I play guitar. I'm not a virtuoso, but I like the chord voicings and progressions I've come up with. Some pieces I've created are meant to be instrumental, but most of them feel incomplete and unfinished because they're missing the lyrics and vocal melody. So here's my point. Sometimes (not very often) when I grab the guitar and start playing whatever comes to mind at the moment, lyrics just happen and come out as if it was a moment of magic creative inspiration, it just happens, I don't force it, and I love it! It's like the whole song just finds its way through me and comes out. But most of the time the vocal part is missing, it's just the guitar playing that happens, and I like it, but once I'm done writing down the chords and recording the whole thing I find it very hard to come up with lyrics and vocal melodies! I think the lyrics are not so hard to create, what stops me the most is not being able to come up with a melodic line that feels like it belongs to the music... it seems that creating it AFTER makes it feel somewhat detached from the music. Does this ever happen to you? Any tips on how to make things fit as a whole?
I find lyric writing easy as I try to do a lot of it, or writing in general, but the most fun songs tend to be those I improvise while jamming at a rehearsal or something. My favorite goofy song "Armpit Hair" came about that way... doing it that way reminds you to keep it simple and lets you be creative but it's hard to keep it up. Writing lyrics before allows you to be more creative with the words but can restrict your music. Writing the words afterwords has the opposite affect - you have to write along with the music, so your lyrics are more restricted. Just figure out whatever works best for you. Or combine all three. Like, come up with some lyrics and an idea for a song in your head, start playing it, while you're playing start improvising, and if you need to, finish and/or rearrange the lyrics later. Don't be afraid to move things around and stuff. In this day and age you can afford to make changes because you're not restricted to tapes - literally, pull out your cell phone and use the microphone for a basic recording so you can work with THAT and make changes to the song and stuff before you do a professional recording.
I always wondered if the lyrics are written first or is the music written first before putting the two together? Because I find I need a tune to write to. But I hear people can just write a song as they walk so I assume lyrics?
