WHAT NOT TO DO WHEN WRITING YOUR SONG. DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT, BUD.

OK! So I will get the ball rolling here. The rest of you take it away.....

THE "UNOFFICIAL" RULE LIST OF SONG WRITING & PERFORMING 101

1. Never refer to a hot woman as a “child” in your song. Only Axle Rose and Mother Love Bone can pull this off.

2. Never open your lyrical opine with a “whoa whoa whoa yeaheeyeahhhhaaa”! Or an “alriiiight”!!!! Or even a “here we go”!

3. Avoid using the word “survive” in your song.

4. Avoid covering singers who really shouldn’t EVER be covered, due to their truly unique style. i.e. Freddie Mercury, Prince, and Rick Springfield………… j/k.

5. If you’re not a drummer and you’re creating a master CD, find a drummer and have them play for you. It will make your songs 100,000 times better. Go easy on the programming of percussion folks, please.

6. Blues songs that “start out” with a big lead guitar, drums, and a bass “all coming in at the same time” is lame. Don’t.

7. Unless you’re the God of Blues son, or close relative, find another genre. Please………

OK, now that I’ve got this post started, let’s hear from everyone else as to what the NO NO’s are in writing music. And PLEASE!!! PLEASE!! PLEASE!! PLEASE!!! Don’t say that there are no “NO NO’s” in writing music, and get a philosophical on me. This is supposed to be a fun post. Have at it and let the world know what you consider the rules to be in “writing” or “performing” music

Baby and Babe should be off limits. They have been overdone to death. Leave them alone.

Apart and Heart as a ryhme should be banned.

Anything to do with waking up, woke up this morning, daybreak, nighttime, evening have had enough airtime. How about a song with afternoon in it! Midmorning, dusk, late afternoon or even after lunch should be brought to the forefront.

Somthing like:
I'll make a suggestion
After lunch with you
I get indigestion

Yeah, there you go!!

Stop writing that song... now !

In fact... look... just give up making music entirely. You know that you're never going to write anything that doesn't suck, don't you ?

LOL ! This is good stuff... the one I hate is that breathy.. chruchy.. type singing. I know folks who have a great voice with tons of tone but still insist on doing that crap.

Ooh, another one..... When boybands go on about "their lyrics" when all they did was add the word 'baby' and rhyme 'fire' and 'desire'. SOMEONE ELSE WROTE IT FOR YOU - YOU'RE PUPPETS - ADMIT THE TRUTH AND GET OVER IT. Ahem. Ok, relaxed now.

Don't think that every instrument has to be playing all the time.

Amen to that one! One of the biggest problems I have is that I'll get a nice sound from an instrument and the moment I introduce it I find it really difficult to get rid of in parts of a song. So it just sort of stays around.

My biggest problem is I tend to write with an acoustic guitar at first to get the rhytm and chord structures sorted. But then I get so used to that guitar I can't chop it. So it will just stay in the mix because I'm so used to hearing it.

My other problem, which I'm currently facing, is that I put a cello in an acoustic song I've written. It comes in at the beginning, reprises in the bridge and stays for the chorus (and instrumental). It sounds really lovely and mellow and creates a slightly haunting feel to the song (especially now I added more verb to that particular track than to the others). Problem is, I put in a nice little phrase that gently sweeps in and out at the end of the first verse but I can't stop with it anw, and I've copied/pasted that little sweeping phase at the end of every verse. It sounds good, but gets repetitive and you can predict when it's going to come in, what it's going to do when it does, and when it's going to go. It's kind of ok because it's almost like a cello riff, but I find that firstly I get bored hearing it all the time, secondly it lessens the impact of when I really want it's melody to shine.

I tried using it just on alternative verse endings instead, so it melted nicely into the bridge, but found then that once I'd taken it off some of the verses, those verses sounded like something was missing again (again, because I got 'used to it'). Darn it.

ORIGINAL: howieizme

2. Never open your lyrical opine with a “whoa whoa whoa yeaheeyeahhhhaaa”! Or an “alriiiight”!!!! Or even a “here we go”!

Or start a rap song with "yo, yo..."

Also, for us rockers, don't write a song about rockin' Yes, Judas Priest, I'm talking to you!

ORIGINAL: ohhey

ORIGINAL: Slugbaby

Don't write about what you don't know...

LOL ! oops... all I write is fiction...

I agree there's nothing wrong with imagining stuff that you don't know first-hand. Songs like "Mack the Knife" or "The Hurricane" or even "Sonny Came Home" were written and performed by people who had no experience of the stuff described. Same is true with Nick Cave's excellent album "Murder Ballads."

Practically the entire catalogue of Creedence Clearwater Revival is haggard, romanticised songs about the hardships and simple pleasures of life on the bayou sung by middle-class teenagers from the suburbs of San Francisco (and all done in a bizzare, vaguely yiddish accent no less-- boinin', toinin'-- who talks like that?). And that stuff is awesome, and even convincing if you don't think about it too hard. It's certainly entertaining.

"Art" is after all, derived from artifice, and there are still a few of us out there who still think that imagination and creativity are more interesting than sincerity.

Cheers.

well said, yep.

the true definition of ROCK in my book is the group of aging musicians who have been on tour for 30 years but still get on stage as if they are 22 yrs old and play rock and roll songs with reckless abandon because that is who they are. Kansas, Blue Oyster Cult, Skynrd, Rush... bring it on!