General ideas I was wondering/thinking about

hey ,
and welcome well we are given a topic to each sunday ( monday ) all depends which part of the world you live in , to write a song / lyrics for.
it has given me the inspiration and the motivation to put pen to paper instead of disregaurding my songs as passing thought .

I write songs from my experiences in life and the people around me who make up my life .

this probably has not helped you in any shape or form but that's how this old fellow does it

cheers

welcome , you do have alot of questions! :lol: :lol: I think songs are like a lanuage or poetry, something we have to get out or maybe just another way we have of expressing ourselves. Every one does it differently.personaly I think as long as it is pleasing to your soul it don't matter how you write it down. Thats the best thing about rock-n-roll, NO RULES 8) 8) But in order to get the words to do what you want them to do there are tricks to the trade :D Songs are here to make us FEEL-good, bad, sad or happy. --did i make that clear as mud?--the dog

Hey xposed,

to answer your questions in order:

sometimes

sometimes

no -- not for me anyways

and lastly, you'll figure it out as you go. Like the dog said,... everyone approaches it differently.

-- Scratch 8)

For me, the whole point of carrying out the SSG assignments was to extend my writing range and get away from the usual boy-meets-girl happy ending/sad ending/indeterminate ending....

I tend to work around a phrase I find memorable...a hook, if you like... and work around that....it could be an opening line, or the last line of the chorus, or even the last line of the song....but whatever it is, I have to find a way of leading into it or from it....

In a recent discussion with Nick, I quoted Stephen King..."...but I never really planned anything big that I ever did, and that includes the books I've written. I never sat down and wrote page one with anything but the vaguest idea of how things would turn out."

I guess that pretty much sums up my approach to songwriting....

:) :) :)

Vic.

welcome Xposed. I believe songs are a form of a new self awareness or perspective. Something maybe that you lost or found, something old, new or special, a feeling, a memory. Anything that moves you, anything that causes passion. That's my 2 cents worth......

Thanks so much for your input! I can't wait to do this weeks assignment!

hey xposed,

ok let me see if i can help any. yes songs paint pictures and yes they do put the listener in a mood. one just might be stronger than the other. a song may be mood driven or it might be picture driven.
Do we ever realize were singing words to a song and we really don't know what they mean, but we sing anyway and like it? If so, I'd like an explanation or perspective as to WHY!?! hehwell i have to say yes. i listen and sing along to songs that i don't really know what they mean. but i still live the song and sing loudly to it in my car. sometimes it is just that the song is so catchy with the music and beat, sometimes it is just that you like the words. i don't always sit and think hard as to what songs mean. i do like to know what they mean but i can just let it be at face value. there was even the song "nobody" by skindred that i liked very much and i couldn't understand anymore than about 10 whole words in the entire song. but i still loved it. there isn't really a concrete answer as to why a song works and another one doesn't, it is just what catches you.

well the first few songs that i wrote i wrote the chorus first and built the rest of the song around it. then other times i write the first verse first. the thing to do is not worry about what is written in what order. just write what ever comes to mind be it chorus, verse, title, bridge and just go with it. you can always rearange it late and put it into the order that works. no one way that works for someone is nessicasrily going to work for someone else.

as for me i just ge a couple of lines going in my head and run over to my desk get a pencil and paper and start wirtting. i never really know what it is going to be. i have wirtten things that turned out later to be a chorus but was never intended to be and vise versa. just write out some stuff and then read over it and then decide what is what. don't let youself get so caught up in it that you don't get the song out. just rememebr that no one but you are ready that first draft in your notebook or on the scratch paper but you. let the idea flow and see where your muse takes you.

the whole point is to have fun with it all. hopefully something i said here is going to help. i figured that i would finally answer your questions with my typical logical approach.

-CheapThrill

If you read the articles in my signature, they'll give you my answers to your questions.

Mind you, the articles are NOT a step by step to writing, they are a snapshot of ideas ripped from these very pages over the first year.

Hi all!

I don't have much to say but I'll say it any way:

What makes a song stick is if it means something to you. But since everyone's different there's no telling if a song means something to a lot of people.

Speaking for myself, I like songs which put me in a mood. And images, they help set the mood. "If this town is just an apple, then let me take a bite". Every time I listen to "Human Nature" by Micheal Jackson, I just wait for that line. I don't even like the rest of the song but that image just does it for me.
Do we ever realize were singing words to a song and we really don't know what they mean, but we sing anyway and like it?
I have a story about that:

The song "Still got the blues" by Gary Moore starts with "Used to be so easy to give my heart away". For years I thought he said "Used to be a soul weasel, to give my heart away." My God! that's beautiful I thought. The mystique! The poetic vagueness of it all!
I saw it as someone who had soul and gave his heart to every woman/man he saw, but now he has the blues and is more careful.

Even now I know it's not right, I still sing "soul weasel" because I like it. It helps the mood which the beautiful music establishes.

So if you ask why we sing things we don't understand... I think people just give a meaning to what they sing. Then we do understand them.

Hm, I had more to say than I thought :wink:

Wow, great replies fellas, thanks so much for the additional input.

Christian that is hilarious dude...