sub7th

I'd say my process is similar to yours John, with a few rearranges in the steps Melody comes first. For me that's one of my most important rules. Without a melody lyrics are just a poem. They don't necessarily fit with the rest of the song and I think that comes through in the final. You can hear when the lyrics and the melody weren't necessarily made for each other. So I like to get a rough idea of both the verse and chorus melodies before I start coming up with lyrics. But my melodies come to me randomly, I never try to force it. Generally they surface in the shower but once in a while I'll hear one while I'm out walking by myself or trying to fall asleep at night. As soon as I hear one I like I start working with it, I'll mumble words that make no sense to get a sort of rhyme scheme going in my head. It probably sounds like someone trying to sing along with a song when they don't know the lyrics, "shiminda boodle kwammana doodle." That kinda thing. Once I have a melody I try to identify the mood of that melody, which emotion inspired it and focus on writing real lyrics that fit into that thought process. The subject can be as random as I like as long as it embraces the feel of the melody. I like to think outside myself a lot and write lyrics from the perspective of someone else, be it someone I know or an imaginary figure. Though generally it's an emotion or situation I have at least experienced myself. After that it's a matter of tightening things up, I'm pretty random in that area which is why I think it takes me so long to get a song finished. I'll go back over my lyrics several times to make sure they aren't cheesy or, in most cases, to abstract. I'll also play with change-ups and structure until I feel like I've got something that has a nice flow. I'd say the biggest difference for me is that I don't usually come up with a title until I'm almost completely finished. I try to make titles that summarize the song in some way and I don't feel I can do that until my song is almost complete. The last step in my process is to set the song aside for a bit and come back to it later to listen to it with a bit less bias. I find that I can hear more mistakes that way and I'm not so caught up in the mood that I let cheesy lyrics or melodies slip by. Nothing kills a song for me like a cliche, hell that goes for movies, art... anything. I'll turn a movie off right away if I hear "My god, what have I done?" It's the same for music, seems like everybody and their mom want's you to "fly to the stars" with them, thanks but I'd rather shoot myself.

I feel that way too. Honestly I think any musician worth their salt feels that way and it's a very good thing. Self Criticizm only drives you to try harder/get better. Unless you're a sissy and you just give up. Don't be a sissy.

Agreed! As a multimedia artist I've always envied that video, such a great job even today! Most of Tools Videos, Stink Fist and awesome. I also think any of Mark Romaneks (director/producer) videos are worth a nod.

It Dont Mean A Thing (If it aint got that swing) - Duke Ellington

Hey Funkeegirl, definitely a sound card is the way to go, make sure you get an external and that it is a firewire interface. Long story short; Firewire has a faster constant data transfer rate while USB 2.0 has a faster peak rate. Since audio is constant data transfer you want firewire. I hear what everyone is saying about switching to everything on your PC but you may have to dig around to find the VSTs with the sound that you want. I've found that most of the free stuff is very "Digital" sounding unless you kick out for the expensive ones. Reverb is one that I fight with a lot, I use Nuendo and I really dont like Steinbergs reverb so if you have a rack you may get a warmer sound from it, until you find a VST that is comparable. I have 2 soundcards but I use a laptop, the laptop has a 5.1 card for my media presentations and I use my m-box for recording. So it really depends on what kind of a sound card you have in your pc and what you plan to do with your pc.

Learning To Fly - Pink Floyd

INDEED! I just spent 4 days on the couch playing video games and watching TV... I dont think I've done that since I was in high school. I'm spending today on a commisioned painting.... promised it by Thanksgiving... oops! And hopefully after T-Day tomorrow I'll get to writing some music. Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Yanks!

Hey! Yeah I offered up some critique for a couple songs, hopefully it was helpful. Unfortunatley life came around and slapped me in the face, big deadline on a project and I've been working late nights to hit it. I think I'm supposed to get next week off so I should be around the forums a lot more. Hopefully I can help out a bit.

Heart of Glass - Blondie

Wang Dang Sweet Poon Tang - Ted Nugent

Just built a really powerful PC for my Mother-in-Law. If you're looking to build your own nows a good time to by AMD AM2 equipment, new processors, ram and mainboards are coming out and the prices on the old AM2 stuff is dropping pretty fast. If i remember right the 3GHz AMD X2 was like $160 = £77 Really nice Asus Main board was $120 = £58 DDR2 RAM in the 400mhz FSB range is dropping as well since the new 800-1300 is coming out. That mainboard I got her supported up to 8GB's of RAM as well. As you probably know the RAM is the Spice and he who controls the spice... </geek> P.S. SATA RAID Striping is not supported by Pro-Tools just incase you are thinking of going that route, or if you use PT.

Yeah Steve, no need for a grahics card if you have an onboard one. As John mentioned, unless you're running some kind of real time graphics rendering application, like video games or 3D modelling/animations. Or if you're watching/editing/creating large video files you'll be fine without an independant GPU. If your PC is for surfing the net and recording music, it's pointless to pay for one.

Steve I would add that all of the internal Sound cards I've used have produced more noise than the external cards. Awhile back I even got the Sound Blaster Audigy 4 Pro, that was an external unit that connected to an internal PCI card and it still produced a lot of noise. I use an M-Box 2 now (USB) and I dont get any noticeable noise from the PC, although I wouldn't recommend the M-Box 2, the external solution seems to provide clearer signal for me on both a desktop and my laptop.

Rocket Man - Elton John

Wow! Some talented cats in here! John you've got excellent proportions in both of those paintings, the dog and the woman. Speaking of cats that beer mug rocks! I dont get to play with paints much, mostly pencil. I've got a buncha crap up at DA, I'm more of a surrealist if you're into that kind of art. Gallery It's cool to see this is such a diverse community.

Makes perfect sense. Thanks again. I've tried to offer up some critique based on this. I'll keep checking back and hopefully can offer some good suggestions.

Booya! Great example.

Nice, as I scrolled through this topic I kept thinking "Billy Joel, someone should mention Billy Joel" Whether you like the guys music or not he had some good lyrics. The first music video that ever gave me nightmares as a kid was "Pressure." I still have to "test the waters" with shag throw rugs before I step on them. But my favorite I would have to go with either Thom Yorke or Maynard James Keenan. Though, Frank Zappa and Mike Patton sit pretty high on my list for wackyness. Im getting into Sam Beam (Iron & Wine), he has some interesting thoughts.

Excellent, thanks for the feedback. So I guess when I'm reading lyrics with the intention of critique, I should be looking at the basics of the structure and the message. Delivery could change then depending on the song the lyrics are placed in. Seems a bit odd to me since it is not my process, but Lazz makes a lot of sense and I think I understand. So essentially we're looking at how these lyrics could be used in a song, if at all? And if they are to be used are they the kind of lyrics that might have the impact they are intended to have? Critique on this might include, suggested word substitutions, or even phrase substitutions? As for signature I'm assuming the usual is 4/4 around here? So for rythmic critique we are looking at syllables per bar and the general pace, suggested flow changes, etc?

I hope this is the right place to post this. If not Im sure one of you kind souls will put it where it belongs? I jumped on today in the hopes of contributing a bit and reviewing some lyrics. I read the guidelines to critique and found them well thought out and agreed with them whole heartedly. Maybe it's because I'm more of a self taught musician but I find it hard to review lyrics for a song with out some kind of back beat in my head. At least a time signature and or tempo. Now Im a lyricist and a poet myself and I see the two as different art forms, a poem has freedom in verse, where as a lyrical arrangement should be an extention of the music to which it's applied, and vice-versa. At least thats my personal view on the subject. So my questions are these; 1. When you write lyrics do you have some form of music or rythm in your head while you're writing? 2. When we critique here, should we be critiqing the poetic qualities of the lyrics or the rythmic qualities or both? 3. If rythm is to be critiqued, when a note is meant to be held for a certain count, how do we indicate this? I hope Im not coming off wrong. I'm very new to a "community" aspect of musical collaboration/evolution and I've always had a hard time sharing my musical ideas with others by any means short of just performing it. So I really would like to learn. Mike

Gadzooks. Mixing and mastering are my kryptonite. I plan to spend some time this weekend listening and learning though.

Its been done successfully before Im sure, I cant think of anything off the top n(still drinking my coffee), but I believe I've heard a song or two like that. I'm guessing most people dont do it that way because it's fun to have the ascent in the music, from a quiet intro to a louder verse and then a full and vibrant chorus. But starting out with a bang could also be a lot of fun, it grabs your listeners ear for sure. Never hurts to give it a try, if you dont like it you can always reorganize it.

Interesting Poll. I said 50% of my drafts make it to completion, but it's probably a lot less than that. My problem is that most of my music comes to me in the shower when I'm on my way to work or something. I can generally have a song and a good idea of how my lyrics should go before I finish my shower but then I get out, get dressed and have to go. I end up forgetting the song most of the time. My kingdom for a waterproof recorder. On the rare occasion that I dont have somewhere to be I can jump out and run up to the keyboard and try to get something mapped out, even if it's just a riff. 50% of those wind up finished. I write the lyrics as I go or rather, the way the lyrics will flow with the music and tighten them up once I've got a good grasp on what I'd like to say. Thats sometimes the hard part, since what I thought I wanted to say may change as I listen to the song more, I sometimes realize that, "Well this song just doesnt want to be about a broken heart.. so whats it about?" After that is probably the killer for most of my songs, I try to produce them myself and my skills in the musical production arena are abysmal. I end up hating most of the productions and leaving the song to gather dust in the back of my head. When other people have produced my songs they usually sound pretty good but they lose some of what made the song mine to begin with, they're either to "pop" or somebody didnt want to work in 3/4 so they tried to re-map it in 4/4, etc. Either way, a majority of my stuff isn't heard unless Im playing it live. So my percentage of finished and produced songs is like... 4 or 5%