Songwriting: Lyric Writing Tips

Songwriting 

Images and Themes 

Taking your building blocks of random thoughts and scribbles, you may spot themes, images and structure in your lyrics – expand and refine these ideas. 

You do not have to know what your song about and it can be a partnership with the listener as to interpretation – the best songs are about many things but hang together with a consistent image or theme. Spot something and extend a similar image, 

Your song might be rooted in time -eg: 

V1 In the morning you… 

V2 At noon you... 

Ch All day, every day… 

V3 In the evening we… 

Ch All day, every day… 

 “Thought about you on a Monday, texted you on a Tuesday..” 

A place – desert (dry, hot/cold, cactus, wind, dunes, insects, snakes, desert dawn) 

City (lights, sounds, traffic, bustle, crime, dirt) 

RHYTHM 

Spending time crafting the lyrics will speed the musical process and help the song to sit well with the tune and the rhythm Say the lines out loud and rewrite onto paper/notebooks a few times, crossing out or adding extra syllabic words as needed (‘the, you know, a’ - all those articles, pronouns and other small words can either help the rhythm or get in the way - if in doubt cut them and see if it flows better) – sometimes the rhythm/flow is more important than the ‘tune’ that is why the lyrics are so fundamental to the music. This is particularly evident in different styles of Rap flow that have an internal stylistic melody. Note the rhythmic flow of the reportage style of The Artic Monkeys which has the same features and is similar across many of their songs. 

Sticking to the common Iambic pentameter and linked binary couplets will make the lyric easier to handle – you can get into the weeds with more complex forms (that is why so many songs are in 4/4…) 

Short-form 

Dum ti Dum ti Rhyme 

Dum Ti Dum Ti Rhyme 

 

Or full-form 

Dum Ti Dum Ti Dum Ti rhyme 

Dum Ti Dum Ti Dum Ti rhyme 

If you want to go with fashion and use the SHANTY form! : 

Dum Dum Ti Dum Dum 

Dum Dum Ti Dum Dum 

STRUCTURE 

Looking at the structure of your lyrics will help the construction and arrangement of your song and will help to guide your musical ideas as they unfold. 

Strophic – you may move on from a four-line (two couplets) verse with a refrain line at the end (early Dylan, ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’) to a binary Verse/Chorus structure. 

To this, you can add a bridge or Middle 8 to make a classic ABACAB structure. 

Having double verses and choruses as the song builds gives a feeling of structure with zero effort (Dan’s favourite trick!) – i.e. delay the chorus then have more of them at the end More complex ideas involve pre-choruses and Tag lines/vocal breakdowns - these are often genre-specific 

You can have tempo changes and slow introductions – influenced by the binary form of the classic early 20th C. musical – ‘Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend’ The extreme edge of this is chaining multiple forms together such as the Beatles on side two of Abbey road (or day in the life - Sgt Pepper) I Bohemian Rhapsody – this challenges the ideas/rules of what lyrics ‘fit together’. 

Have fun with lyrics – language is music and you are all experts at ‘Jamming with it’ that is what social interaction fundamentally is. Don’t separate the process from a perceived musical one – when improvising at your instrument, try opening your mouth and jamming along – you may be surprised at what comes out! (always record it and write it down). 

Mastering Tips 

Suggested standard mastering chain, programme and taste dependent: 

1. EQ (and lower the level to give headroom) 

2. Multiband compression, perhaps with a slight "smile emphasis" 

3. any saturation or exciter plug-ins (keep subtle) 

4. spatial - stereo enhancement if needed 

5. Limiter - ensuring the level does not peak and give a headroom a few dB below 0 to give algorithms wiggle room to work 

6. Final bounce with normalisation and (best possible) dither setting to 16bit Wav 

7. Check on multiple systems to see if it sounds right - also hear it from the next room, 

8. Load to Soundcloud