Originally Posted By: Tano Music
I am a believer that the music and melody must come first. Maybe that comes from being a keyboard oriented person. I think of lyric writing as a craft, like woodworking, where the challenge is that the words must be carefully chosen to fit the melody that has already been given. To start, I often choose a style from BIAB that seems interesting. Then I play around with chord sequences that also seem interesting, let the software generate the song, and listen; then modify/expand the chord structure as I wish. I typically only work on the melody after I get the song “roughed out” in this way. Once I’m happy with the music I’ve created, I work on the lyric idea...sometimes it comes quickly, other times years go by before something seems to fit. My lyric ideas come from things that are in my mind generally in life, I less I decide to give myself a “lyric challenge”, like writing with alliterations, or creating a special/weird rhyming scheme. All my work takes place in front of the computer, with my midi keyboard at my side, and my indispensable rhyming reference book “Rhyming Dictionary”, written by Gene Lees.

Very cool! Thanks for sharing that. It has been really interesting to see where everyone draws their inspiration from.

Cheers,
Ember