Songwriting & Beyond…

Did you know that it’s possible to write lyrics that actually hypnotize your listeners?

Yes. You read that right.

You can create lyrics so compelling that they actually put your listener into a light "trance".

Now, music can do this too, and the combination of "inspired music" and "hypnotic lyrics" can create powerful emotional swelling in your listeners.

Have you ever heard a song that caused you to feel little" tingles" move down your back?

This is the effect of inspiring music and compelling, hypnotic lyrics.

In this article I want to scratch the surface of writing lyrics that cause EMOTIONAL reactions in your listeners.

Let me start by saying that: Most people go about writing lyrics exactly the WRONG way.

Tell me if you’ve done this before…

Have you ever sat with a piece of paper or at a computer, staring at the blank screen trying to think up the "perfect line" that is going to move emotion in your listeners?

And you go to write a line but because it’s not "perfect" you just think, "that’s no good" and end up writing nothing at all…

Common… be honest! We’ve all done it!

This type of so called "creating" only serves to let the "analytical" side of your mind get in the way of you letting your magical creativity flow forth…

So how can you write lyrics using your "creative resources" instead of your "analytical resources"?

Here’s the million dollar tip of the day.

To create truly spellbinding lyrics, you have to "kick" your inner "editor" out of the room.

Instead of JUDGING everything you do, you need to let ideas pour out of you WITHOUT judging them.

Here’s what you need to do when you want to write lyrics.

Instead of trying to "craft" every line perfectly, and trying desperately to come up with that HOOK that’s going to grab everyone…

Just write. Sit at your desk and pour your heart out onto that piece of paper. (We haven’t discussed exactly what you’re writing about yet-more on that later)

In a later article I’m going to send you some specific tips about WHAT to write about, but for now, just choose something. I know you’ve got some ideas spinning around inside your head!

Sit in your comfy chair and write lyrics completely unedited for 20 minutes. Don’t worry about making mistakes. Don’t worry about not "completely nailing" every line. Don’t worry if you think you’re writing rubbish.

Just write…

Write everything that comes to mind. Do anything to keep your pen moving.

After completing this session, have a short break.

Do something fun! Make sure you take your mind off the task of lyric writing though.

When you come back you will notice something very strange. This writing that you’ve just done… it flows much more naturally than any lyrics you’ve written.

Yes… there are mistakes everywhere… but after fixing these mistakes and adjusting a few sentences to make it all "flow"… you’re left with writing that really
COMMUNICATES.

And as you go through your writing, there will be certain lines that jump off the page and GRAB you. These are the lines you can use as hooks and focus points of your song.

Ok… this is just the start really. But by now I’m sure you can see that writing completely unedited defeats the problem of staring at a blank screen (or blank piece of paper). And it also has allowed you to produce some of your most natural sounding lyrics to date.

In a later article I’m going to give you some tips that will really make your lyric writing hit home. With these tips you will be able to take what you’ve done in today’s exercise, and polish it until it literally moves your listeners to tears (or joy depending on what you’re writing about!).

I want to leave you with one more thought.

Why is it possible to write lyrics that move people emotionally?

And I’m talking about JUST the lyrics. If you take away the music, the melodies… everything until there’s nothing but the lyrics.

Here’s the answer: Something in the lyrics triggers a memory in the listener that has emotion attached to it. This memory could be anything. It could be a past memory.
It could be something they’ve dreamed about. It could be something that they’ve fantasized about.

If something in your lyric can cause your listener to reflect on an "emotion filled" memory, than they will feel the emotion attached to this memory.

This is why love songs or songs of "lost love" have been so popular over the years. Most people have at least some experience in this area, and since being in "love" is very emotion driven, lyrics to do with "love" can cause a listener to re-live this emotion.
If you want the "advanced training" so you can develop incredibly powerful lyrics that move people, be sure to check out my book, The Songwriting Genius Within You.

There are many original ideas in this volume that will lift your lyric writing to new, soaring heights. There is one technique in particular that will blow you away. This technique really taps into your "hidden genius" and is an incredibly pleasurable way to write lyrics.

-Article written by Geoff Williams from Genius Songwriting

In the next five minutes I’m going to show you how you can “tweak” your song writing process, so you’ll produce more songs, easier, and of a much higher quality.

Let’s start with a question.

Do you sometimes feel your songwriting process is a mess?

By this I mean, do you feel as if there is no structure… and you’re always jumping from one thing to another.

And because of this, you let ideas get away from you. You may have a moment of inspiration, but it doesn’t always translate into a completed masterpiece.

Also, you don’t complete nearly as many songs as you feel you should. You’ve always got “half finished” material that ends up being forgotten.

If this is true for you (And believe me, most songwriters feel this frustration), why do you think this happens?

It’s a good question to ask, because if you can get to the bottom of this issue… if you can learn to streamline your song writing process… you’ll end up writing many more songs in this lifetime, and at the end of your life you’ll be able to look back at these songs and say, “I didn’t live my life with my music stuck in my head”!

So let’s stop the mass of “unfinished material” and put some systems into place that will allow you to output excellent song after song.

I want to give you a simple technique that will help you do this. Strangely enough, it’s a very simple idea… but it’s helped me greatly to keep on track and write a lot of great songs, very quickly.

Here’s The Technique :

What you need to do is take out a piece of paper and write out a flowchart of your song writing process.

This basically means creating a visual diagram of the different steps you go through when you write a song.

Here’s what this will do for you: It will allow you to develop an incredibly streamlined approach to your song writing. A step-by-step system you can follow when writing a song. And if you follow it you will never get sidetracked, or off focus.

NOTE: Now of course, as song writing is a creative process, there are times when you’ll be hit with a profound idea - or maybe a thick stream of ideas. If this happens, it’s strongly recommended to follow these ideas when they come up. But for the most part, you can stick to your “flow charted” song writing process, and it will “cut out” the time wasting distractions that keep you from completing songs.

Now the best way to create your flowchart is to look at what you’ve done in the past when you created an entire song in a smooth, streamlined manner.

If you can think back to an occasion like this, and then re-create this process on paper, you can use this to streamline your songwriting process from here on in.

An example of your song writing process for writing an instrumental piece maybe something like this:

This is just one flowchart that you could use. How yours looks will depend on the way you write songs, and your song writing strengths.

If you EVER leave songs unfinished, you should DEFINITELY create a chart such as this one. Then hang it up in your song writing space, so you can see it at all times. And of course FOLLOW IT!

You’ll find song writing much easier, and you will create many more songs because of it.

Another important point is this …. as time goes by, you need to tweak your flowchart.

For example, you may write out a flowchart after finishing this article, but when you begin writing a song, realize you’ve missed some important steps! Also, you’ll often find there are subtle little tweaks you can make to REALLY streamline the process and make each step flow into the next.

The point is, you should try and continually improve your process, making it more and more efficient.

Over time this will dramatically increase your ability to output songs of a high quality.

So be sure to DO this! The benefits you will get from this simple five minute task are massive.

I’d like to finish now with a few tips you can use to write out a great flowchart that will get you the most results.

Tip 1 :

It’s vitally important that in your song writing process you keep the CREATIVE tasks and CRITICAL/ORGANIZATIONAL tasks separate. There are some very interesting psychological reasons for this. To give you a brief overview, when you COMBINE these different tasks you will block much of your creative potential, therefore sucking a lot of the power out of your song writing process.

So when you write out your flowchart, be sure to assign separate steps for the creative tasks and the critical/organizational tasks.

Tip 2 :

When you have a successful song writing experience, try and learn as much as you possibly can from it. For example, if you had an amazingly creative session where you created ideas that blew you away… Instead of thinking, “Wow, where did that come from?!”… Be thinking, “Hmmm, what are the conditions that brought on this incredible creativity session?”

You will notice things like:

* The state of your location, as well as the location itself.
* The time of day
* The mindset you were in when you were creating, and how you found that mindset
* The events that led up to this session
* What was happening inside your mind as you created
* And anything else you can think of

The point here is, when you do something incredibly well, it’s no fluke. You are doing something in a very specific way that is bringing about the great result. And if you can discover exactly what you’re doing, and reproduce this, you’ll continue to get these exceptional results.

So pay attention to your successes, and when you figure out what makes them “tick”, include this into your flowchart!

Finally, if you want to really optimize your song writing process and tap into the deep potential that lies within you, be sure to check out this songwriting course.

-Article written by Geoff Williams from Genius Songwriting

OH MY GOD. It’s the 24 th December. Erm, can somebody tell me what happened to the year? Where did it go? For me, it has just FLOWN.

I want to take this opportunity to wish you a very happy Christmas to all my subscribers and customers. I also want to say sorry for not being around as much this year … things have been rather busy.

If you do not celebrate Christmas, than have a great time over this festive period. It’s a time to forget about the bad times, relish in the good times, and look onwards to the greater times.

So what’s in store for you next year? What are you going to do? Who are you going to help? How are you going to give? How you can change to become a better person? What’s the GOAL for you?

Many public figures died this year. One of them was a man that taught me a lot about life … his name was Jim Rohn. I will end this post with a quote from him:

“Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.”

Have an amazing 2010.

Shamir Rele

OK everyone, here is the last ‘chunk’ of the Lyrics On Steroids series by Stephen "Realis Vir IV".

If you want to check out the previous 2 chunks, (and you really should if you haven’t already, because they are equally as brilliant as the one below) …here they are:

http://www.songwritingtipsonline.com/blog/06/lyrics-on-steroidspart-a

http://www.songwritingtipsonline.com/blog/07/lyrics-on-steroids-part-b

Intellectual lyrics: These lyrics focus on the smart in art, or the art in smart I suppose since the word art is in the word smart :p. These lyricists usually like to use sophisticated English (or w/e language they’re writing in), rely on wordplay and advanced aesthetic phonetics (alliteration, complex rhyme schemes, internal rhyme, etc.)

They also like to write profound thoughts and new and creative subjects that make you stop and think, or else are just general food for thought. This ties into the 2nd writing style to a degree, as all of these styles are or can be combined to a degree or at least mixed. Think of lyrics like "A long life lived with little regrets, is a short life to its liver. Because no matter how many accomplishments he begets, he’d live it all again forever."

Lyricists like this are: Thrice, Taking Back Sunday (second style they’re mentioned in :)), Evanescence, Guster to a degree, etc.

You, a perfect lyricist: These groups aren’t all-inclusive of every possible style or descriptions and some aspects could be split apart or regrouped depending on how they are viewed. It’s up to you to find what you’re most comfortable with or find your own combination’s. For instance, even two things which seem incompatible like the objective lyricist and the mystery/creative lyricist styles can be carefully and cleverly combined by talking about concrete down to earth things but in somewhat artistic or stylish or creative fashions and that combined with other elements mentioned.

"I called it, it was a tear, in your eyes was a fluid fear."

Lyricists who combine or alternate between ALL of these kinds or styles lyrically also appeal to a lot of different people with very different emotions/personalities, and that’s why they’re successful! Songwriters in my opinion who encompass all these different styles, albeit even if in different songs or mixtures in certain songs, would include:

Parabelle, Breaking Benjamin, Evanescence, Linkin Park, Patrick Wolf, Taking Back Sunday, YellowCard, ColdPlay, etc.

These are all very successful where they are known within the circles that like their genres. Now it’s your turn. Try to incorporate those styles, get inspiration from the sample examples, or browse lyrics from those artists to get inspired. Don’t plagiarize, but as long as you make it your own you’re good!

The sample example lines were all written by me, Realis Vir IV, 2009, all rights reserved. Check out my url if you want at www.myspace.com/RealisVirIVmusic

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Well, that about wraps up this series. If you feel you have cool articles like the one above, please send them to
yoursongwritingtips@gmail.com along with your name and which country you are in. Next thing you know, they’ll appear on this blog.

Good stuff huh?

Shamir

If you remember, just over a week ago, I said that I would post three ‘chunks’ of an article, spread over the next few days. Apologies for diverting away from the plan, I had to make a post in-between (about MJ’s passing, as you’ll remember).

Anyways, I’d like to continue with this. For those of you that don’t remember the previous article (shame you on …lol) you can find it here: http://www.songwritingtipsonline.com/blog/06/lyrics-on-steroidspart-a

It had received some GREAT feedback, so let’s carry on with another bite from Stephen "Realis Vir IV".

Writing pathetically - No, this doesn’t mean doing a bad job on purpose. This means writing with pathos; in other words, appealing to emotion and the human psyche. This includes *subjective* feelings (versus the objective feelings in type 1 songwriting) and emotions; it has to do with understanding or trying to understand another person being addressed in a song, as well as conveying how the lyricist feels; it also conveys other feelings and appeals to strong psychological language and artistry. "I understand where you want me to stay. I guess we never were exactly on that page. I guess you never exactly felt that way"

Examples of pathetic songwriters are (versus apathetic): Billy Corgan, Good Charlotte, Saosin, After Midnight Project, etc.

Intense songwriters - Similar to writing pathetically but it can contain other elements that pathos lyrical style might not go into and it’s more about intensity. It may use commands or forceful questions, or even just intense descriptions. "Stealing my heart from under the very nose of me! Did you think I would like that? When you’d capture then break it? Now how would you take it back? Tell me!" Usually, it’s also more about the mood rather than the lyrics. It’s about how the genuineness in the voice is conveyed, whether it’s truly happy, truly sad, truly angry, manic, depressed, w/e.

Examples of Intense lyricists are Adam of 3 Days Grace, Element Eighty, The Drama Club, Taking Back Sunday, etc.

Happy light lyrics - These lyrics can be superficial, or just very euphoric, or just idealistic. They talk about perfect versions of things, or power-punch lyrics. It may go like "With my own themas of sunshine, I’ll refresh myself in dark times, you better believe I’m going to have myself a very good day. With my carefree reckless attitude, and my timeworn necklace beauty jewel, I’ll have to admit it’s a rather good way."

Examples of this kind of songwriting can be found in: The Killers (especially in a song like Human with lyrics like "are we human? or are we dancer?"), a song like Accident and Emergency by Patrick Wolf, or Patrick Wolf’s song The Magic Position, the song Perfect Day, a lot of mainstream pop, etc.

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I love the article. I have one more chunk to go and I’ll post it very soon. Your thoughts? Post them below.

Shamir