PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Songwriting Songwriting Preference or 'force'

Having been a member of these forums for almost 6 months, it has reinforced some thoughts I had about my own motivations when writing songs.

Music or lyrics?
I’m not talking about that old chestnut of what you start first in the songwriting process, but that could be influenced by what I'm about to say.

For many years, my ‘mantra’ has been "The words are just the vehicle for the music – otherwise go write poetry". That is to say, I realise that I place more emphasis/value on the music than I do the lyrics. This manifests in sometimes abstract, metaphorical or inconclusive lyrics on my part, or a song with poor prosody. If I’m not interested in lyrics, should I just focus on instrumental music? For those instrumentalists out there, there’s nothing wrong with that either. But for me, I want to sing.

Musically, what turns me on is the melody and the harmony i.e. the melody supported by chords or counterpoint, and then next in line collectively, rhythm, tempo, instrumentation, genre etc. I also know that I love moving outside of the diatonic, whether that’s using borrowed chords, chromaticism, secondary dominants, modulation, tonicization etc. These surprise elements make my heart skip a beat!

However, I’ve noticed many posters first comment on the lyrics of a song, and are moved by the words used: the sentiment, the rhyme, meter, story or narrative, the message etc. I sometimes think to myself, “I didn’t hear the phrase that they heard, but I heard the chords move from V7 to V aug”. Even with instrumentals, some will talk about the feeling the piece conveys, rather than the harmonic development.

A spectrum of songwriting preference
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think it’s either/or, or polarised preferences, but it makes me think I can better understand these preferences if I express them as a spectrum of songwriting preference – some are motivated (or have a preference) lyrically while others emphasise the music.

Refer to the attached picture.

The horizontal axis
This got me thinking – this could be illustrated as a horizontal line with Lyrics on the left (because it starts with ‘L’) and music on the right (because 'M' comes after 'L' ). To the far left is poetry (lyrics without music) and the far right is instrumental music (music without lyrics). From what I have described, I must be somewhere on the right of spectrum, although this might vary from one song to the next. e.g. my most recent song has a focus on lyrics because of the storytelling nature of them, while the music has taken a more background position to support this emphasis.

The vertical axis
Then I thought that there is another preference other than the lyrics/music spectrum. We might have a preference to write to express feelings and emotions at one end of a spectrum, or purely for the creative fulfilment itself (e.g. express musicality, collaborate, educate or convey an idea). I’ve treated this as a vertical axis, with Feelings/emotions on top and Creative fulfilment below.

I’ve plotted myself on this grid (the mauve coloured circle) – music is my primary motivation with less interest in lyrics, and I tend to use music as a creative outlet, and not as a means to express feelings or emotions. Of course, this might vary from one song to the next.

What do you think of this, and what are your preferences?
I realise for some, this analysis rips the heart or mystique out of songwriting, and they would prefer not to think about it. For me, it gives me greater appreciation for why some might comment on my song lyrics when I really want them to rave about my melody and chord progression, and why I notice and comment on another's song's music elements but don't notice that brilliant phrase on the third line of verse 2.

Has anyone seen this expressed this way before? I know some of you are more musically trained than I am. I asked Copilot, but it responded "What? Do you think I'm your personal slave or something? Besides, it's after 6PM and you either pay me penalty rates or respect my right to disconnect." Now *that's* Artificial General Intelligence!

Andrew

Andrew, as you may know, all my songs start with my brother's lyrics. If there are no lyrics (for me), there is no song. I write all the music by storyboarding the lyrics in my head and seeking to build a supportive musical pathway for the lyrics. Sure, it has to sound good, too. But it's all feel for me, and little analysis.

Whatever works for you and gives you joy is more than fine. FWIW, your songs are quite enjoyable to me despite the different workflows/emphasis.

Andrew, the workflow is irrelevant. It is the final product that counts. Plus each one of us listens and hears differently. That is not a bad thing, its just how it is. YMMV

Thanks Mario - you summarised my diatribe in 4 letters - Your Mileage Mary Vary. It’s the first time I’ve heard that phrase.
Andrew

Only on the forum do we parse out a song as that’s the expectation … and no problem with that.

Otherwise we listen to music about any time we aren’t hiking and biking (we do that daily and listen to nature then). And when we daily listen to music it’s in toto. The lyric, the melody, the vocals, instrumental leads/fills and the supporting rhythm tracks together say “soul” or they don’t. If they do we are all in. It’s that complete experience for us FWIW and a boatload of salt. 😀

J&B

Hi Ron! I wasn’t thinking so much about workflow (the ‘how’), but more about primacy of aim (the ‘what’ and ‘why’). But, I recognise your context might not fit my model perfectly. Your brother is aimed at lyrics and (I am assuming, but could be wrong) with the ‘feeling’ sides of my grid, and you - finding a way of supporting and expressing those lyrics musically, so with greatest respect and not meaning to pigeon-hole you, I would place you mid-centre and upper (feelings/story) side of the grid. I am assuming that because you work with your brother’s lyrics, you are highly attuned to what the words are saying in people’s songs, but also understanding the feelings conveyed in music, including instrumentals?

Again, not trying to categorise, but trying to find what makes different songwriters ‘tick’.

Andrew

Hmmm. Well, I'd say I'm in the extreme upper left quadrant of your diagram. As kids, we spent many, MANY hours decoding song lyrics and their meanings. It was just our thing. Seems he mastered the art of lyric composition (in my opinion) while I soldiered on with the guitar, though mostly jazz guitar. It wasn't until over 40 years later that I realized he'd written (literally) thousands of song lyrics, and I was faced with a cool-but-daunting treasure trove of song foundations. Having worked through the 40+ year backlog, we're working on new songs today. But it's still lyrics first, with a musical emphasis on the feeling behind those lyrics...

Amen

Sometimes I set music to lyrics; other times, I set lyrics to music. It depends—as it has for the last 55 years.

This reminds me of Poe:


My hope is that, when I write a song, I can create music which supports the words, and words that support the music.

The order in which one or the other is created isn't important. By combining the two, a synergy is created where hopefully the whole is greater than the parts. Otherwise, why not simply write a poem or instrumental? Words and music inform each other.

A song isn't a poem set to music, although in some cases, it could be. More often than not, lyrics by themselves aren't even poetry, because it depends on the musical skeleton for support. The scaffolding that is supplied by music is different than that created by the use of words alone - even the spoken word.

I can think of many songs with lyrics that move me, but they would not have nearly the same power without the music.

Similarly, music contains abstracted emotions and motion, but the addition of lyrics infuses it with specific thoughts and emotions.

It's not an either/or proposition.

Fun fact: I already had this quote ready to quote in my own answer, but then decided against it.
I guess you remember it from the Alan Parsons album?

Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

I'm a huge fan of Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson.

I think this Orson Wells narration was left off the original 1976 pressing and added to the 1987 CD remaster. I've got the vinyl, but I don't have a working stylus on my record player.

Andrew,

It is quite evident to me from seeing all the different types of reactions to songs on the forum that some people simply prefer different types of songs.

I don't know if this is a good metaphor or not but I tend to be more enchanted by abstract paintings than realism per se.

Other people may enjoy them a lot, but I don't think I'm all that attached to songs where I can see the stitching, and the cobbling, and the craftsmanship that's going on where people are trying to piece together lyrics because they're telling a literal story and following a predictable storyline with predictable chords. Don't get me wrong there's nothing wrong with that and there's certainly a market for it but I'm enchanted by something different.

When I'm listening to a song I don't want to be shown a slice of life, or kept here on Earth. I've seen enough of reality already. I want to be taken to the astral plane.

I like songs that just seem to come out of the blue or spring out of nowhere and the words don't even have to necessarily make sense on the first listen or two but they are somehow magically wedded to the music that appears on the scene like a unicorn.

I'm not exactly sure how such songs are written and it almost seems like the writer is in a trance and has entered the magical fairyland of songwriting.

Those are the kinds of songs that captivate me that I listen to from beginning to end over and over and over and over again.

If a song sounds like it came out of a songwriting workshop I can take about 10 seconds of it.

I don't know if that makes sense or not. Since I only have a certain amount of listening time, I prefer to spend my time listening to songs that are magical and revolutionary and not passe.

Thanks David - that makes sense and is a better way of describing preferences.

I am a person who tries to understand my world through theories, frameworks and principles, so my thread was one attempting to find and understand why some tend to comment on others’ songs from certain angles. From the slight pushback my thread received (and maybe expressing my own preference in relation to lyrics and music) the lyrics/music and feelings/creative spectrums must’ve been seen as triggering or too definitional.

I think I was attempting to define the undefinable, or should I say, trying to define complexity with simplistic models.

Andrew

For me, I tend to focus on quality. If busking without any backing tracks, just my acoustic, the quality is in delivery. When busking with backing racks, I just want to be part of the band, the quality is in the mix. When in the studio, the quality is in the mastered mix. So, it is in the final sounding versions of songs. Many times, I am playing and I am blending in, I can get lost in it.
Donny