Before the internet I relied on my monthly magazine subscriptions to get a fix of the topics that interested me. Every blue moon a tidbit of music tech would appear on television but I was starving for more. Today there is so much great information I can’t possibly read or process it all. It seems there is a new website full of content tailored just for me created everyday. Today I found Audiotuts which is another musician’s resource site which has many numbered list style posts (fun to read, easy to scan). They have multiple contributors to their site and today Joel Falconer posted 50+ Great Lyric Writing Resources.
Want to get started writing your own lyrics? There’s a long way between the beginner’s “violets are red” debut and award-winning wordsmithing, so here’s a bunch of great resources to help get you on your way. Includes tools, how to guides, communities, recommended books and sources of inspiration. – audiotuts.com
Songwriting posts on Wire to the Ear: click here
photo credit: ayumina
This entry was written by , posted on August 12, 2008 at 1:39 am, filed under song writing and tagged lyrics Audiotuts, songwriting. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
If your a song writer you probably write hundreds or maybe thousands of songs over your lifetime. To avoid the Nickelback controversy it’s a good idea to arm yourself with an arsenal of tools and ideas to help yourself from self repetition. A good place to start is the beginning. How do you start your songs? What’s the first thing the listener will hear? Here’s five different ways you can kick it off:
1. Solo vocal. The human voice is the most powerful instrument of all. If you have a strong opening line 
having it solo will focus the listener on your message. You can even start with the chorus. Example: Killing me Softly by Roberta Flack.
2. Record the count in. One. Two. Three. Four. Say it. Say it in German. Put some guitar feedback behind it. Click the drumsticks four times. Record four finger snaps. Record your voice staying, “Start the tape!”. Example: Showroom Dummies by Kraftwerk
3. 16 bars of beats. If your music is headed for the dance floor is a nice thing to help the DJ out. How? Give him at least 16 bars of steady drums to help him mix in your song. In fact, by doing so your increasing the chances of your song being played at all.
4. Fade in. This is an unusual way to start a song especially in modern times. Before hard disc recording you heard this more often as producers would ride faders up in a song that was already in progress. Do you remember my related post titled “Bring back the song fade out.“?
5. Full on. A lot of times I start my songs by adding in one or two instruments at a time. Sometimes thats a sign of the amateur. Many songs just start off with most of the instruments and even the vocal already going. Load up an old song you did and just chop the intro off. Maybe it works better that way?
What’s your favorite what to start a song?
photo credit: Jon_Marshall
This entry was written by , posted on June 13, 2008 at 9:05 am, filed under song writing, Uncategorized and tagged songwriting. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Liptikl which is pronounced “lip tickle” is a new application from a company called Intermorphic. It’s basic function is to help you create lyrics. When you launch the program the main window is separated by three sections: ideas, lyrics and verses.
To start of you need to put some text snippets into the ideas section. You can use your mind and just chuck in some words or head online and grab text from Wikipedia entries, poems, song lyrics, news articles, basically anything.
After you have the text ideas in their containers you click the “Create Lyrics” button and liptikl will spit out a verse. The processing does seem a bit random but you can keep clicking the “Create Lyrics” button repeatedly to get new verses. According to the user guide liptikl is applying internal rules:
There are many internal rules used to create lyrics within liptikl. When the liptikl lyric engine is figuring-out what to do, it combines all these rules together in combination with your source material, and respects them as best it can, but ultimately liptikl makes its own choice as to exactly what to do. In other words, you can give the engine brain lots of guidance, but ultimately (like a child) you let liptikl makes the final, detailed decisions as to what to do.
The reason this all works, is that at its heart, the liptikl lyric engine uses random events in combination with a powerful set of rules. How you interpret what you read is filtered through your own internal knowledge of language. This combination of chance and logic is what allows liptikl to keep coming-up with ideas that are fresh, interesting and unpredictable.
You can apply Lyric Rules which tell liptikl how to create your verse. For example “4 5 4 5″ tells liptikl to use four words per line, the first and third and second and fourth lines ryhme, four lines total.
When you get a verse your happy with head into the last section and click “Add” which then saves your verse in that last section. Repeating that process you eventually build up a song.
I’ve been using the 30 day demo and I am undecided if liptikl is worth $99. They do offer a 
version for $59 but you can not use liptikl’s output in a commercial project. I would recommend that most people should buy Masterwriter first (screenshot on right). As a song writing tool its a far more comprehensive product. But liptikl is different enough to justify owning both if you have the cash and are a full time musician (is that possible?).
For those of you who have zero dollars to spend there are some free and fun online lyrics generators. For example the always dark “Random Goth Lyric Generator” or even more scary “Alanis Morissette Lyric Generator“.
One thing to keep in mind when using liptikl is if you source your original text from a news clipping, poem, other band’s lyrics, make sure the output is far different enough so that your not plagiarizing or stealing someone’s copyrighted ideas.
This entry was written by , posted on January 2, 2008 at 2:47 am, filed under song writing and tagged chorus, inspiration, liptikl, lyrics, Masterwriter, songwriting, verse. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
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