Your Favorite Song-Writing Tips

[Tidwells@aol.com]

Famous songwriter Jimmy Webb wrote that he would record his whole songwriting session on cassette tape, then at the end of the session, he would rewind the tape to the beginning and record the "finished product" at the beginning of the tape. So later, he could easily find and listen to the latest version of the song, but would also have a documentation of the development of the song if he wanted to "go back" to an idea from an intermediate phase.

Over the years I've developed a lyric-writing process that works well for me and thought I would share it:
1. I use Apple's free TextEdit app. At least in the older versions, there is no preset page size or restricting margins. You can basically have an infinite canvas to type lyrics on. I find this inspiring, like a giant blank sheet of white paper.....but also useful.
2. I think of lyric writing as similar to sculpting with moist clay: Just as with clay you can add a big "chunk" to your masterpiece and then carve it down, I often take a phrase and add several options on the same line, dividing the options with slash marks. Since TextEdit has no margins, I can add as many options as needed on the same line. Eventually, over a period of days or weeks, the page gets very cluttered looking with all of the options I've added....
3. DON'T ERASE ANYTHING! Instead:
4. Duplicate the whole document with a new version number, then save and close the previous version.
5. Now, I can choose which optional phrases I prefer and delete the rest. If I ever need to look them up again, I still have the previous version, so I can be RUTHLESS and sculpt the lyrics into a lean, trim form.
6. Amazingly, once the lyrics look nice and neat on the page and I sit at my keyboard singing them, new options and ideas often pop into my mind. It's like clearing out the old "junk" makes room for new ideas. So then, the page starts getting messier again with new options. Eventually, I return to step 4 and keep repeating this cycle until I can't seem to improve the lyrics anymore. I probably average about 10-15 versions before I'm happy with the lyrics. Similar to Jimmy Webb's process, I end up with neat, easy-to-find and read lyrics, but with a "paper trail" if I ever need to go back and look up a previous version of the song. I rarely ever go back, but I think the knowledge that I can go back gives me the courage to make bold, decisive choices.

What are your favorite song-writing processes?

Doug

[Tidwells@aol.com]

81 people have viewed this post but no one else has a song-writing process tip they are willing to share? Does no one have an idea worth sharing, or have we all become so competitive and territorial that we want to protect our "secret sauce" which has made us such phenomenally successful writers/composers? I have no delusions that I am a "great" song writer, but I am willing to share the little I've learned if it will help someone. Or maybe the meager lyric-revising wisdom I shared was so bland and obvious that it depressed everyone who read it and sent them screaming and running to their therapist's office.

Oh well, I do wonder if it anyone has experimented with recording their song writing sessions in a way similar to what Jimmy Webb described with cassette tape? Have you used DP for this? Or some other app? I tend to just record short music & melody ideas as voice memos on my iPhone, even when I'm sitting in my DP-equipped studio.

Then I like to give my melodies the "memory test". After I write a melody to go with some lyrics, I record it as a voice memo. (I don't actually write out the music since I can barely read music). Then the next day, I sit down at my keyboard and look at the lyrics and see if I can remember the melody without listening to the recording. If I can't remember the melody, then by definition it is NOT a memorable melody. So I try to start fresh and make a better melody to fit the lyrics, with different chords and maybe a new key. Sometimes my second or third melody ends up being better and catchier than my first.

Doug

[James Steele]

I don't think it's territorial. Just hard to convince people to participate an purely altruistic endeavors.

Personally, I've been really busy lately so haven't had time to sit down and think it over so I'd have something valuable and insightful to add besides things that are obvious and cliché. I thought your tip about lyrics was pretty good. I tend to work on lyrics with paper and pen and leave extra space in between lines and scratch out things and write in new words/lines in the margins... it's messy. I'll have to give your method a whirl sometime. Thanks for sharing it.

[Tidwells@aol.com]

Thanks, James! I know what you mean about lyric-writing on paper being messy! That's why I like doing the multiple versions in TextEdit: I can clean up the "mess" easily without losing any previous version/revisions. When I started doing my lyric writing in the computer, it took away some of the tedium and made the process more enjoyable. For so many of us, song-writing is a struggle: we want the results (new songs) but don't enjoy the process. I think anything we can do to make it more enjoyable will make us more successful as songwriters. When I enjoy my work, it becomes less like work and more like play....I think I shared a post a year or two ago about writing for a short period of time once or twice a day, then coming back the next day with a fresh frame of mind. When I get stuck, I don't make myself more miserable by stubbornly trying to "plow through". Of course, that's easy for me to say since I'm no longer making music as a vocation and don't have to face real-world deadlines.....But even when you have a looming deadline, I feel like a short break can often help. A new idea may pop into your head when you take a leisurely walk or while you're in the shower. I don't recommend grabbing your iPhone to record an idea in the shower unless you have a waterproof model. Interestingly, I once read an author who claimed that the ideas which came to him during slow, leisurely walks were superior to ones that came to him in the shower. And I believe that Steve Jobs was famous/infamous for his walks and for dragging others with him on those walks to hash out ideas/innovations.....

Doug

[HCMarkus]

Here in San Diego, Cathryn Beeks periodically hosts "The Game". Its not really a contest; more of a motivator... Cathryn shares two proposed titles and participants write a tune using one or the other (or both) in a new song, which is performed live during a gathering about a month after the initial prompt was shared. Fun and inspiring, "The Game" is a great motivator, particularly given the 30-day deadline.

My personal version of "The Game" : A client of mine lives in Australia. He sends me lyrics and I try to make a song out of them. I usually end up offering some lyric editing suggestions, as the client is not at all musically inclined. Nicest part of this "Game" is I get paid for my work.

The best songwriting tip I can offer is this: collaborate with co-writers.

Also, record ideas into your phone immediately; mine them later.

[stubbsonic]

Text-Edit is my go-to for ALL text tasks. I use a fixed-width font so aligning chords is easy, making "ascii images/charts" is also very doable.

One little song-writing activity someone taught me, is to brain-storm 20 song titles. Mostly it's fun because you often just get some goofy ideas out there that lead you to other ideas. Brains are fun.

The analogy about working with clay is a good description of how I compose-- sometimes. Get a shape going, keep shaping. Let my "life-experience" kind of take the wheel, trust myself. There's also something about knowing when to stop. That's not a skill I have.

[mikehalloran]

For the first few years (1969–74 or so), I wrote parody lyrics to popular songs and Gilbert & Sullivan. Eventually, I learned the craft well enough to try real songs around 1975.

I always write to a poetic form. Usually the first decent line or two will dictate that form. I don't sketch lines out preferring to work them out in my head first, often while driving. I do rewrite, of course, but I don't save the work product nowadays.

Although i can use Word, I normally sketch lyrics in Pages. Since 2009 or so, anything I enter on one device shows up on all my others. Word, GoogleDocs and many other apps can do this as can Notes. Text can't.

I write lyric/chord charts for others including my bands but never for myself. Courier and other monospaced fonts are convenient for this but I don't enter them that way. I just change the font before adding chords.

For myself, I enter the songs in notation. Sometimes, I'll have composed the melody first. I work out the chords last since I can no longer play a guitar. I never composed on the keyboard before my stroke, I still don't 15 years later.

If I get inspired, I can open Notes, Word or Pages on my iPhone and use voice-to-text to get the idea down for work later but that's rare. Other than that, I do word entry one-handed just as I do these posts. I type with one finger on my right hand, using another finger or thumb for the space bar, shift key or modifiers as required.

In the pen and paper days, I would use yellow legal pads, triple-space so that I could line out as needed. I've had a couple of collaborators and we use the 100% rule: Unless everyone like it, we're not done.

[James Steele]

I'll throw in one little thing... it's really nice to have a rhyming dictionary. I think there actually was (or perhaps still is) a specialized lyric wring app that included a rhyming dictionary built in. That really is crucial.

I find it really interesting that there are some people who write lyrics first and then set those to music. I only did that ONCE in my entire life. I was in a band back in the 80s and we had a financial backer (oh THAT is another story that didn't end well) who had a public access show on local cable. She gave me lyrics and had an idea for a rock opera sort of thing. It wasn't long form. More of a short story... had some dancers... etc. I came up with the music for her lyrics and they actually shot the video and it aired. The ONLY copy I was able to get my hands on was on a very old BetaMax tape (LOL) and I transferred it to digital, but it looked horrible. I think I shared it on my Facebook once, but I just uploaded it to YouTube so you guys can have a laugh... . Ahh to go back and know then what I know now!!

[mikehalloran]

Barry Devorzon's MasterWriter has a rhyming dictionary, thesaurus and other tools.

https://masterwriter.com/songwriters/

I used to resell it but, once it went to online only/subscription, there was no more money in it for me. I had a copy and wanted to use it but never had the need. I did the subscription once when the stand-alone no longer worked after a MacOS update but I never used it.

Interestingly, I just logged into my account (first time in over a decade?) and found that, though my expired license is now "limited", the rhyming dictionary still works.

It's good if it works for you but you can probably cobb together a version of your own for a lot less these days.

Screenshot 2023-08-25 at 12.43.54 PM.png (501.95 KiB) Viewed 1375 times

My favorite rhyming dictionary is still Clement Wood, all 1,040 pages: I've had my copy since high school; my wife has had hers since then as well. There's a 1992 edition available new $8.99
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Rhyming ... 15-5609816

The Internet Archive has a searchable .pdf of the 1936 edition available from a library in India:
https://ia904707.us.archive.org/31/item ... e_text.pdf

I'll stick with my 1960s reissue of the 1936 edition. Since I can access the MasterWriter version, glad to leave well enough alone.

Screenshot 2023-08-25 at 12.51.09 PM.png (1.78 MiB) Viewed 1375 times

[Tidwells@aol.com]

Stubsonnic said:
"Text-Edit is my go-to for ALL text tasks. I use a fixed-width font so aligning chords is easy, making "ascii images/charts" is also very doable."

Interesting, Stubsonnic! Is there an easy way to find which fonts are fixed width?

Doug

[James Steele]

Barry Devorzon's MasterWriter has a rhyming dictionary, thesaurus and other tools.

https://masterwriter.com/songwriters/

I used to resell it but, once it went to online only/subscription, there was no more money in it for me.

I'm pretty sure that was the one. Yeah... I'm a hold out against subscriptions. I just won't do those.

[mikehalloran]

Stubsonnic said:
"Text-Edit is my go-to for ALL text tasks. I use a fixed-width font so aligning chords is easy, making "ascii images/charts" is also very doable."

Interesting, Stubsonnic! Is there an easy way to find which fonts are fixed width?

Doug

The term is monospaced or fixed pitch.

Fonts in the Courier family are preferred for screenwriting, programming, medical and legal where monospaced fonts rule. If you download and install Adobe Reader, you'll get Courier, Courier-Bold, Courier-Oblique, Courier-BoldOblique. You may need to make them available to all applications but that's easy in Mac or Windows.

On the Mac, Menlo superseded Monaco on the Mac as the the default monospaced System Font. For Windows, it's Courier New, Menlo, and Consolas, Cascadia Code and Cascadia Mono.

Office installs others. These remain even if you discard the demo. Again, easy to make available to all apps if they don't show up in Font Book.

[Tidwells@aol.com]

Thanks, Mike! This will help me.

Doug

[HCMarkus]

https://www.rhymezone.com

[mikehalloran]

https://www.rhymezone.com

Someone put a lot of thought into that site—quite well done. Thanks for the heads up.