Carnival

I just re-read every single post. I am the only one who mentioned Neil Young. Makes me wonder what others think. I won't put him ABOVE some of the great ones listed, because they each have their style and merits. Just wanted to know if anyome else here would rate him with the greats.

Cheater

Breaking new ground, creating new genres...

Your observations are excellent. Like all the others, they seem to fit illuniate another aspect of the discussion. That said, to put critiques of content and emotion off-limits based on the concept that we all like different things, is a slippery slope, and if it applies to emotion and content, then why not to coherence and form. Your incoherence might be my soaring freedom, etc. Typo made some excellent points about some things having to be understood, and we shouldn't have to refer back to explanations of the 'guidelines' with every criticism. Another quideline that pervades these forums (intentionally) is that we are critiquing with an ear toward writing commercially viable music. If you want to write wonderful music, there are absolutely no rules. If it sounds wonderful so one person, and everyone else hates it, it can be considered a success. But if you want to write commercially viable songs, it is reasonable to look at the elements that are common to those songs, including phrasings, content, subject matter, rhyme schemes, etc. Before your song gets on the radio and we find out if people like it, it first has to be 'approved' by experts, who would include record labels, publishers etc. These persons look very closely at the content, subject, mood, feel, message, theme, etc of the song in determining whether it is a commercially viable song. It's helpful to have other experts, many with professinal experience, to comment on these issues before you take them to a record label and try to get them to invest some $$ in your project. I can write songs that are coherent and techincally perfect, knowing full well that no one in their right mind would ever publish, record, release or buy it. The feedback fro others on the emotional content of our work is critical.

Jan, it's an excellent topic. There are times when I think the reviews ask for story that is completely outside the intended scope or message of the song. They are asking, in effect, for a different song. But there are other times when the song screams for more 'story' We need to get our story straight. What do we mean by 'story'? Basically it means "who, what, when, where, and / or why?" But beyond this, it has two subtly different meanings. One is for the physical facts to be laid out more clearly. This is the request that sometimes grates on the lyricist, who has no intentions of rewriting his lyric to satisfy a reviewers random request. But the other kind of story is the fulfillment of the one the lyricist set out to tell. The elements of a song have to be self-supporting. Who decides? A consensus of listeners. Since we don't have that level of access and communicaiton with a large body of listeners, we rely on reviewers. With regard to love songs as you mentioned, when writing directly 'to' your love, sometimes a lyric just doesn't connect because it is goes TOO FAR in speaking directly. If you were really speaking to your love or ex-love or whomever, it's a fair assumption that the person would know what you were talking about - your shared background, etc., so you would never need to address it. The only thing that is important is your message, which in your mind, shines against the backdrop. But your audience lacks that context and cannot see the backdrop in your mind. You may think your lyric conjures it up, but perhaps it is insufficient. So in that type of lyric, you need to 'step back from the topic', because you are too close, and fill in enough context or story so that we know enough to relate to your words. In this type of lyric, the context becomes the story. When context is lacking, we can't relate well enough to your words to get their full emotional impact (which is what we are going for in songs) so we ask you to fill in the details of the story. It doesn't have to be the who, what, why, when, where details. It doesn't have to blow the mystery. It just has to set it up better, so you can knock us down better. You might feel that you are 'fudging' on the integrity of the lyric to include context for the listener, that you wouldn't if you were really talking to your lover. It's partly a matter of how skillfully you do it. And it's partly a matter of remembering that songs are art, not real life. Making art more life-like does not necessarily make for better art. Understanding your medium, including its limits, is what makes for better art, better songs. Your posted lyric, I CAN'T STOP LOVING YOU, for example, does a fine job of telling the story. It gives us all the context we need to appreciate your words. Nicely done. Norm

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I propose that we collectively identify and discuss the merits of different writing elements that impact a lyrics clarity of message and story, in an effort to effect a style, build a mood, etc, Here are examples to start things off: Metaphor. What does it take to use it effectively? What is cryptic writing? I would say it is writing that conjures ideas that are hinted at through phrases that, by themselves, have no apparent meaning. 'Yes' and other groups have made a career of it. What other writing elements are commonly criticized for obscuring the clarity of the story or message, that may have justification in their lyrical use? At what point does poetic license make a song more effectivel, and at what point does it become inappropriate? Do we fall into the trap of reviewing songs for their clarity of message at the expense of their lyrical beauty, which is only revealed when set to music? Are there a lot of successful songs that don't have a clear theme, message and story? Are these usually performed by the writer? Or are they portable, and can still be effectively sung by others?

It's a combination of familiarity and recording quality. The same thing happens with photographs. Most people don't think their photos really look like them or flatter them. One reason is that we are used to seeing ourselves in a mirror. But that is really a mirror image, and since our faces aren't truly symmetrical, what we are used to seeing is really backwards, so photos appear wrong to us. In our digital world, you may see enough pics of yourself to get over the illusion, and you look okay in photos of yourself. Most of us don't hear our recorded voices regularly. When we do, it's like seeing that first photo, and if the recording quality is poor, it's alike seeing a fuzzy photo, but not recognizing that the fuzz is a technical issue. Imagine seeing a fuzzy picture of yourself and believing you really looked fuzzy!?? That is what happens with vocals. You need to have a half-way decent recording, and get used to hearing yourself. Once you are familiar, you can begin focusing on deficiencies, through vocal technique, to make certain 'bad' sounds better. You may think you are putting a certain emotional inflection into a word, only to hear it sounding cracked or weak on playback. This is vocal technique, and by re-recording and listening, you will learn how to bring out the strengths in your voice. Think about when your friends sing, just casually. Some sound better than others, but few sound really bad. You don't sound bad to others either. I have a friend who is an accomplished composer and fantastic guitarist. Hes about 50 years old. He recently confided to me that when he listens to his own compositions, his guitar work doesn't sound very good to him. It just sounds like him. I told him, "That's your style. That is what makes your music unique. That is why people listen to you. It IS you, and it's a beautiful thing." It's still hard for him to get past that. So open your mind and accept your voice as this unique instrument. It may need tuning, and you may need to learn to use it better, but it's uniquely yours, and you can use it to sing like no one else!!!

Good insights from Lazz. The bottom line is that a lyric needs to be written and heard on it's own merits, and not on pre-conceived notions of its component phrases. It's also important to remember that reading a lyric is different than listening to one. It's much easier to be critical when reading, where you can stop and examine a word or phrase at length. When listening, we are carried in the flow, and the music is an integral part of the phrasing, and therefore the meaning and context of the words. The purpose of learning the characteristics and uses of the minute components of lyrics is not to be able to write 'perfectly', but to develop better instincts for what works, and what sounds good. We learn to forget. But in doing so, our instincts have changed, hopefully for the better. American football provides an apt analogy. It's an incredibly complex sport from the coaches POV, and the players need to learn all of the nuances of their respective positions, not so they can think each play through clearly, but so they can react properly with no thought at all. One of the greatest running backs of all time was Marcus Allen. In an interview years after his retirement, he said that what enabled him to be so successful is that he could line up for a play, and know what every player on the field was going to do. That's 21 other people he was tracking in a matter of a few seconds. He had learned the elements of football so well, he didn't even have to think about it, and could just rely on his lightning fast instincts to guide him. It may not be coincidental that, even as a young man, I always thought of his running style as 'poetry in motion'.

Sounds like we're all pretty much on the same page, each expressing it a bit differently. A lot of good lines have been used before, once or twice. I google all suspect lines, and I find hits. But I look to see how they were used. So when does an overused line become a cliche? You're cliche may be my soulful echo of a time gone by. What I have heard 10 times over, you may never have heard once. To me, a cliche is defined by its usage. The cliche works beautifully when it is the perfect phrase for the lyric. The more familiar the cliche, the higher the standard of usage. If you don't meet the standard, you've written a cliche.

I've never sung in front of others in my life. No confidence. Sometimes people have made fun of me for being off-key in a group. I have a hearing loss which makes it worse. But I want to sing. I bought a little recording setup for my PC (border-line studio quality mic and pre-amp) and started singing. I amplified the sound and used headphones as a monitor. I was amazed at how much better I could sing when the volume was up, and found that the reason I was off-key was because I couldn't really hear my voice that well before. I found that my voice is pretty smooth, and I can carry a tune, but I don't have much skill or range. I also found out that I really have to sing out, or my voice sounds anemic - that may be partly a skill issue, not sure. Anyways, my point is that listening to your own voice and trying diffferent things clears up a lot of the mystery, and you begin to associate different techniques with different results. Once you do this, you can make some progress. I'm making some, but still don't have much confidence singing in front of others. From another perspective, my daughter began working on her voice when she was about 10 years old. She would sit in the basement and wail for hours on end. Her voice wan't that good, and frankly, some of her song choices had such disonant melodies that I couldn't tell whether she was hitting the notes or not. But now she is 13, and I'm pretty impressed by what the kid has accomplished. She was recruited into her school's 'select choir', which is well known in the area, and does college level vocal arrangements. But the real point is that she developed her voice with no real vocal instruction. Now she is at the point where a little instructin is making a big difference.

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Just adding my penny-and-a-half to what you have covered. Regarding what the labels are "lookinig for", we all agree they don't really have much of a clue. Produce something really special, and someone will give it a shot. Or if they don't you can prove it's appeal through independent marketing, and the labels will take notice. Remember, it doesn't take a concensus of the music industry to get something recorded, just one or two people who think you have something saleable. I agree in part with your derision of the "hit single formula" concept, but I don't think the rules are completely without merit. What these rules say is that to grab the attention of the lay public, it helps to have certain identifiable benchmarks that seem to help a majority of casual listeners remember and like a song. It's difficult to understand and accept this for some musicians, because these people aren't appreciating what a musician appreciates, so you may feel like you are "writing down" to the public, but that is the wrong attitude. Think of it this way. If you are an author who writes children's stories, you write to a level, with all the implied constraints, of what is identifiable and understood by children of a particular age group. The successful writer doesn't 'write down'. to the children, but rather celebrates the child's discovery in reading. So it is with commercial songs. The rules spread over all popular genres, and seem to apply with some consistency. There are lots of hits that don't follow all of the rules, but most hits follow most of them. Remember, it isn't about listeners following arbitrary rules set down by record labele executives. It's record labels looking for music that has certain characteristics that the public has indicated, throught it's listening and buying habits, that it will accept. It's easier to get them to purblish/record/release songs that meet the criteria. That doesn't make commercial songs better, just more saleable to the masses. So if you want the masses to celebrate your music . . . ya gotta write what they buy, or show them something better, by their own definition.

I've been writing poetry like that lately - just sit down and write what comes. Lyrics would be a greater challenge, but I can see the benefit of just WRITING PRODIGIOUSLY for a month. I'll give this a try. But to be honest, I'm pretty challenged even when I'm not writing. In fact, "challenged" is a word often used by others in describing me

I like your cover design concept. That said, I would always have a professional designer, preferably one with album cover experience, have a look at it. As far as whether you do it yourself or not, it's all about the result. A monkey can do it if it comes out perfect. But I wouldn't trust a graphic designer to sing my songs, and I wouldn't trust myself to completely design an album cover, even though I have years of experience in photography and graphic design. Just like song-writing, there is more to it than meets the eye. The fact that you are putting it up here for critique is evidence that you need professional support. And this is not a professional design forum, which means that in addition to all the good advice you have received here, a top designer would probably cuckle, shake his head, and think of a half-dozen other ideas to improve on you beginning.

I'm confused. I seriously can't see any words printed on this album cover. No joke. Am I missing something?

I thought it would be fun to do a critique of this referenced lyric: Theme: Robot rock Message: Robot rock Story: Robot rock Main hook: Robot rock Secondary hook: Robot rock Empnasis through alliteration: Robot Rock Empnasis through repetition: Robot Rock Overall very consistent, the story stays on point beautifully. May need some variation in the delivery of the repetitive sections to avoid monotony.

Why is the alphabet in that order? It's a letter by letter transposition of the Ten Commandments from the ancient Hebrew into the written English letters of equivelent sounds. Until this event, in approximately 1070 B.C., English was a spoken language only. Changes to the respective languages make the the correlation between their modern counterparts impossible to decipher. Why is there no other word for synonym? The word 'synonym' describes two or more words that have similar, but not exactly the same meaning. The difference in meanings may be extremely subtle, and so must be absolutely differentiable against a standard. If there was another word that had a meaning that was subtly different than 'synonym', the standard to identify synonyms would become muddled, and synonyms would not be identifiable. The synonym of 'synonym' would render itself indistinguishable from it's own designation as a synonym. The world would then explode. Why is there only one word for thesaurus? This one is obvious. The word, "thesaurus" is the generification of the proper noun, "Thesaurus", which was the name of the original book of synonyms. Titles cannot be copywrited, so there was no way to prevent the spread of the word quickly into the vernacular. There are many precedents for this, including Dictionary and Almanac. Why is abbreviation such a long word? Abbreviations were originally seen by classical literary and linguistic scholar's as an affront against common decency, and a dangerous an influence by the less civilized elements of the population in changing their respective languages. In settling upon a word defined by such words that had been so mutilated, they determined to find one that could not fall victim to it's own definition. Try to come up with a suitable abbreviation for "abbreviation". and you'll see that even a child would think you were a f**ing idiot. The most commonly attempted one is "abbrev", which, at sx letters, does not qualify. 'Abrv' has the required numerical brevity, but just doesn't cut it. Sorry. What does acronym stand for? Acutely Chronic Opposite Name You Made Can you shuffle all the letters of "anagram" to make another word? (All letters must be used) No

BUSTED! LOL No, it's not. I guess I gushed all over myself about her book, huh? It was a good book for me to read right now. I'm not a professional yet, so a lot of info that many of you already have learned in the most authentic manner - hard knocks - I am still naive about. A book full of information like this, of which there are few, is a valuable glimpse behind the curtain. Also, as John noted, its discussions of song structures and their importance in lyric writing was consistent with what I am hearing from people here, which tells me I am on the right track associating with you guys - who would have thought?

That's what you call a high quality problem. Wish I had it.

I just finished what I imagine is the most widely read book on writing lyrics.. The book is titled, "The Art Of Writing Great Lyrics", by Pamela Phillips Orland, who has had hundreds of songs published and recorded for every conceivable use. While Orland is definitely an old timer, she updated the book in around 2000 and it is pretty up to date, with references to writing for slang-specific genres such as rap, etc. The book is a great companion for the tecnical aspects of reviews in the Lyric forum, and I would say that her advice on lyric structure is consistent with that offered by professional musicians in the forum. But having it in book form, and having all the insights of such a consumate professinal, is extrememly enlightening. She covers a lot of different areas. The book is widely available. I think I bought it on Amazon.com for about $15. For me the book has provided direction, both in my writing and in approaching this endeavor professionally. It will allow me to make more constructive use of constructive criticism. I highly recommend it for everyone who writes lyrics. The more advanced you are, the less interest you will have in the early chapters. The book has excellent organization, going from basic writing skills up some basic insights into working in the music business. An extensive recommended reading list about songwriting and the music business is included.

I am writing a Christmas lyric, but it's not finished. There is some big international Christmas song contest, can't remember who the sponsor is. Anyways, here is a Christmas Poem that 'Santa' left for my kids on Christmas morning. The secret is to leave treats for the reindeer, not just for Santa. Everyone does that, but nobody thinks about the reindeer. Santa appreciated that, so he left a note. At least I think my daughter told me. Dear Kate and Max, I don't have much time To spend here this year, But I want to say "Thanks" For your fine Christmas cheer. Your house is just lovely All twinkling with light, And your tree is the best one That I've seen all night And I'm tempted to sit And take a brief snooze But children are waiting In ones, threes and twos So I can't take much time now To write you this letter - It seems the world's children This year have been better For my sleigh is still full Of goodies and toys To deliver to all the world's Good girls and boys Now it's getting quite late And I must tell you true That I still haven't been To Tibet or Peru But first I must go Back to Bellevue and Redmond, With presents for Daisy, Lucille and Desmond It's nice that you left us Our treats in a bag We can eat them in transit Rather than lag The reindeer are restless - It's unseasonably warm We'd all prefer sleighing Through a jolly snowstorm As I'm sure you would too If you had it to choose Between muddy wet clothes Or snow in your shoes But there's no sense complaining For Christmas is here And I hope it's your happiest Day of the year! Ho, Ho, Ho - Santa

This helps me too, even though I don't write music, only lyrics. I do know how to read music, and laying it out on manuscript paper makes puts it into a sort of universal format that is easy to understand.