I would say it's 90/10 that I write lyrics first. One recent exception was "Titles" where I wanted to do that industrial/trance tune and given the nature of the music bed for the song, the music had to be first. Usually though the lyrics come first.

I get asked from time to time "Where do your song ideas come from?" My answer has been the same for a long time. Songs are stories set to music. Stories can either be fact or fiction. I don't do fiction well. Most of my songs are "relationship" songs, and I am notoriously BAD with relationships so many of my songs are "We tried. We failed. Buh-bye." songs. The big band thing I did was about the last girlfriend I had (and she will be the last!) where I actually said the words that were the hook to her. "I don't care where you go, as long as you're gone". One from my CD was called "When The New Wears Off." I was out for the evening with a woman in 2009 and she spent the whole evening going on and on about moving away to be with the latest Mr Wonderful who was going to make her a star. Meanwhile, she can't write, she can't play and she can't sing. And after we parted ways for the evening I said out loud to myself while driving home "Man, she will be back in a couple of years when the new wears off." When I got home I went upstairs and that song was written in about 20 minutes.

The last one, Livin' On Wheels, I explained in a thread that I was laying in bed one morning after the dog had awakened me to go outside (at 6AM!!!) and I thought "Man, I have so many things to get done before I'll be living on wheels." Another quick write.

Sometimes I struggle with the lyrics being cohesive and still maintain the proper sense of prosody. The cadence of the lyrics has to fit the cadence of the music, and that can call for a lot of tweaking, like "How else can I say this to make it fit?"

And that's usually how it goes for me. Lyrics tend to determine genre, and the cadence of the lyrics dictate how long the phrases will be, thus the Real Band style I look for.

Last edited by eddie1261; 04/12/18 04:36 PM.