I Can't Write That Well

I'm sorry, but I have a bad sense of songwriting.

Does anyone know where I should look to for help? and, if possible, tell me the secrets to writing a decent song(where to start, etc.?)

Listen to other people's songs with a critical ear (especially here). Submit your own songs for criticism. Practice.

practice, practice, practice. Write constantly. Well, not constantly, but you know...

I can write, just not to a beat. I have written numerous poems and stories but just can't apply them to a song! People usually like my material(stories and poems) but I can't find my inner beat!

I'm guessing you aren't a musician?

The only way to get good at writing metered poetry (poetry with meter, a beat, if you will) is to stumble on...

To develop your ear for meter, you need to read aloud. Reading aloud is different than reading silently to oneself because it gets other parts of the brain going -- not just the parts that control your vocal mechanism, but the parts of the brain devoted to dealing with sound -- it's important to get them involved since hearing language is different than reading it. It also gets the auditory memory system involved which allows us to "roll the sound around in our heads" -- playing it back in a manner of speaking for a short time. (Auditory memory is parallel to and linked with other short term memory functions. That's why reading aloud can help you rehearse and memorize things.)

(It is possible to get these 'circuits' involved without actually reading aloud through muscular subvocalization technques [the speech apartatus becomes activated, vocal chords tense, muscles move] and then use other short term memory to mimic the auditory memory system. But it's not quite the same, so if your situation does allow you to read your work out loud, it's the best course of action and may well be necessary on the way to 'silent' vocalization techniques. Anyhow, ain't the brain great? Amazing they can fit a whole little world up there. )

If it makes you feel any better, I went through a similar thing.

I was a 'college poet' but desperate to learn how to play guitar and write songs. (It was the end of the 60s, what can I tell you? What a time! I remember this one... er... where was I? )

I considered myself a pretty good poet (I was a wee bit delusional -- when you're 18, 19, it can go with the territory). Natch, I wrote free verse. I wasn't drawn to rhyming poetry much at all... maybe Shakespeare 'cause his flow was so good if you could figure out how to pronounce that Elizabethan English. And Eliot... 'cause he slipped in and out and was often so postmodern (at least when his bud Ezra was doing the slicing and dicing).

Anyhow, I tried writing some non-rhyming songs but it seemed even harder in some ways -- and I liked rhyming songs, unlike my feelings about poetry.

My first rhyming songs were doggerel. Sub-doggerel.

I was humiliated and ashamed just writing them down. But it was the only way forward, I could see that much.

I tried to build on each one. And each one was a little better. At some point I checked a rhyming dictionary out of the library and did some pretty mechanical rhyming exercises. When I had to give it back, I quickly realized I could do a pretty good job of it myself just by running the alphabet...

For example:

Rhyme with car? Run the alphabet. Of course, some vowells and a few consonants won't work in any given case -- and then there's orange. But it only takes a half a minute:

a bar [car] -dar e far -gar -har i jar [-kar] mar -nar o par -q'ar -rar -sar tar u -var w'ar yar -zar

I think you get the idea... it's really not much more trouble than getting up and walking across the room to pick up the rhyming dictionary -- and it kind of gets the blood flowing, gets the brain searching around -- whereas just looking something up doesn't really loosen up the brain juices in the same way. (I love modern cognitive science. Can you tell?)

Added benefit, after a while, finding rhymes seems to often come quite naturally... as soon as you end one line, some little brain idea-spider is going out looking for the next rhyme -- and that can help generate ideas you might not necessarily have had if you were just plodding along in a linear fashion.

Writing poetry or "verse" gets a lot better when you learn about cadence. Once you establish a rhythm, it is easier to create song lyrics.

There are a few good books on songwriting, but, a book that does double-duty is the "Song Writer's Market" which explains what quality writing actually is.

What I have noticed, more times than not, with novice songwriters is that they tend to put too many words in each line of their songs. The best songs keep the lyrics very simple while painting a picture in the listeners mind.

If you want to become good quickly, I would do a few things:

1) Learn to play the piano. It is much easier to write songs with.

2) I would sit down and map out famous songs. Write down how many times they repeat a verse, or a chorus, and for how many measures. What is the chord progression? Is it I-IV-II? What is it? Where are the key changes? I cannot emphasize how much that helps. You can spend ten minutes a day doing one song.

3) I would start writing, and RECORD EVERYTHING. I probably went through 5 cassette tapes in the last 8 months before I got my recording system. Don't waste ideas by forgetting them.

4) Read the book "How to Write Hit Songs on Guitar." It helps a lot.

5) For the love of god, get a rhyming dictionary. It will help with your vocab. Also, listen to artists who are good with lyrics.

It depends on the type of mood you want to set and your style too. If you listen to someone like Jason Mraz, he has a lot of words per verse and I think it adds to his style and makes it unique.

I recently took a songwriting class at Berkleemusic.com Which offers some great online classes from Berklee School of Music in Boston. The class is pretty expensive but you learn a lot of material from the course book which much MUCH cheaper. Check out "Songwriting Workshop: Harmony" by Jimmy Kachulis. It shows you how to approach songwriting much more logically than just noodling around. This has been the best book that I have read on songwriting. Theres also a book called "Songwriting Workshop: Melody" by Jimmy Kachulis. I was sent both of them as course material but have only gone through the harmony book. I think I remember reading in an interview with John Mayer that he still has these books and goes back to them from time to time as a reference.

As others mentioned though, practice will help you the most. I find that learning techniques to add to your "toolbox" of songwring tools, and practicing those tools will make the most out of your practice time. If you write a bunch of songs you will not learn nearly as much unless you know what you are playing and can apply it again if necessary for another song. This is where theory comes in.

If you learn some theory, this will help you a lot in writing songs. check out the site musictheory.net and read some lessons. When you can analyze songs using roman numerals, this will give you a great start. You will learn the diatonic chords in a key and go from there. If you have a piano, this makes learning theory and writing songs much more straight forward than on a guitar. I think piano is a much more liner. Its just 12 notes repeating for each octave. It is much easier to learn and because you don't have to worry about fretting notes correctly (as with guitar) you can concentrate more on the mental aspects of it and less about the physical aspects of it.

Work on your ear training as well. Try this exercise: Play a note on you instrument, then its respective major scale. C would be the easiest to start with on piano, just start on middle C (white note to the left of the set of 2 black notes in the middle of the piano) and play up to the octave. Then sing the C note and then sing another note or two within that scale. now try to play what you just sang. A great way to write songs is to create a song in your head. You can be much more creative without having to worry about your fingers. The exercise I just mentioned will help you then put the song you have in your mind down into audible music. Thats a very basic example and you can go from there.

+1. B2B, your method makes it a lot harder to generate multi-syllable words, as well as words that start with dipthongs and blends. Sitar, scar, star, char...

R34, of course, perfect practice makes practice perfect. The more you work at something, most likely the more improvement you will have. Still, I have seen countless beginners that try to cram too many lyrics in too small a space.

Granted John Denver, Jim Croce, James Taylor, and others have managed to make it work at times, but, think of big hits, like "Margaritaville" and just how simple they are to play and pick out the lyrics. More times than not, it is those commercial successes people should emulate until they start to master this craft.

We are advising someone wanting to improve cadence and rhythm. When you are learning, it is much easier to work on songs that are not as complex.

As others mentioned, I would try and share your ideas with others and expose yourself to constructive criticism.

As a writer/musician who is more prone to listen to melody, harmonies, rhythm and song structures, I tend to have a more difficult time focusing on lyrical elements of song (as many musicians do). Learning to hone in on your weak spots helps, however. Read lyrics of artists you enjoy along with their songs. Try and "appreciate" their talents.

Additionally - I noticed someone recommended you get a rhyming dictionary, which is a good idea. I've been using this site (I know it's cheesey) for years, ha... it's free - cut me some slack. But, put as much effort towards your writing as possible before using outside tools... otherwise you might become too dependent on outside tools.

Hope that helps!

I get what you mean...but I am a musician. I do go through the alphabet to find rhymes but I need to find a way to make a transition in words instead of repeating. I have learned piano and about 2 or 3 other instruments, but I haven't quite applied them to their potential. Thanks for the tips, I will find a rhyming dictionary, and try to keep giving me some help in the songwriting world. I'm a great player, just can't make my own stuff.:arg:

BTW: you guys are good songwriters, is there really nothing that rhymes with orange? I mean, cant they make another word like "ginormous" to rhyme with orange?

Door hinge?