Non-vocalists, how much effort do you put into your lyrics?

[mawso]

Why would I be writing lyrics if I was a non-vocalist?
Would I be writing them for the non-guitarist or the non-drummer?

Lot's of examples here.  I think Angus and Malcolm have been writing most of the AC/DC lyrics for years.  Didn't Geezer used to write all of the Sabbath lyrics?

Yeah Geezer wrote the words, but he left it to Ozzy come up with the melody and phrasing, and Ozzy had a bit of a free hand to chop things around a bit to make it work.  It wasn't like he was just given the parts completely written and then just told to sing them.  I remember Iommi saying that Ozzy had a very predictable way of writing melodies - often he would write a riff and have a very close idea of what kind of melody Ozzy would want to sing over it before he even heard what he'd come up with.

[Pundan]

It's difficult. Really the hardest part of the whole songwriting thing, we've tried to have our drummer write lyrics but he didn't really care that someone should be able to play and sing it. So since I do all the riffing, singing and guitar playing I'm the one who do the lyrics. It's also a little bit challenging because English isn't my first language, but I do want to reach out to as many as possible. I want my lyrics to have a meaning not just be random nonsense.

[jibberish]

yes , much work.  i decided to upload the 2 songs i probably sweated the most blood over. i believe the lyrics are killer, as they tell the story reasonably coherantly, flow, rhyme, and are comical.

It's funny, that seems to be my bag, just fucking around with no respect for anything, like usual (sounds like L7 lrics heh)
anyway, i put a lot of effort into both these tunes, hope you get a laugh out of them.

"Don't Look"
so this one is a 4 track sequenced piece. i only started playing guitar srsly 9-10 years ago, but ive been playing with midi since you had to write your own shit in C for DOS 5 and finally cakewalk came out with a text mode midi sequencer heh. old skool wow, but i got some things done in it, and then when win3 and the matching cakewalk came out , off to the races 8D

so the emo's ticked me off. fuckin' whiney ass punks..lol, well anyway, i decided to out emo the lot of them and take away all reason to snivel. (but the lyrics came out unreal, in the context. only regret:i had to use dread twice, was up against the wall and couldnt solve it)
[soundcloud]http://soundcloud.com/doktordeath/dontlook[/soundcloud]

"Feed My Face"
this one is part sequence and hd recorder kludge..production value is in the red lol, but it worked, great. i love this. my version of turn the page, inspired by metallica's lame rendition. so that ticked me off.  fuckin slackers, listen to the yawn solo in meh-tallic -o-cized version(i like that album, though,with all the covers

[soundcloud]http://soundcloud.com/doktordeath/feed-my-face[/soundcloud]

[EddieMullet]

Little or none they always come out bad so I give up.

I like to let the singer write the words then sing them acapella as I fumble around for the right riffs/chords to go with it.

[Hemisaurus]

Little or none they always come out bad so I give up.

I like to let the singer write the words then sing them acapella as I fumble around for the right riffs/chords to go with it.

Cool, so you do words first.

[jibberish]

words come first some of the time, but i think i generally put the words to the music

in both these cases, the words got formed to the music (if you were directing that at me). 

the sequenced song had the attitude in mind while i was sequencing

of course the weird al stuff always starts with the music first.
maybe trying out some weird al may be good practice for refitting words for people struggling or not comfy with word-smithing . you get to be the human thesauraus real quick like


if i get hardcore, i will write out a list of every word i can think of that rhymes with a certain ending, then if i see enough of what i need i'll try to ram-jam it together somehow to get the timing to fit also.
and the old joke, never use orange at the end of a line. the subtle hint here is use word sets that have lots of rhymes. that helps vs like only 3 other words in the language rhyme with something, pretty dodgy success rate


im going to try to whip out an example.

maybe i want to work around the word "say"...there's a ton: play, day, may, bay, slay, stay, away, way, they, tray, clay, flay, bray, today, ..just load up. then think through the theme of the message. maybe i'm going to tell someone off.

and i'm the jerk or so you say
well listen to the jackass bray
the loudmouth tard that's in my way
im just about to wreck your day.

pro-pain owes me for one song now harr dee harr.
if this set just doesnt work, try a different set. but save all your rhyme word sets and dont use the same one too much.  HTH

[jibberish]

also, maybe i can take a shot at helping someone with lyrics if they are really buffaloed.  might be worth a shot...

[liquidsmoke]

I generally write lyrics at work and guitar parts at home. Then the trick is to match the lyrics up to guitar parts that fit or vice versa. Actually for one song I had the general idea in mind while writing the guitar parts and then wrote the lyrics so they would fit.

[chille01]

I usually end up writing the first round of lyrics in conjunction with the music.  IE; I'll come up with a basic verse and chorus musically, but then I'll start trying to put in some lyrics (or at least melodies) over that verse and chorus before I get too worried about specific transitions, dynamic changes, bridges etc.  My reasoning is that the lyrics will likely influence the music, as much as the music influences the lyrics.  The transition might be vocally driven.  The band drops out for the last two bars of the verse and the vocals carry it solo into the chorus, stuff like that. Or the length of verses and choruses might change, the rhythm might morph to punch harder on specific words etc. etc.  I try and think of it all as part of one song, and build it all up at the same time.  I used to write and arrange all of the music first and then layer lyrics on top, but for the last couple of years I've been doing it this way and have been more happy with the end results.  Your mileage may vary, but this method works well for me.

[RacerX]

I put a lot of effort into all of it.

Why would I do part of my job half-assed?

[Hemisaurus]

I put a lot of effort into all of it.

Why would I do part of my job half-assed?

Well as they say

Don't push it, don't force it
Let it happen naturally
It will surely happen
If it was meant to be

[RacerX]

I put a lot of effort into all of it.

Why would I do part of my job half-assed?

Well as they say

Don't push it, don't force it
Let it happen naturally
It will surely happen
If it was meant to be

Bullshit.

Effort does not necessarily = struggle.

"Meant to be" = magical thinking.

[Hemisaurus]

magical thinking

[clockwork green]

Since I'm starting to sing in my new project I definitely take a lot of care in pride in my lyrics but melody and phrasing always win out which is why it isn't necessarily poetry. Despite all of this care I will probably never write anything as memorable as the shit Buzzo just blurts out and that's probably true for everyone else on here:
"Like siz the well known water
Like siz the well known war"

[cat shepard]

magical thinking

Usually it's regular thinking. But when we're doing our music it will be "magical thinking". Otherwise it can just be beats and patterns to no  avail of hypnotic trance without implanted memory collective spiritual chamber of ideas reflected in symbiotic reflection of recognition through repetition AND magic.

[Hemisaurus]

I think bass drones are magical then.

[VOLVO)))]

I mean, who says you can't make up your own fuckin' words and phrases?

lungsmen? hasheehian? weedian? ring a bell?

Just make shit up, so what if your spellcheck goes wild.

[cat shepard]

I mean, who says you can't make up your own fuckin' words and phrases?

lungsmen? hasheehian? weedian? ring a bell?

Just make shit up, so what if your spellcheck goes wild.

ha ha ha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha i can make up names but not really words ahahahahahahahahahahaha


LUNGSMENhahahahahahha wow

[rayinreverse]

i write 'melodies' when we are writing songs. then as the song progresses i start to form actual words/stories/sense.
then when we record I finalize all the lyrics.
ive been playing a few songs for 2 years that I still have no concrete lyrics for. only rough sketches. every show they change a little bit.

[liquidsmoke]

I've started writing a new song and I'm questioning different approaches to lyrics and their placement. We are a power trio and because I play guitar and sing I don't like having lyrics throughout entire songs like many bands with dedicated singers do. Part of it is that it's hard to remember 20+ lines of lyrics. One trick is to repeat them 2 or 3 times, another is to have instrumental parts containing riffs that were previously sung over or will be in the future. This is a bit hard to describe. I kind of wonder if people find those approaches boring. I think playing a riff/part without vocals over it first and later having the vocals come in helps to build the song but maybe it's better to have certain riffs always be layered with vocals and just write more vocal-less riffs so the song has less repeating sections. There are many different ways to go about this and there are no rules but I'm wondering if some of our material flows oddly considering where the sometimes sparse vocals are placed in the songs.

[moose23]

I've started writing a new song and I'm questioning different approaches to lyrics and their placement. We are a power trio and because I play guitar and sing I don't like having lyrics throughout entire songs like many bands with dedicated singers do. Part of it is that it's hard to remember 20+ lines of lyrics. One trick is to repeat them 2 or 3 times, another is to have instrumental parts containing riffs that were previously sung over or will be in the future. This is a bit hard to describe. I kind of wonder if people find those approaches boring. I think playing a riff/part without vocals over it first and later having the vocals come in helps to build the song but maybe it's better to have certain riffs always be layered with vocals and just write more vocal-less riffs so the song has less repeating sections. There are many different ways to go about this and there are no rules but I'm wondering if some of our material flows oddly considering where the sometimes sparse vocals are placed in the songs.

Sounds very similar to my approach.

[liquidsmoke]

Sounds very similar to my approach.

What is your approach?


Another factor that came to mind today on my way home from work listening to some Mirror of Deception was story telling vs more poetic/statement/feelings/etc lyrics. If you are telling a story it can be odd to repeat lyric sections where as if you are saying something Bobby like such as 'cause i'm not the living you soon will be giving' it seems more okay to repeat it, even if it's not part of the chorus.

So following that if you select certain parts/riffs to be lyrics sections always they probably shouldn't be placed into the song until the message fits the plot flow of the song if they tell a story in chronological order. Of course the order could be told otherwise too.

I think I'm going to strive for more lyrical sections in songs that are not as related to telling the actions of songs that tell a story of events so I can repeat lyrics more. This will require a lot more experimentation with words. I hardly know how to explain this stuff because my technical knowledge of writing is so limited.

[Ombrenuit]

+1 for writing lyrics at work.

The other method I use is a melody first approach. I'll record vocal melodies with nonsense lyrics and listen to them in the car. Sounds crazy but listen to them long enough and your subconscious will start to make out of it . The song basically writes itself. YMMV depending on your sanity.

[everdrone]

WITH AN INFANT BRAIN HE WAITS
CONTENT FOR NOW TO SUCKLE AND TO SLEEP
UNTIL THE TIME HIS WORK MAY BEGIN AGAIN

yes!