Category Archives: Songwriting Adventures

Songwriting Adventures: Keeping a Journal

Ukulele Journal

Journaling to mine your own experiences for lyric ideas is a staple of the songwriting craft. Keeping a daily record is a great practice, but if you’re like me and you’ve had some major lapses in that record, don’t let that stop you from starting again, or starting for the first time.

Journals can take many forms, but are commonly a record of the places you’ve been, the experiences you’ve had, the people you’ve met, the tasks you’ve accomplished and so on. For the purpose of writing powerful, emotion-based songs, you may have to go deeper than that, with a particular focus on exploring how you feel about events and why (this can include your reactions to what is going on the world).

The practice of using concrete imagery to express the emotions you felt during an encounter can bring your journal a step closer to making your experiences relatable to others. Let’s say you are tempted to write something like “I felt sad.” Labeled emotions like ‘sad’ or ‘happy’ tend to fall flat in poetry and lyrics. Although they state an emotion, they rarely invoke an emotion.

“I felt sad” could easily be expressed in a myriad of different ways that invoke the senses through which we feel and interpret the world. That sadness could feel like being ‘cut off,’ ‘punched in the gut,’ ‘drowned,’ or ‘loaded down.’ These expressions, though commonplace, invoke feelings more poignaintly than simply saying, “I’m sad.” Of course, coming up with a novel expression that is easily relatable is even better (some examples to follow).

The same is true for happiness. Would you rather sing about “I’m so happy” (Pharrell Williams) or “I’m walking on sunshine” (Katrina And The Waves)? Both songs were smash international hits, but which title has more emotional punch? What helps Pharrell’s song out of this pitfall is that much of the rest of the lyric translates the phrase “I’m so happy” into more concrete expressions: “like a room without a roof,” “sunshine, she’s here,” “hot air balloon that could go to space,” etc. … lots of repetition, a catchy groove, and ironic pairing with a hit film certainly help as well.

Of course, Elton John and Bernie Taupin sidestep this issue entirely by pairing ‘sad’ with ‘song’ to make it concrete in “Sad Songs (Say So Much).” This is a cool trick that could be applied to many emotions. “Angry Young Man,” “Shiny Happy People,” “Bleeding Love,” and “Creature Fear” are all titles that mix basic emotions with concrete imagery to help conjure feelings in us.

Once you have written a journal entry or two as a springboard, you can get started on your new song. One approach is to use this material from your life to tell a story in song form. Another is to mine your journal for highly-charged, emotional phrases and images and base a song around that. For the first, you’ll want to read the coming article on storytelling. For the latter, you’ll want to read the coming article on media mining (yes, your journal is now ‘media’).

Note: This is an excerpt from the book I’m currently writing, “The Songwriting Adventure.”

Songwriting Adventures: Using a ‘Found’ Text

Man reading poetry ... toa-heftiba-Sr5A9u_Y96g-unsplash

Maybe you want to get straight to writing music and a text serves as inspiration. Maybe you feel daunted by writing your own lyrics. Maybe you have have a love of the antique or ancient and want to celebrate it in your own way. I’ve written my own lyrics and set a variety of ‘found’ texts, from Shakespeare to Christmas carols; both ways of getting started on a song have their own rewards and pitfalls.

First, if you want a laugh, do an internet search for ‘lyric generator ai‘ and try out some of these horrible abominations. While some of these ‘tools’ are actually better than others, they mainly serve to highlight how difficult it really is to write a great, coherent, soul-satisfying lyric. It’s possible you might find a cool phrase or two to base a lyric on, but if you’re looking for something to set to music immediately, you probably want to look elsewhere.

Poetry is a source of inspiration for many composers. Within my lifetime there have been popular settings of famous poems like The Lady of Shalott, and Hope Is the Thing with Feathers. While these have mostly been made by folk-inspired artists, I have heard rap versions of The Raven and Fox in Socks. The latter of these, by Dr. Seuss, is still in copyright. Be cautious about setting anything that is not in the public domain (written after 1922), unless it is just for your own personal enjoyment (getting permission to set copyrighted works by major publishers can be next to impossible). In classical circles, there are thousands of settings of poems, known as art songs, generally for voice and piano. Archives of public domain poetry on the internet are many. If you’re interested in a specific author, try gutenberg.org and look for collections of their poetry. I’d personally love to see more settings of poems in popular styles.

Scriptures have been set to music by composers for thousands of years. The most famous popular music example is undoubtedly Turn! Turn! Turn! by the Byrds. More recently, many songs by U2, as well as songs by Amy Grant and other Christian artists have been based in full or in part on scriptures. Once again, you’re going to need to be careful about what translation you use, as many modern translations of the Bible are going to be in copyright and you will need to get permission to publish your setting. The King James Version is classic and in the public domain. If you want to make it more modern, just restate archaic passages in your own way, switching out the ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ with you, etc..

Relatedly, some public domain hymns could use a modern makeover. While many powerful texts are still viable and relatable they may currently be paired with dated tunes that no longer sing to our souls. A notable example of a powerful makeover is Casting Crowns reset of the Christmas hymn “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” which brings the text home in a completely different way than the traditional setting. Speaking of Christmas specifically, there are hundreds of Christmas Carol texts, both sacred and secular, that could use a similar makeover. One of my favorite sources for these texts is an older website, hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com.

Other sources? The Italian composer Rossini famously bragged that he could set a laundry list to music. Composers have since done so, as well as other lists, recipes, crosswords, fortune cookies, axioms, sections of prose, posters and more. The Beatles song “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite” is based almost entirely on a circus poster. While a lot of these ‘found texts’ generally lead to more experimental and avante–guarde types of songs, they can be a fun way to mix things up from your regular songwriting routine.

Finding a text that excites you enough to want to set it to music can happen quickly, or it might take quite a bit of effort. Sometimes, I feel, writing my own lyric is often easier. Another option is to work with a living poet or collaborate with a lyricist.

BONUS CONNECTION: If you have found a text you’re excited about, share it on your social media, mention you’re thinking about setting it, talk about why you like it and get reactions from your followers. Be sure to interact with their responses.