Do you have a process for tying lyrics to music?

[echoraven]

Soooo I'm fairly prolific in coming up with riffs (not necessarily great ones though) and thought about writing a full song lyrics and all. When trying to find music that will fit my lyrics my mind drifts and I start noodling.

What is the process you use to tie lyrics with music?

[weed_killer]

well, first of all, do you intend on singing and playing at the same time, or are you interested purely for recording/songwriting? I only ask cause if it's the latter you'll generally have more freedom to write vocal melodies that don't necessarily follow the riff. In terms of the lyric content itself though, I very rarely write up lyrics with the intention of finding suitable music, because I find it limiting and unnecessary. I write all the time, so once I've worked up a song I'll start going through recent poems or lines and figuring out what could work, then decide how I'm going to sing them and come up with a vocal melody. Depends what type of music you like or what you're after with your own though - my lyrics are usually pretty visual/impressionistic.

[popvulture]

I'm terrible about just sitting down and writing lyrics... I find the process excruciating. I've found that the thing that helps me the most is giving myself a few things to start with, and I pull these things from a huge list that I keep. I use the Notes app on my iPhone to jot down pretty much any random word, phrase or full on sentence/verse that pops into my head. I may not know what to do with these bits whenever I think of them, but the important thing is that I jot them down immediately before I forget, and later I can come back to see if I can make something out of various entries. I have TONS of stuff in there right now, and it's all pretty good—much better than if I sat down and tried to force myself to think of something.

[Seedy]

I'm terrible about just sitting down and writing lyrics... I find the process excruciating. I've found that the thing that helps me the most is giving myself a few things to start with, and I pull these things from a huge list that I keep. I use the Notes app on my iPhone to jot down pretty much any random word, phrase or full on sentence/verse that pops into my head. I may not know what to do with these bits whenever I think of them, but the important thing is that I jot them down immediately before I forget, and later I can come back to see if I can make something out of various entries. I have TONS of stuff in there right now, and it's all pretty good—much better than if I sat down and tried to force myself to think of something.

This is a fine system, or part of a system. You write down every clever (or stupid) idea you think of and let it sit until you're ready. I am usually the singing bassist of whatever band. As a song starts to form, I sing "derp derp derp" in a way that kinda forms around what I am playing on bass. Not the notes, but where can I jab some words in while not ruining my rhythm. Those 'derps' start to become a word, then those words make me think of a story, and the first verse is written. Then I go back to my book of derps and fill in the rest of my vocal melody and that's that. Of course this means the first verse is of one thought and the rest of the verses are random thoughts that were scribbled before there was a tune. 60% of the time it works every time.

[toothsome]

Yeah good replies. Start by trying caveman vocals or dummy lyrics. Helps to have a rhythm/number of syllables and/or melody. Makes figure out / narrowing down the words down a lot easier for me at least.

[popvulture]

I'm terrible about just sitting down and writing lyrics... I find the process excruciating. I've found that the thing that helps me the most is giving myself a few things to start with, and I pull these things from a huge list that I keep. I use the Notes app on my iPhone to jot down pretty much any random word, phrase or full on sentence/verse that pops into my head. I may not know what to do with these bits whenever I think of them, but the important thing is that I jot them down immediately before I forget, and later I can come back to see if I can make something out of various entries. I have TONS of stuff in there right now, and it's all pretty good—much better than if I sat down and tried to force myself to think of something.

This is a fine system, or part of a system. You write down every clever (or stupid) idea you think of and let it sit until you're ready. I am usually the singing bassist of whatever band. As a song starts to form, I sing "derp derp derp" in a way that kinda forms around what I am playing on bass. Not the notes, but where can I jab some words in while not ruining my rhythm. Those 'derps' start to become a word, then those words make me think of a story, and the first verse is written. Then I go back to my book of derps and fill in the rest of my vocal melody and that's that. Of course this means the first verse is of one thought and the rest of the verses are random thoughts that were scribbled before there was a tune. 60% of the time it works every time.

Ah, totally... I do the derps as well. I don't think I've ever written a lyric and then written a song around it, rather I usually come up with a main riff / chord change kind of idea, start singing some lalas over it, then later on (often WAY last minute) I'll decide what words would best fit on those lalas/derps.

Lalas n' derps y'all. The building blocks of platinum hits.

[snipelfritz]

Yeah, I'll often just kind of synthesize the lyrics and melody as one thing.

However, it should be noted that the last song I wrote (wrote in my head at least) had the chorus of "girl, I ain't got time to wipe my ass."