Singer - melody & lyrics

Shaping a Melody to Enhance Musical Meaning

Trying to get lyrics to be more important to your songs? You need to read “Use Your Words! Developing a Lyrics-First Songwriting Process.” Right now, it’s FREE with your purchase of the 10-eBook Bundle. Yes, the shape of a melody really can help or hinder what you’re singing about. To be sure, the way that […]

Songwriter - lyrics

Organizing Words and Phrases Into a Complete Lyric

Improvisation plays an important role in pop songwriting. And we love that feeling of quickly coming up with musical ideas and having them sound great right from the start. Hopefully you know, however, that most songs, even the ones that seem to spill deliciously out of our musical minds within minutes, require some working and […]

Peter Gabriel - My Body is a Cage

Making Imagery An Important Part of Your Lyrics

At its heart, imagery is a simple concept. When you write something that causes images in the mind of the listener, you’ve just made use of imagery. You could argue that imagery, therefore, happens all the time. I could say “I went to a baseball game this afternoon,” and you likely will get images in your […]

Songwriter - Lyricist

What’s Going Wrong With Your Lyrics? Use This Checklist

More songs are valued or rejected over the longterm because of the quality of their lyrics than any other song element. Take a look at practically any “worst of” list, and you’re usually looking at a list of songs where the lyrics are corny, stilted, or otherwise missing the mark. The best songwriters are best […]

Piano - Songwriter

Lyrics Easy, Melody Hard?

If you find it hard to create a melody that works with your lyric, it might be that you find the entire package of the musical side of things (melody, chords, rhythms, etc.) to be difficult. Some lyricists are good at creating images, and saying much with few words, but when it comes time to […]

Do Your Own Lyrics Speak To You?

When you write lyrics, do you hope that they speak loudly enough to someone else that they sit up and listen — that they can get something positive from your song’s message? There is an interview online with singer-songwriter Jason Mraz, and he was asked this: TT: You seem like a very positive person. What […]