syntheticpop


In what stage of the songwriting process do you come up with the lyrics? Is it when you lay down the beats, throw down some loops, play a melody or wait until you have a finished song? Some people also prefer writing lyrics before anything is recorded, but I don't hear much about the process of writing lyrics to the music.

Yes! To all the above. But usually last because the melody almost always comes first. I am lyrically challenged but a good song has to have good words so it may take me 20 years (in spare time) to come up with them.
 
You wanna good laugh? A trick I use that sometimes works well is to speak gibberish while recording a song idea. Then I work on the musical composition and mix it the way I want (in SONAR ). At this point I have a finished song reminiscent of the 70s when you couldn't tell what they were saying anyway. I'll play this over and over again until I get some idea of a story line by interpreting the nonsense words into real words that sound similar. The initial stages of this process can be mind twisting at best but in the end can produce results that are truely mind blowing. At least my mind is blown by the end of it.
 
On the down side, I have a pile of almost finished songs with no lyrics.
 
I've tried putting music to words but that's backwards to me and rarely works. Once my brother wanted music for some lyrics he wrote. I found myself changing the words to fit various melodies until the words were no longer his. It ruined the song and make him mad, so it never happened.
 
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The wife & I work as a team (teamwork is always good)

I usually come up with the basis for a song, establish what could work as a melody and pass it over to her for lyrics/singing.

Then we'll go back through the entire song, she'll suggest changes to structure/melody, I'll suggest changes to lyrics and we'll proceed from there

I like to use my time machine and go back to when I was 18 to write lyrics, when everything was right, nothing was wrong, everything worked, nothing was stupid, immatuer, over the top, not hip, current, real, and from the heart. Problem is, I need a new flux capacitor. 

Great posts - all.  Indeed, there are many ways to approach the crafting of lyrics for a song.

I started writing a whole bunch of stuff about rhythmic pulse and all of that sort of thing, but while I was doing that it occurred to me that for me it all combines into a single word.

Context.

I create both music and lyrics together so that they both are faithful to the 'context' of the picture that is being created.  The context is the musical expression of the concept being described, in  sonic and lyrical  concert.

I work very hard at creating music underlying the lyrics that support the lyrics, rather than creating music that detracts attention from the lyrics.  It is the lyrical message that is to get through to the listener, using the platform of the underlying music to paint the picture that helps the concepts ion the lyrics to stand out in a pleasing manner.

As an example. one song I wrote has an ending section that hangs on a musical framework of simple arpeggios with strings, piano, and acoustic guitar.  The arpeggios are pleasing, but lie underneath the lyrics, keeping a flowing rhythm underneath, with an additional complimentary flow of words and syllables.

Here are the lyrics I am referring to:

If the dawn of time was this morning, and forever was a single day.

If eternity was lived in a moment, what would you say?

Have you ever stopped to wonder, at the falling of a star?

Have you ever seen the thunder?  Is it really all that far?

Have you ever touched a sunrise, as it climbed into the sky?

Golden rays unfold to hold you, but still you wonder why.

It's for you...


(I have the above copyrighted already, so no worries there - I just wanted to illustrate my approach)

Bob Bone