Critique of words without music

Since I joined the forum 9 months ago, there has been a noticeable number of people who used to post words and music that now post only lyrics in the first instance, in order to get a 1st pass of comments on the lyric alone.

I understand that different people have different reasons for doing this, but I find it difficult to critique a song without some music.

The relationship between the musical phrasing and the lyric phrasing are usually so important that it's hard to make an assessment of one without the other.

And obviously, the mood of the music has its own effect on the lyric.

This may be my own limitation, but as this is a songwriting forum and not a poetry forum, I can't help but want to assess both at the same time.

So if anyone is wondering why I am not critiquing your song lyrics in isolation, it's not that I'm indifferent to your effort, but I prefer to wait for your next posting when you include some bare bones of the music.

Does anyone else feel the same, or have any other thoughts on this matter?

I think we are all waiting to hear your songs

I think we are all waiting to hear your songs

Thanks Stick - I'd love to hear them myself!

I've accepted that i'm a slow learner of this songwriting craft. I thought because I am able to play guitar with a reasonable competence, that I'd pick up on writing music fairly well.

I was mistaken - I'm still melodically challenged. And a few other things as well.

I remain optimistic that I'll wake up one morning, and my subconscious will have finally pieced all the components of songwriting together, and I'll be able to get my act together.

But for the moment .........

I agree with OldGit. It is difficult for me to fully contribute when there are lyric only posts. I struggle with that sometimes, particularly with some of the more detailed lyrics that some very talented people on this board write. If there is one of those longish lyric threads and you don't see me posting contributing to the lyric its usually because things rapidly escalated above me head.

That being said, I find it good exercise to force myself to review lyrics only, as best I can. I'm pretty sure I have such a difficult time reviewing lyrics only because I have a hard time with lyrics in general. Give me a melody any day of the week to put me in my comfort zone! But I know I need to build that muscle so I do try to review songs with lyrics only.

And I do want to mention, having posted lyrics only, that its been highly educational (and beneficial to my lyrics) to see the thinking process of some excellent lyric writers on this board. When those comments are applied to my songs, it really is a teaching moment for me.

So I am with you OldGit. Now, has everyone had a chance to review my lyric only post "Was it something I did?". :-)

Rick

ADDENDUM: I just added a demo version of my song to "Was it something I did". I got to thinking about it, and I had not posted it from the start because I was embarrassed at the roughness of the vocals/lyrics. I think that is a wrong reason not to post a song. So I did.

Also I do agree with you. I find it hard to give advice on lyrics without music... usually because sometimes they don't appear to work or flow on paper... but they in melody they are great.

I have to say as well.... whilst I think lyrics are very important.... i do think this forum can sometimes get a little lyric happy (its like trigger happy but without a gun). I know this has been covered before but some of the greatest songs dont have the greatest lyrics and i think an "amazing" song can be written with "good" lyrics

Anyway... for me even the roughest of recordings .... even if its just your voice recorded into a phone...anything.... really helps

Thanks Stick - I'd love to hear them myself! I've accepted that i'm a slow learner of this songwriting craft. I thought because I am able to play guitar with a reasonable competence, that I'd pick up on writing music fairly well. I was mistaken - I'm still melodically challenged. And a few other things as well. I remain optimistic that I'll wake up one morning, and my subconscious will have finally pieced all the components of songwriting together, and I'll be able to get my act together. But for the moment .........

You've heard some of the stuff I've posted, right? Yours can't be any worse. Just get it out there and get it shot down. It definitely helps facilitate the learning process!

To answer your OP, yes, I find it easier to respond to lyrics and music together, but I still see value in discussing lyrics by themselves. I'm a language person, so I can usually get a feel for the mood that the songwriter is trying to convey from just the lyrics. Sometimes I'm surprised when the music is added later and the mood turns out to be not what I expected (sometimes pleasantly surprised, sometimes jarringly surprised ). Anyway, I'm O.K. with folks posting their story first, probably because I like story songs more than songs that are all beat and no meat (oh, that was bad ).

I think it's a good idea to get the lyrics criticized before you record. Although you can't quite analyze the flow and 'feel' of the song with just lyrics, you should be able to read them and grasp what the song is about. Sometimes it can be hard to tell if your lyrics aren't quite coherent in the eyes of others so it's a good idea to have someone else read them and make suggestions before going through the faffing of recording and uploading.

It's true that good songs can have average lyrics, and lyrics don't make the whole song. But a good melody can also often hide flaws in a lyric. So I think if you're looking for advice specifically on how to make your lyrics better, then it only makes sense to post them by themselves, because the music can often be a distraction.

The only time I think hearing the music is important to a lyric critique is for advice on rhythm and meter, whether the lyrics flow, whether they fit the melody, and that can be very difficult to do without actually hearing the melody. But generally, if the lyrics are well-written and make sense by themselves, it's unlikely that major adjustments will need to be made.

Pitar,

I'm interested in hearing how the board should be handled, how you think it should work for the benefit of songwriters and aspiring songwriters?

"You say you got a real solution... We'd all love to see the plan"

:-)

Rick

Yeah, I would like to hear this too.

Kurdy,

I agree with your post, but I also wanted to add that one of the reasons aspiring songwriters come to this and other board has nothing to do with improving a particular song. It's got to do with accelerated learning. To see how others approach things, not so we can copy, but so we can try to understand. It's not as much (at least for me) the improvement in one of my songs as it is learning why and how to improve a song. Thankfully, there are about a dozen people on this board that combine absolutely stellar songwriting talent with a willingness to share their insights.

Just my 2 cents,

Rick

In all fairness, I recently posted a song in bare bones form... a live performance, which is something I'm not comfortable doing at all. I see that Rickidoo just did something similar.

So, oldgitplayer, I think your time has come. I'm calling you onto the carpet.

What we have here, Pitar, is a community... one that you'll never really fit into... which is your choice.

It won't be long, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

It won't be long, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

It won't be long, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

'Til I'll be on the carpet too.......:wave::wave:

I've been here 5-10 years, and this is a recurring issue. The craft of "songwriting" is often confused with lyric writing, probably stemming from the days in which a new song was created when some current-events lyrics were grafted onto a familiar melody, but definitely boosted by the "Set Your Poem to Music" scams of the last 100 years. I think the only remotely effective response is routinely offering a friendly, "Lyrics scan well (or don't), rhyme scheme is interesting (or isn't), but I can't really judge this without hearing the accompanying music". It doesn't take too many responses to enlighten the poster in question.

As for Pitar's comments, it sounds like most of us do it different from the way he does it, and that's probably why the rest of us have congealed here. Everyone is welcome, but if you don't believe in the process we have in place, it probably isn't going to be very productive for you, unless you're the sort of person who enjoys meta-arguments about writing. In which case, again, this isn't really a good place for you.

Thanks Stick - I'd love to hear them myself! I've accepted that i'm a slow learner of this songwriting craft. I thought because I am able to play guitar with a reasonable competence, that I'd pick up on writing music fairly well. I was mistaken - I'm still melodically challenged. And a few other things as well. I remain optimistic that I'll wake up one morning, and my subconscious will have finally pieced all the components of songwriting together, and I'll be able to get my act together. But for the moment .........

I certainly find it easier to hear what will work and what won't when there is music -- and I, myself, tend to write the music and the lyric together -- although, for me, the music is often fairly dynamic. Some songs, the music comes out more or less as it will always be, but basically I consider the music/arrangements to be not fixed in stone. Maybe it's because, back when I used to play in bands and jam with people, it often fell to me to come up with the words. (At a certain point I basically stopped bringing my notebook or be that linchpin, but that's another story.) So I would often repurpose a set of lyrics on the fly, sometimes recontextualizing whatever melody the song already had, sometimes coming up with a new melody to fit whatever was going on.

That said, I can easily see why some folks -- particularly those whose words get out in front of the music -- like to get feedback going forward. If there's a problem with the words, they may want to fix that. For some folks, I think, the music flows more directly from the words, the words almost being like a foundation they build the music on.

So, for me, the connection between lyrics and melody is quite dynamic and flexible.

With re OGP, I guess I'd forgotten that you, OGP, came here at the 'beginning' of your songwriting career. You jumped in with well developed aesthetics and insights and I just lost track of that.

I suspect your dilemma is not unlike my own when I started writing -- I knew, to some extent, what was good, but what I was turning out was utter crap. On the other side of the writing coin, I felt at the time like I was a pretty good poet (not as good as I thought, but, 20, eh?) and that just made the doggerel I was scribbling to go with my two chord wonders the more vexing. The fact that you're an experienced musician probably makes your efforts similarly frustrating to you.

But it's like anything else, tennis, golf, knitting, skeet-shooting... you're going to be bad at the beginning. And it's something you just have to burn through. It's going to be embarrassing to you (or it has been already), even to read yourself. This is how it is. You just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, one word after another. You don't have to be good. You pretty much can't be good at the beginning. But the more you write, the better you get. (OK, there's certainly a lot of two steps forward, one step back, along the way, too. But it's a process.

I just want to thank Pitar for the insight about how useless this forum is. All this time I thought my songwriting, lyric writing and production skills had improved from time spent here, but it was pure fantasy.

I may continue to hang around here, but it will be solely to accost those idiots who continue to waste their time by posting {censored}.

Thank you Pitar!

Hah! Thanks for the laugh, Justin!

I feel the same way about being here. It's not necessarily about each particular song, and gaining approval-by-committee to proceed with it. It's about honing your craft, something that's not as easy to do on your own compared to when you have a chance to rub shoulders with a group of like-minded, and sometimes not-so-like-minded fellow craftsmen and craftswomen (hi, Grace!).

LCK

Ha... if Pitar didn't exsit, maybe we'd have to invent him. Of course, I can only answer for myself, as we're all different. Let me break things up...

Yes. Of course. But I find getting feedback from others to be helpful. I'm a pretty complex guy but I can't hold all points of view at once. And, clearly, neither can you. You don't even seem to be able to imagine another point of view, apparently.

Many songwriters in the past have collaborated with others -- which is clearly dependent on just the kind of communication and critique you disclaim and, of course, as we know from reading about the 'golden age' of pop songwriting, some of our most respected and beloved pop craftspeople were products of the publishing 'sweatshops' of the Brill Buildings, where songwriters went to work everyday, hanging out with other songwriters, bouncing off ideas and getting feedback.

On the contrary, people seem to be writing a LOT of songs. They may not be doing the actual writing IN the forum (although I've actually written a couple of songs straight into this BB) but they are certainly editing and shaping their songs, with the feedback and assistance of others.

How so? I know I haven't asked anyone's permission to write what I want to write. Sometimes I ask for feedback. Sometimes that feedback helps me change a song. Sometimes it helps me feel OK ab out leaving it as it is. Sometimes I agree, sometimes not. But it's always helpful to me to varying degrees. Feedback/critique may not be helpful to everyone -- obviously, some folks don't respond well to critical comments from others. For those, such feedback may be problematic and they should probably try to find some better way of sussing out issues with their songs.

I see it. Maybe the mote is in YOUR eye.

Maybe you simply do not understand modesty or lack of arrogance. Not everyone is convinced they are in possession of all the answers. Ahem.

Maybe you cannot recognize or understand people trying to help each other. Not every aspect of life fits into the stunted view of life as a zero-sum game. Some of us actually develop friendship and affection for those we think of as colleagues. Others have developed the perspective and maturity to work and cooperate with others they may not have any great fondness for because such an effort can be beneficial to both parties -- and can even help both parties rise above their differences in point of view or temperament.

Of course not. And I certainly hope that if this place folded tomorrow that people would take what they've learned here and use it in the future. (I'd also hope -- even maybe expect -- that in such a case, folks would put together some kind of alternative on their own -- since, when I look at this forum, I see a real community that works together.

Damn, does this have to be explained yet again? First and foremost, the works-in-progress rule is an unfortunately necessary barrier to keeping promo out of the forum. And that, whether you have the experience or insight to recognize it, is one of the main reasons this forum works. If we allowed promo, it would, sooner or later (and my guess is sooner) be one of those typical forums choked with "Check out my band" promo, with no real dialog or interaction. I've been online for a LONG time (since before the www) and I've seen that phenom over and over.

Beyond that, of course, is the very common sense concern: with limited time and resources, why should I or anyone else bother critically analyzing and thinking about a song that is already finished and which will not benefit from that analysis and critique?

Really. Is that so difficult to understand? I shouldn't think so.

Wow, man. Heavy. What does it mean, though?

I'm really sorry we don't match up to your lofty criteria.

I've written well over 150 songs and my song blog/podcast has had over a a half million podcast downloads. The fact I'm a "non-writer" in your eyes means... absolutely nothing to me.

I think it's always good to get together and have a kind of loya jirga on forum issues. Especially welcome, since I haven't been able to spend as much time here as I have in the past. But then, every time I drop in, Pitar's concerns notwithstanding, things seem to be going really well, from my perspective. People seem to be writing a lot and interacting a lot and discussing songwriting. I don't see newcomers or others going without comments or feedback. I really do see a community of people working together.

Never say never. I have not written Pitar off by any means. I rather like the guy. I just think he's trapped in a certain perspective.

Aside from spammers, there's only one guy I've truly written off here (DoB, just so there's no mistake about who), which was, itself, a bit of a shame, because, despite a disdain for the feelings of others bordering on classic sociopathy, he had a certain energy and intelligence and wasn't without musical talent. He just couldn't play nice. Or anything close to it.

Absolutely...what makes this place unique from songwriting instructional books or classes is that it doesn't dictate how to approach writing. Instead it illuminates the process itself, makes it less of a mystery. As a beginner, you tend to have pre-conceived notions about how things should be done. For those of us who've been at it a while, it's easy to forget that to someone just starting to write songs, it can be quite a revelation to realize any approach is valid if it gets you good results.

And even as someone who's been making up songs nearly as long as I can remember, I believe there are things to be learned here. I may have fewer songwriting revelations than I would if I were just starting out, and perhaps the things I learn are less obvious, but it's impossible for it not to have some influence on me.

And sometimes it's just fun to come here and talk shop. Nothing wrong with that either.

Also, I think the decision is up to the participant themselves how they want to use this forum. Even though there's a bit of a community here, this place is meant to be a resource for songwriters, not some sort of exclusive club. There are no rules that you must ask other members for critiques...you are allowed to use this forum in the way that you feel is most useful to you. If you are looking for some other kind of writing advice than the kind that's typically given, then speak up about it. No one's going to reprimand you for it.

And....there is always somebody out there that is worse at it than you.

WRT the OP.....I'm also one who really needs music to fairly critique a song. That said, I do enjoy finding the cadence in a set of lyrics that seems musical and then seeing how my first impression matches up with the finished product.

Exactly.

I used to belong to a real-life songwriting workshop, where a bunch of us songwriters would meet once a month and sit together in a circle, offering critiques of each other's work. Then typically, the members would go home, make revisions to their work based on the feedback they received. So what is it that makes this forum so drastically different from that? Because it's online? Because the process happens much quicker than it would in real-life where people actually have to drive to a place? How about college writing classes, where you hand in your first draft to a professor who then suggests changes and revisions to be made? I don't know--maybe I'm missing something.

This is my thinking. And, as always, as moderator, I try to be very open to discussions of how the forum might be improved.

Now, I certainly understand that it might sometimes seem that I have pre-thought 'answers' to some suggestions, but that's mostly because I've thought about this stuff a lot.

I've considered many angles and options, even including setting up ancillary sites and forums. None of the '6 basic rules' of this forum was crafted without considerable thought based on long observation of songwriting and musician's forums. Whether it's from studying biology or game theory (or just all those mind expanding trips to the mountain top), I feel like I have a good gut understanding of the importance of setting up viable conditions for growth and function.

But I'm always open to further discussion. I like to talk.