.At a recent NSAI meeting in Orlando, the topic was "Songs Using Communication Devices." The arra...
Re-Song: Shining Knight
It took a little while to get back around to the exercise of doing another version of "Shining Knight" using Stolpe's method (blog posted April 12, 2009).To refresh: I've already written a song called "Shining Knight" using my regular Pat Pattison-in...
Nellie McKay: 48 Hours To Write A Song!
Yes - songwriting often involves a cell phone in hour 20! This one's a bit eclectic, but the process is always interesting. You may have seen Nellie McKay on The View talking about her album Get Away From Me back in 2004 (she was 19 at the time). Gr...
48 Hours To Write A Song
NPR has a series called "Project Song" (yes, I'm all about NPR lately - their music site is just good!), which challenges songwriters to complete a song in 48 hours. They're given images and/or phrases, and develop a song around those concepts.The v...
An Experiment Using Stolpe's Method
The last post got me thinking about the song "Shining Knight."P.F. Sloan, who wrote “Eve of Destruction” and “Secret Agent Man,” would write several versions of a song around a single line. After reading through Stolpe's process, I wondered i...
Tools for Songwriting: External Detail Exercise
Andrea Stolpe is a strong writer who's penned several hits in her day and offers a very instructional blog, and has a nice audio post up right now about where to go with your second verse.In her book Popular Lyric Writing: 10 Steps to Effective Story...
Setting a Strong Scene
One of the most important elements of a song is setting the scene. The scene can either be a physical place, or a point-in-time, but as a listener, I should be able to describe it in some way.For example, if a song takes place during a single hour o...
Making Sure Your Title Gives You Options
One of the most important parts of your song is the title. I usually add it last since I want to make sure I give myself as much flexibility as possible when writing. Since your hook often ends up in your title (though it's been known not to), decid...
What's a Hook?
In songwriting, the "Hook," or what should be the "Title," is the most important part of your song. As Pat Pattison says in his book Songwriting: Essential Guide to Lyric Form and Structure, "[the hook] is the focused statement of the central idea. ....
Lyric Basics: What's a Metaphor?
A metaphor is a type of "figurative language" used in imagery. To define a metaphor, we'll need to look at imagery and the elements of it.Imagery: is the representation of one thing by another thing using vivid or "figurative language" to represent o...
Lyric Basics: What's a Simile?
A simile is a type of "figurative language" used in imagery. To define a simile, we'll need to look at imagery and the elements of it.Imagery: is the representation of one thing by another thing using vivid or "figurative language" to represent obje...
Becoming the Other: Using Metaphor
In my songwriting group we had a great discussion about when a metaphor breaks down. The song we were critiquing was about a bird, which was a metaphor for love. At some point in the song, the bird was shot - not just shot actually, but blasted out o...
First Lines: One of the Keys to a Great Song
The first line is probably one of the most important things you'll write when creating a song. It has to grab the attention of the person listening - not reading - listening. So, you have about 5 seconds to get the audience for your song to make a de...
Songs & Poetry: Cross the Great Divide! (Part 3)
The final piece of the exercise from the original post Songs & Poetry: Cross the Great Divide! (Part 1) when we began a discussion of the elements of poetry used in Theodore Roethke's poem "My Papa's Waltz" and a Richard Marx / Luther Vandross so...
Direct Address: When it's not "You" but "It"
I'm currently helping a friend with a set of lyrics, and something very interesting came up. The song is direct address, but not to a person. I know, you're thinking, OK - that's personification and at some point will just end up being either really ...
Songs & Poetry: Cross the Great Divide! (Part 2)
Here's my completed work on the exercise from last week's post. The below reflects questions asked in #2 of the post entitled Songs & Poetry: Cross the Great Divide! (Part 1):Point of view (who is speaking and telling the story)"My Papa's Waltz" ...
Songs & Poetry: Cross the Great Divide! (Part 1)
At the last NSAI meeting I attended, the lesson we discussed was lyric writing and finding an original angle. One of the examples given by Sara Light in the materials she provides to NSAI was a song called "Dance With My Father," written by Richard M...
Recommended Blog and Podcast for Songwriters
I was nosing around on the NSAI web site looking for a group up in the Chicago area (I travel on business up there quite a bit), and was reading through a few coordinator bios. I found Eric Edstrom in Burlington WI who has a site called Hit Hackers...
Song Elements Overview
One of the most fundamental aspects of songwriting is song structure. Each component of a song serves a very specific function in creating the overall tapestry of a song. And, much like a tapestry, if you weave things together in a way that's innovat...
Song Analysis: Adele's "Chasing Pavements"
A recent comment on the blog got me thinking (yes - it takes prodding). The comment was downplaying the songwriter's lyrics, mentioning they sounded as if they were written by a 17 year-old, because, well, they were.I know when I was 17 I felt most o...
Q&A With Kim Copeland
Speaking of Kim Copeland . . .Kim does video tips for the Songwriters Connection E-Tip every so often. I found this one today and thought I would share. It's a great overview of songwriting techniques, song plugger process, and how Nashville has chan...
Rhyme Families: Your Secret Weapon
Using rhyme effectively can help you not only move through a song, but add nuances to the rhythm, melody and feel or tone imparted. The goal is to find rhymes that don't sound awkward, like "with love I swing for the fences/when I see you it all com...
Poetic Meter & Rhythm: Keys to Writing Great Songs
William Carlos Williams once said, "measure is all." Ezra Pound insisted in 1915 that "rhythm must have meaning." A line, any line, whether in a poem or a song, is a unit of measured time. How we use those finite increments are the key to memorable s...
