Songwriting: Waht is it Made?

just for example, this morning I tried the "common chord progression" approach. I actually got a bite pretty quickly, a progression I liked but that still sounded "simple" and a bit of vocal melody, a few lines that set a scene/story, but then suddenly I found it going in a direction I didn't like, the character annoyed me, it was a second person song to a woman and the stuff the character was saying seemed slightly creepy or stalkerish. Maybe I should just run with it anyway and see where it goes, but that's an example of the kind of roadblock I tend to hit.

if you've never written much of anything before, songs or stories or whatever, and you're trying to jump immediately into a deep but relatable confessional or a complex shaded narrative, it's going to be ... difficult. i would recommend trying to keep things simple to start. a couple of verses and a chorus. don't worry too much about it meaning anything super important. maybe just an observation or a scenario or even nonsense that sounds good. try writing lyrics before writing music and stockpiling them so when you have a musical idea you can see if you have something prepared that fits. i mean, if that doesn't sound fulfilling to you, feel free to ignore me, but it feels like you're setting the bar way too high for yourself.

try writing lyrics before writing music and stockpiling them so when you have a musical idea you can see if you have something prepared that fits

^^^ ime every good songwriter does this

there's something to be said for writing something that can mean different things to different people, depending on how they look at it, instead of being really didactic about "this is my song and this is what it's about"

Joni Mitchell: “[Bob] Dylan said to me at one point that he, you know, he couldn’t write anymore, and I said, “Oh, what about this and what about that?” And he said, “Oh, the box wrote it.” I said, “What do you mean ‘the box’?” He said, “I write down things from movies and things I’ve heard people say and I throw them in the box.” I said, “I don’t care where you got your bits and pieces; you still put them all together.”

i don't think there's a right way to do any of this. music before lyrics is fine, lyrics before music is fine. this is just advice intended to reset your brain and approach from a different perspective.

i definitely have written several songs that are just describing the plots or ideas of movies or books that i have enjoyed recently

writing a bunch of bad and embarrassing songs is part of the process

yeah good stories can come from anywhere

xp

I wrote a couple songs where I liked the music and just sang words that fit into those bars nicely. The words themselves had no real relationship to one another. It was more of a free association thing, but when I had finished, I could definitely see how a stranger could construct some sort of meaning out of it.

I'm sure there are examples of musicians who did this, I just can't think of any at the moment.

Eno

Good call!

In terms of ideas for a cohesive narrative, I usually rely on books and movies to inspire me to write something.

I think Doug Martsch claimed that that was his approach to lyric writing.

Karl Hyde said somewhere he uses pieces of overheard conversation. Lyrics as collage is what I was sort of talking about up thread

i definitely have written several songs that are just describing the plots or ideas of movies or books that i have enjoyed recently

Ah yes, the Iron Maiden method

Man Alive's first post is basically where i'm at. i have a million couplets and notes. a million little hooks with melodies recorded. i just cannot put it all together. my only luck has been when i set out to write in a particular song form, typically country, where there are rules and cliches to play with. it's when i get into this vague territory where anything can go that i freeze. i don't really want to write country songs, though.

otoh, after 7 (!!) years of being a tired dad, i feel the juice again. i finally have a space to be loud in, so thankful to be back at it.