{ Lick That Riff! }

Christmas is near now, can’t wait! Have you all been writing songs? Hope so.

We  now move onto part four of the Beginners Guide to Songwriting. This one is mainly going to be about the lyrical side of things, so take note.

Lets Crack on with it:

Vocal Melody

Good solos can reinforce and underline the vocal melody (Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit) or take the place of words altogether when the intensity is peaking, as heard in Eric Clapton’s awesome Layla. And sometimes a solo can come in like a stranger and end up in the heart of the song, like Paul Kossoff’s great break in Free’s Alright Now – an example of slow playing carrying twice the resonance of fast-fret wankery.

Lyrics

Lyrics are tricky to get right, so they’re often the last thing to be decided upon. It’s a mistake to think that a song just needs verbal sounds to hang the melody notes on. Granted, it hasn’t done Ozzy any harm, but while a song’s words are the last thing people concentrate on, they’re also often the last they forget. So save yourself embarrassment and put work into it.

First off, don’t be under the impression lyrics have to read like poetry, so don’t get too hung up on making things rhyme. You’ll end up writing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star or Be Here Now. In face, lyrics don’t even have to make sense. It’s far better to leave people wondering what on Earth you meant. A great example of this is in Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody,

“I see a little Silhouetto of a man, Scaramouch, scaramouch, will you do the Fandango,
Thunderbolt and Lightning, very very frightning me
(Galileo) Galileo (Galileo) Galileo, Galileo Figaro
Magnifico-o-o-o”

What the fuck is he onna bout? Who cares? This lyric is one of those famous ones in the world that has caused many arguments about what he is talking about and all of its hidden meanings. I bet Freddy Mercury never really thought about it, he just seen that it was good for the song.

Scan: Scan is vital in lyrics. Try to cram too many words into a line and it will sound messy and self-indulgent. Think about your syllables and consider them the same way you would the notes in your guitar solo. Everything depends on how the vocal breaks up and interprets the words. The opening lines from Nirvana’s Lithium demonstrates this:

“I’m so happy ‘cos today I found my friends/They’re in my head/I’m so ugly/But that’s OK ‘cos so are you.”

Looks like scribble on the page, but sounds perfectly placed in the song. And while there’s no obvious musical rhyme, the vocal interpretation matches ‘today’ with ‘OK’ for some effective internal rhyming, made doubly effective by being on the peak notes of the lines.

Place Names: Place Names are another good starting point: rivers, streets and cities. They give you a physical backdrop and start a train of thought. Come to think of it, basically that’s all a lyric is. If all else fails record drunken conversations in the bar or check out page seven of any local newspaper. The music papers will soon be calling you a musical genius like Nick Cave.

Verses/Chorsus: Finally, a word about verses and choruses; don’t overwrite, three verses are enough. Use the first one again at the end if you have to. If the song has moved on, so will the context of the verse. As for the chorus, keep it short. The perfect chorus is just just one word – the song title, preferably.

And I’m afraid that’s it for another week of Songwriting tips. I hope you have enjoyed this one and it would be nice if you could send some of your songs in to me so I could see how you were getting on.

Peace
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Other Posts in the Series:

• Arranging, Middle Eight, Riff, Solo
• Key and Time Signature
• Melody, rhythm and tempo

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