Green_Ghoul

What do I do? I noticed that a lot of my lyrics from the last month or so have all been similar...all about either dreams, time, melting, or a mess of topics...so much that it's turning into a cliche of my very own.

I can't get out of it.

Also, a lot of my writing seems to fit melody of songs I've listened to recently...ughghg....

Please help :'(

TheNameOfNoone

1) Experiment. Throw a bunch of random verses while running a marathon, and sort the good stuff from bad stuff afterwards.
2) Be an instrumentalist and get somebody to write lyrics for you (my mother writes most of the lyrics for my music).

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Eccer

Could I please have a look at your lyrics? Why don't you post them up here at UG? People are more than willing to help you expand your ideas. And yes, try to experiment, do things which you would never have imagine doing. It often brings positive results

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BledGhostWhite

What I do, is pick a topic you find interesting. Wikipedia the shit out of it and related aspects to it. While doing this, write down interesting concepts, thoughts, words, information, etc. Using this, I find it much easier to come up with an interesting song. Of course, it's no way to write a heartfelt lovesong, but I find it cool for historical shit or technical death metal.

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Green_Ghoul

I'll post some examples when I get home from class, I usually don't bring my notebook with me unless I'm gonna be at uni all day.

Green_Ghoul

I kinda forgot about this topic. Anyway, here are a few examples of stanzas I've written -

It ravages me
The feelings so low
Teell me when
Our hearts will stop mending

I promised you
Our dreams will end
See today
Where brittle love breaking

A cut of our own greed
Brought in by misery
^^that one isn't finished, I just wrote the lines really quick

Another strange day
That parted my way
To form from the past
Our hopes can not last

they're bad

FistOfMichallin

@Green_Ghoul

Okay, bro. I can give my 2 cents.

Writing lyrics is just like writing prose; everything you write is gonna have a little meat 'n bone to it, but you gotta figure out what's the fat and what isn't.

Excess is what you never want in your lyrics, unless that's what you're going for - excessive nonsense, which can be appealing in the right context.


Let's look at~~~~~~

BABOOOOSH:


Okay, you have here, a BODY of lyrics. On a body, you got the bone, the meat and the fat. The bone (I.E., keywords like 'feelings', 'hearts', 'dreams', you know, nouns and shit. The object of the story) is what keeps a line all together. You lose this, and you got... a puddle of stuff. ewuwhgghgh. ;L

Your meat is the muscle, babeh (I.E., anything pertaining to perspective (you, me, him), verbs, etc.). Your muscle is what carries a lot of the emphasis in your lines -- gives your metaphorical walk a metaphorical extra stomp in your metaphorical step. With little of this, your lines better be appropriate for such circumstances.

Fat (in this case) is when you're overwriting. You'll almost always overwrite. Matter of fact, you should ALWAYS overwrite. Sometimes we'll keep fatty lyrics out of respect for the melody; however that's what inflection is for, isn't it? It's YOUR job to figure out for yourself, what feels least needed in a lyric for the better of it all. This shit is all GUIDELINES.

Still with me? Okay, mothabrothafuzzabuzzawuzzahuzza. At this point, it really is all about what feels right to you, but since i've gone this far into composing this message, i'll give some examples on cutting that mothabrothafuzzabuzzawuzza, huzza, zuzza, blurbablooga FAT.

Your first body of lyrics. Look at each word. Then, look at keywords, and ignore everything else. decide those words are the most important, and can't possibly be cut out. It is not possible for you to cut them from your work; they're too important. So, let's say those keywords are: 'Ravages', 'Feelings' and 'Hearts'.


However, that does not mean that you can't change whether it's current-tense or not. LE GUIDELINES.

Okay, to the ****ing point. Pardon my martian.
Lets look at this:


It ravages me. The feelings so low.

Look at it. Read it out loud. Does it interest you? Does it make you go 'would not read again'?

Look at this as an example:



See the difference? There's a little more weight to it. Sometimes, refraining from pluralizing an object in your line makes it feel more important.

Say, you tell someone, "I've got plenty of these feelings and they're all hitting me at once." Who's gonna wonder, 'what feelings are they'? Not many, prolly.

Instead say, 'This ONE feeling i get over this...'

It implores for more attention, it adds mystery; there's more tension.






Tell me when our hearts will stop mending. Perhaps, to you, there's a bit of fat on this, so, you cut it; HOWEVER, there are many ways to approach doing this. You can change so much about it, that could add to it, and be short and sweet at the same time. So, play with the ****ing words, my brah! There is no shame in it!

Examples of le wordplay:

.... period.

Or, if you feel 'heart' is a little cheesy for your tastes, try something like, 'road' in place of 'heart'. 'Heart' is one of your keywords, but sometimes the industry of diction bears a... cold heart, so to speak. I'm bending this shit a lot, but that's what experimenting is all a-****ing bout!

'Don't' feels right to me in the context of this body of lyrics. What you're feeling, i don't know. But it seems to me that you'd not want someone saying shit to you when you've got an ass-clinching, nipple ravaging feeling. To halt your line at 'stop' adds more weight to 'stop' itself. 'Stop', my friend, is a strong word in society. It's one of those words you'd want to end a line with. Least, in my opinion. They're your lyrics.

2nd Stanza:




You could flip 'made' for 'laced', and 'of' with 'with'. 'Made' rolls off the tongue better.

These probably aren't the best examples, but it's how you gotta write better lyrics. You write (without stopping), and then you set aside time to EDIT. Never mix both processes; you'll only end up with a handful of lyrics, rather than a bucket load of them.

DIG AS MUCH DIRT AS POSSIBLE BEFORE YOU START SEARCHING FOR GOLD.

Oh, and embrace your cliches. Only thing you should worry about, are your choice of words. Work on Alliteration, Idioms, Similes and whatnot. And remember that you can literally -- LITERALLY -- write anything you want.

Green_Ghoul

Thanks for the post

I'm gonna keep writing more and more. I think I finally have something that *clicks*

FistOfMichallin

You better. ;L 'Cause. i spent a lot of time writing that ****ing post.

Maybe it'l help a lot of others new to writing lyrics. Needs more exposure to views, doe.

Invicto91

Well your "lot of time" was "****ing" well spent. I've never attempted writing lyrics before and i have found your post very helpful and have given me a new sense of intrepidity to my attempts at song-writing. Thank you!

jessieming

@FistOfMichallin Would you be interested in picking apart some of my lyrics? I thought your analyzations were awesome and in-depth :]

FistOfMichallin

You're welcome.

It's scary at first, dude. It's like sticking your feet in water of an unknown depth... until you realize it's only knee deep, and it feels nice and cool.

The water is nice, bruh. Come back to it often, and you'll reach the deep end of the pool, and you can piss in it all you want.

Feels good.

Nathy137

Dude...

I literally just had a look on this thread as I was pretty bored with nothing to do, and wow...

You have helped me out so much, it makes a lot of sense now, just using your technique I feel like I edited one of my poorer songs into a better one, so well ****ing done there mate, no more than a hero!

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FistOfMichallin

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