Lyrics or Poems?

[tony333]

I have been giving a little thought to this question this morning. I am probably a bit different than most here in that I always write "lyrics" first and then try to work music around them. The problem being that I am a very novice guitar player and struggle to find the right chords, melody, etc... When I am writing I hear the music in my head, all of it. It's a little strange and frustrating at times. I am constantly "running lines" to see if an idea emerges. Sometimes I go through phases where I wake up with stuff that won't go away until it is on paper. I am in one of those right now. But when does it turn from "poem" to lyrics and song? To me if I hearing it as song then it is and always will be.

[Chicken Monkey]

Lyrics and poems are very different things. If you're writing lyrics, then they're lyrics. I'd suggest you learn more about your instrument so that you can properly express yourself. Learning other people's tunes is a good way to get started.

[Lee Knight]

I write a lot of lyrics first. I've written them at times too poem like and I get boxed in. But a good lyric starts in the same place at a good poem does. Some key differences:

Symmetry versus asymmetry. Songs lend themselves to a asymmetrical lyric writing style. Why? Because in music you can elongate syllables and turn the same amount of syllables into it into an entirely different stress pattern. Poems are based on syllable count it seems, lyrics on stress count.

Another reason asymmetry works so well when you're writing lyrics is because we have the element of melody built in to our art, poems do not.

And last but definitely not least if you ask Lieber and Stoller, the sound of the word is everything. You could argue that the same is true in poetry but I think you'd be wrong. The sound of the word in poetry is more a device but in song writing it is everything.

[blue2blue]

Everything is a big word. In fact, it's a word whose meaning borders on the absurd.

But sound is, certainly, a lot.

[oldgitplayer]

A song doesn't have to be written in one single process. The 1st draft can be prose or poetry or a bit of both.
When something is on paper, then the musical experimentations can take place.
Once a musical direction is found, then the lyric can be crafted.

One essential component of song-craft is prosody. That is the unity between the music and lyric components.
It is possible to get all these things working together in the 1st draft, but as you are a novice guitarist, it might be easier to build the parts incrementally.

[Lee Knight]

Originally Posted by blue2blue

Everything is a big word. In fact, it's a word whose meaning borders on the absurd.

But sound is, certainly, a lot.

Well... "Everything" might not mean exactly what I meant, but it sounds great, doesn't it?

[Mark Blackburn]

A poetic exaggeration, to be sure. But poetry, to be appreciated, need never be said aloud; whereas a lyric MUST be sung. The best song writers will tell you: the best lyrics are composed "in the throat" -- sung aloud. Words set down on paper to a piano tune wind up sounding "pianistic." (See Stephen Sondheim.) Yes, even apart from exaggerating for effect, when great lyrics are being composed, the sound is EVERYTHING.

[Mark Blackburn]

Johnny Mercer admired his good friend Gene Lees, the Canadian-born lyricist who wrote "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars" (and English words for four other tunes by "Brazil's Cole Porter," as I call him -- Antonio Carlos Jobim). In his definitive Mercer biography "Portrait of Johnny" (2004) Gene Lees acknowledged, at the start of the book, the debt he owed to Mercer's female relatives:

I began research [with] Johnny's daughter Mandy, who urged me to talk to her cousin Nancy Keith Gerard, daughter of Johnny's sister Juliana. She said Nancy was keeper of the family flame, its true historian.

[in the closing words of the book Lees writes:]

Nancy brought one of John's friends over to meet me on a day when we were exploring her memorabilia. The man said, "Don't you think Johnny was more than a lyricist -- he was a poet?

"No," I said, without hestitation, "he was more than a poet, he was a lyricist."

---

Earlier in the book, Lees speaks with great eloquence about great lyric writing -- that it is the highest form of written art, requiring much greater discipline than poetry. He alludes early on to the heart of the mystery:

"Music can communicate before it is understood. It need not be understood at all, ever. It doesn't matter whether you have technical knowledge of the art when you are being moved by say, a Rachmaninoff concerto or a jazz solo by Dizzy Gillespie. Music is the only art form that works directly on the nervous system; but how it achieves its effects baffles neurologists. They can describe some of the mechanics of the process but they cannot tell you why the process works.

"In these observations one catches a glimpse, but only a glimpse, of the power of song. The words must be slowed to the pace of the music, which gives them time to have their emotional effect, while the music has its own direct emotional effect. There is nothing in literature to compare to this form.

[Lee Knight]

^ thanks, that's a great bit ^

[blue2blue]

 

Originally Posted by Lee Knight

Well... "Everything" might not mean exactly what I meant, but it sounds great, doesn't it?

 

Well... it sounds all-encompassing, anyhow.