8♥ Round robin

8♥ Eight of Hearts in The Rock Songwriter’s Deck: 52 Ways to Write a Song

Eight of Hearts suggests a songwriting game that you can't do by yourself. Gather a group of 3-6 songwriters for this game.

Here's how to play: Get a pad of paper, and sit around a table. Decide who gets to start. That person writes down a single line of lyrics, and passes the pad to the next person, who writes the second line of lyrics. As you continue, each person writes one line of lyrics in turn.

Don't talk, don't make suggestions, and don't coach each other. Each of you might have a different idea of where the song is headed, but none of you is individually able to control the direction the song is taking. Just let the song emerge.

"Slow Dancing Beast," on Left Brain's Raspberry Park album, was written this way. The songwriters used Scrabble Sentence Cubes, a game with words printed on dice, as a random element to create the first line of lyrics.

A team with a dream

Inspiration is usually something that a single person carries. It's hard to explain the substance of an inspiration to someone else so that they can truly share it. At best, if you have a proven track record of successful inspirations, you might find that people will to follow your lead even though they can't exactly see where you're going.

But there are rare cases when a team of people share an inspiration and work together on it. If you are in such a team, don't take it for granted. These teams don't come together very often and usually don't last very long. Working together on an inspiration puts a lot of extra tension on relationships. Even with good people who have the best of intentions, it may take a lot of care and diplomacy to keep the team together and keep the project on track. If your team blows up and the project falls apart, try not to judge your teammates too harshly.

On the other hand, if you have a team that works together smoothly and handles ups and downs over a period of years, you have a powerful advantage in the world. Keep that team together!

2♥ Write lyrics for this

2♥ Two of Hearts in The Rock Songwriter’s Deck: 52 Ways to Write a Song

Someone gives you music, and your job is to write the lyrics. The reverse scenario — being supplied lyrics and writing music for them — might feel more familiar and natural to most of us. Trying to fit lyrics into a completed piece of music seems unnecessarily difficult, even perverse.

But what's a band to do if inspiration hands them a beautiful and powerful piece of music? Someone has to write the lyrics, or the song will remain an instrumental.

So how do you come up with lyrics? First off, you might as well try playing the music and see if perfectly formed words spontaneous fly into your head and emerge from your mouth. No luck? To be honest, it never works for me either, but if it did, wow.

Unfortunately, many lyricists get stuck trying this same process over and over, just wishing for a miracle of inspiration. There's no need to stay stuck! There are two systematic methods — diametrically opposed from each other — for coming up with lyrics. One of these methods is sure to work with you.

The first method requires you to be fairly uninhibited. Sing the melody, starting with "la, la, la" but working your way up to babbling nonsense words and syllables. After several rounds of this, you might find a key phrase of lyrics that feels right, even though it might be complete nonsense. That's your first draft. Write it down (or record it), and then keep working with it, nudging the words here and there until you settle into something that uses real words and makes at least a little bit of sense. (When I do this, I'm always impressed with how little has to be changed to turn complete nonsense into a deeply meaningful song lyric.)

The second method is almost the exact opposite of the first. You start with something sensible, and reshape it as much as necessary until it fits the music. This is a good time to pull out your lyrics notebook (you do have a lyrics notebook, don't you?) and look for any half-written song that even approximately fits the mood of the music. You might have to rewrite every line to make it fit the scansion of your new music, but that's often not as hard as it sounds. If you have a solid idea, it can be re-expressed in any shape and rhythm.

What if the lyrics notebook doesn't pan out? Here's the backup plan: you trance out to the music, and let it suggest something to you, even if it's just a single image, a mood, or a theme that you can start with. Once you get that initial idea, start jotting words, phrases, and images on paper, and build a collection of lyrical fragments that fit the rhythm of the song. If you keep at it, the lyrics will start to coalesce and take shape.

Any way you do it, it's painstaking work to fit lyrics to music. But if the music is good enough to justify the extra effort, you can work systematically and come up with the right lyrics.

To complete the Two of Hearts' assignment, you'll need a collaborator to provide you with some music. Or, if no collaborator is at hand, you can write some music yourself; just be sure to finish the music before you give any thought to the lyrics.

9♥ Let’s get together and write a song

9♥ Nine of Hearts in The Rock Songwriter’s Deck: 52 Ways to Write a Song

The Nine of Hearts says that songwriting can be part of your social life. Sure, on the geek scale, getting together to write songs is way up there with going to the art museum or collecting rocks and minerals. But what the heck! You're not a conformist; you're a songwriter!

Try one of these:

• Have a songwriting "date," an appointment with a collaborator to get together and write.
• Start or join a songwriting support group that meets weekly or monthly. For each meeting, prepare a new or revised song to share.

A♠ Set these lyrics to music

A♠ Ace of Spades in The Rock Songwriter’s Deck: 52 Ways to Write a Song

Someone gives you lyrics, and it's your job to write the music. In real life, many songs are written this way. Think of the long, productive collaboration between Bernie Taupin (lyrics) and Elton John (music), for example.

If you find yourself in this songwriting situation, where do you start? A great deal depends on your relationship with the lyricist.

Sometimes the lyricist has no attachment to their work and is just glad to play a part in your musical efforts. In other cases, the lyricist might be maniacally invested in every nuance and syllable. It's better to be clear about their attitude before you start composing. In any case, it's good to ask the lyricist if they had any bits of musical ideas, and if they have a particular musical style or mood in mind.

Finally, when you're alone with the lyrics:

1. First, figure out how to fit the lyrics into a conventional song structure, usually with verses, choruses, and a bridge. If the lyricist hasn't provided a chorus, can you invent one by picking a phrase that sums up the song and repeating it a few times?


2. What is the emotional tone of the lyrics? What kind of feel and mood do you want to create with the music?


3. Start with the most central part of the song, usually the chorus, and figure out a mood, a tempo, and a rhythm that makes that part of the song work.


4. Work out specific notes and chords for the chorus.


5. Then rough in the music for the rest of the song.

Now you've got a first draft of the song. How well does it work? Play it through for yourself, for the lyricist, for a test audience. As always, identify the weak spots and keep working on them until you're satisfied.