Here's a very recent experience I can bore you with.

I'm trying to write a lyric for a recent instrumental I posted (and pulled). I had the idea/theme and a line or two kinda in my head. I went to a nearby little restaurant and found myself unexpectedly beginning to flesh out more lines until I was "done".

Problem was, I didn't have the music playing. I THOUGHT I was writing something that would fit structurally (and it pretty much does). But it doesn't scan rhythmically. None of the phrases or even the lines are in the pocket, and if I leave it as is--a decent lyric that says what I want to say--it's not at all going to have that "bounce" and flow I am looking for ALWAYS against this particular musical groove. If a bass player came in with as little correlation between his licks and the rest of the piece as this "lyric" has, you'd fire him.

Do the stresses in the words line up with the pulses of the rhythm? Do the syllables fit on the up beats or on the down beats or sometimes one then the other? Are there any triplets or other variations? I can't score that, but I do FEEL/HEAR it. That's what writing a lyric actually IS to me--after a theme/idea is established. It doesn't matter if it is clever if it doesn't scan.

In order of importance to me (at least in effort if not always execution) it is theme/idea, prosody, originality.

So anyway, I got some lines out, perhaps, but it's back to the drawing board for this one. Sucks.

Last edited by Tangmo; 03/03/21 05:37 AM.
BIAB 2021 Audiophile. Windows 10 64bit. Songwriter, lyricist, composer(?) loving all styles. Some pre-BIAB music from Farfetched Tangmo Band's first CD. https://alonetone.com/tangmo/playlists/close-to-the-ground