How To Put Music To Lyrics...?

[samanthaG94]

Hi everyone,

I started learning how to play piano about a year ago...

I taught myself and i'm pretty good now, when i have a sheet infront of me,

The one thing i can't do is make music to put to MY lyrics,

How would i go about doing it?

are there any sites you could reccomend?

thanks.

Edited August 20, 2012 by samanthaG94

[cisco]

hi Sam..there is a program Fruity Loops i have heard of there are some ads with it..but its free. don`t know how good it is I don`t use it.

if you have a "mic you can track your voice, or your music with ..Audacity real simple program, easy to use. I use it, and I save files as "WAV and then convert that file with "Switch another simple file converter converts files to mp3 I use that too. if you have trouble let me know I`ll try to help..

[samanthaG94]

hi Sam..there is a program Fruity Loops i have heard of there are some ads with it..but its free. don`t know how good it is I don`t use it.

if you have a "mic you can track your voice, or your music with ..Audacity real simple program, easy to use. I use it, and I save files as "WAV and then convert that file with "Switch another simple file converter converts files to mp3 I use that too. if you have trouble let me know I`ll try to help..

Ok thanks

I'll check them out

[nickamandote]

you need to exercise on ear training. how good are you on translating sounds to notes? there are also programs available that will turn .wav to .midi

[DoctorKeys]

nickamandote has the best answer, it's all about ear training. If you start out by using a computer program you'll never figure out what the hell you're doing. The best way to start this is to hum a little melody to yourself, it can be anything, then try and play it on a keyboard. It gets easier every time you do it. Switch it up and keep at it, it's one of those things you can learn pretty quickly. Your ear is absolutely the best creator of melodies, just listen to the tone of your voice and natural rhythm as you recite your lyrics, then try to achieve that musically. For example, "I act like stuff don't phase me" the downbeats are on act stuff and phase. notes go up toward the middle of the phrase, down toward the end.

[snabbu]

Hi Sam

It is actually not all that hard or complicated. If you have a Daw And half a brain I can teach you how to do it in about two weeks.

Without ear training. Music is actually a proscribed mathematical thing, if you can get your head around Math, you will pick up music writing easily, if not you'll find it a little more difficult. But still achievable.

Think about it. There are only so many notes, how hard can it really be.

The tools you need are a sequencer, a key board, and some reference material, which I can show you where to get.

That I guess and a bit of dedication and a reasonable work ethic.

It's a process.

Starts with a plan the plan is generated from the lyrics. That tells you the rythem, where the stresses should be where the tension and release should be where the cadences should be.

What is the prosody of the lyric, like sad happy up beat or what, that tells us the mode we need to be in. For example if it's sad we can choose to write it in a minor key, or we can use a major key but choose a mode that makes it sound as it is written in a minor key.

So before we even touch the keyboard we know where we are going. We have seven notes to choose from in the basic skeleton, we may add notes not from our chosen key if it improves the melody. It is even simpler than that because we also know at this point that the half cadenced will most probably be the third of the key and the full cadences will be the root of the key. So if we are in D we actually know we have to get to F# our half cadence by a certain point in the song usually the end of line two. As we have to be on D for the end of the last line of the verse. We also know we need to start whith a note of the triad so we have three notes to choose from as a starting point. This establishes the key in the listeners mind the earlier you do this the quicker they can grasp the reference point. The more accessible your tunes will be.

The other thing we know is that melody moves in a proscribed way. That is in verses melodies are linear. That is there are no big leaps up and down it moves by smaller steps. This is because there is a lot going on in the lyrics. In the chorus if we have been paying attention to our lyric writing there will be less words and there is not that much need for the listener to be paying attention to the lyric because we are only summing up what we have said in the chorus. So here the melody can have leaps and jump around a bit. So in the verse we might only use three or four notes. It gets easier by the minute.

The last thing to do before actually writing the lead line is to decide how many motives we need and where they are going. Let's say for example it a fairly basic song we will have three motives. One for the verse, one for the chorus one for the bridge.

A motive is usually only one or two bars long. Let's make it easy and make them one bar long. So for the verse you now have to noodle around starting on a note of the triad and not leaping about all over the place keeping it linear. Untill you have one bar of notes that you think is cute. The rest of the entire verse melody is a combination of repeats and variations of this single bar of music. What is more If your first motive does not end on the root or third note then we already know what two of the variations are because when we hit the half cadence it will end on the third note, so variation one wrote itself, the last note of the verse is the full cadence the root of the key so variation two has also written itself. All you have to do then is fill in the gaps. Then on too the next motive.

Writing like this is very efficient because if you are inspired you can write all three motives in one sitting, the next day if you are not you can develope your motives using variations so you don't need to be creative on that day because you are just trying out three or four possible variations and choosing the one that works the best.

Now there are variations and complications to everything, every thing I have said here can be varied, changed or generally disagreed with by any musician, however this is like kindergarten, this is ABC, once you have learned to create melody then you can start wondering about this and that and trying out new things. Like what happens if I don't begin with a a note of the chord? What happens if I don't use the third for my half cadence. When you do do sometimes something beautiful will happen other times it will sound crap. But you will know what to do if it does, that is revert to a sure thing.

I am quite happy to puppy walk you through the process as long as you are prepared to put in the work.

As you probably know from my lyric critiques I find slackness and sloppy work a bit irritating.

Cheers

Gary

[snabbu]

Thanks alot for the reply, sadly I'm starting work this week, so I wont have as much time as I would've liked, but I would still love to try and learn in my time off...

When it comes to making up my own melody, I am pretty terrible, though I am pretty good with a sheet, so I'm looking forward to learning...

Now that I'm OK at lyrics, I want to be able to put them to music

Like you say it's only 7 notes! lol

I'm looking at starting in a week or two, so i'll message you then, hope that's ok, thanks, samantha. x

That's cool Rick and I will be up to our necks in " better days" for a week or so so that will work well. You will be surprised at your melodies once you know how, believe me.

Cheers

Gary

[Darmin Deflern]

One way of doing it is just try singing the words. By its very definition lyrics should have a certain rhythm and length to them also the number of lines will inform you of a start and finish the way it rhymes will influence how it sounds to.

So say you have six lines in your verse I'll write a quick verse to show my process.

I'm shaking my head

at what she said

I never knew she felt that way

I don't know why

she began to doubt

I just know the knife went in today

Ok the word structure and the way their written for me is fairly youthfull that puts me in mind of a band. The lines are short and failry snappy so the music is going to follow a fairly quick pattern changes. Due to the lyrics being fairly simple the music is also going to be failry simple to.

In my mind then its youthful singer male.

I'm shaking my head

at what she said

I don't know why

she began to doubt

all four of those lines are going to be sung the same tune their all snappy type of words

I never knew she felt that way

I just know the knife went in today

Due to the fact that these two lines are rhyming these are going to sound the same and emphasis and scooping/sliding can occur on the last word to provie the verse "hook".

So I just sing out loud now to see what I get I went to the keyboard to tap out the notes:

I'm shaking my head

c---g---g----fg--c

At what she said

c--g--g--fg---c

So basically each word is almost a note, the note lasting as long as the word the my and she are a quick slide from f to g notes.

I never knew she felt that way

c-g-----f------f-----c----c---fgf

Is the notes i got for that line from singing out loud with the way being a slide over three notes wayhehay so it sounds something like that phonetically when sung.

So I got that verse as a melody line

rhythm pattern to fit those notes they are in the key of C or C minor and the "way" part works with b flat etc. Its about now having a listen to see how you can fit the melody into a chord or rhythm pattern.

If I'm working off lyrics to music (I work the other way around to i.e. music to lyrics) that's how I do it. As it stand its very basic but I found a very simple but basic melody I can work from and I have an idea on the types of chords or rhythm I will be using to. Once I have the verse and have the chords I have a starting point and can use the same techniques to create the rest of the song (bridge chorus). Once that's done you have a very basic but good framework to then develop and build the song.

I hope this makes sense if you have any questions at all please do not hesitate to contact me as I joined this forum to teach and reach out to people as well as receive help myself.

(By the way might develop this into a song so I claim copyright on this original work )

[Realwarrior]

Sometimes I will play a lick on the Martin and there will be certain words that just seem to fit. Sometimes while I'm writing lyrics the will create music that I start to hum. I will immediately sing the melody into my voice recorder on my computer or phone, singing the lyrics. Then later I will find where the melody fits on my guitar. Then other times I'm in bed or elsewhere and the music and words just start flowing out....run tape so I remember.

The point is, don't force the lyrics to music or vise versa. Just sit down at your piano and start playing with no sheets in front of you. make it up as you go. You may hear a run here or there that you really like and so it starts.

[samanthaG94]

thanks alot for both thoses answers