Category: song lyrics

Writing Lyrics for music is a way to release your aggravation for some people and something as holy as research for other individuals. While the framework is not essential for a tune, it certainly should allow it because audience members are used to music with a well-known framework.

Now, is songwriting that complicated? In the following TEDxNaperville video, Ralph Covert explains the four simple steps that are required to become a successful songwriter. To demonstrate how simple that can go, Ralph creates a song on stage with his audience’s participation. Have fun:

If you have dreamed about Writing Lyrics for a tune all your life, you will know that composing a number of collections based on a unique idea(s) is easy but elaborating them into a tune requires much effort. Most of us dismiss the idea just because we cannot pay for simply moving from the world of ideas to the real world.  That “pay” can take on the form of creativity or energy expended or even monetary outlay.  Here are some techniques for writing lyrics.

Continue reading Writing Lyrics for Music

A few months ago a potential client made me with an offer. Now, as a freelance writer who spends an hour every morning browsing online job boards, I have to admit it was flattering to have a client approach me, rather than the other way around. The pay was good, and the workload, while certainly heavy, was manageable. So when we look at freelancing writing jobs for beginners – what can go wrong?

I turned them down.
Did I do this because I have so many clients I can pick and choose my gigs? Hardly. Am I financially well off? I wish I was — turning down this client made making rent difficult.

No, I turned them down because the client’s product violated my Three Big Don’ts.

Continue reading Freelancing writing jobs for beginners – what can go wrong?

Over these most recent winter months, I found myself having to deal with issues that involve the hard economic times that we are now facing. Sure, the U.S. economy is booming, but for writers…

Previously I wrote an article entitled, Using Spirituality To Solve Foreclosure that covers options that are available to you to help you stop your foreclosure in its tracks. You may well benefit from the following video that tells a lot about dealing with difficult times in life:

Not only are so many families still facing foreclosure; but unemployment, as well as the lack of jobs available to people who have perhaps never had a problem in the past in obtaining gainful employment.

Continue reading How to Cope in Hard Times

Let’s face it! We’ve all faced a writer’s block at some point in our lives; when writing narratives, short stories, poetry or even song structure. For quite a few writers, the most difficult part of this process is when you stare at some blank paper and convince yourself you don’t have anything to write about. So this post is about  Writer’s Block and How to Write Song Lyrics Without Music.

This is your brain’s sensor . . . .the self-critic in you, that takes over and builds the notion called Writer’s Block—preventing you from moving forward or expanding on your writing.

It could be a little comforting to know that also the most experienced writers sometimes suffer from this thing called Writer’s Block. Our most famous literature writers like Leo Tolstoy, Katherine Mansfield, Ernest Hemingway, or Joseph Conrad had their moments of torture as they experienced momentary lapses and inabilities to write.

Continue reading Writer’s Block and How to Write Song Lyrics Without Music

Many writers make a huge mistake. They write for themselves. Now, this is fine if you are writing in your journal, making a grocery list or only intend to show your work to your closest friends and most accommodating critics.

For those of you who actually wish to get published, receive glowing reviews and actually sell more than ten copies, there is a better way. Write for your audience. Target your words, your ideas and your plots to a particular audience and know what they want. Do some research.

If you intend to write for five-year-olds, go to the library and study their stages of development. What are their language skills at that age? What are their interests? What children’s books for that age group soared and which flopped?

Continue reading How to Make Readers and Listeners Clamor for More

You can be very successful at writing lyrics if you use just some basic, simple strategies. Just take a look at how designers, marketing pros, writers, or other prolific creators managed to come up with the most brilliant ideas over and over again. Check out this article and learn all about writing song lyrics worksheets

Brilliant ideas don’t come from magic, and also you, if you prepare in the right way, may get some brilliant ideas for the most catchy song lyrics.

Take a closer look at the following tips on how to write superb song lyrics, even when it’s not your good day.

What also may help to see if you have the talent to be a creative writer, is taking a talent and aptitude quiz to see if this direction could be your ticket.

Phase 1: Collect Raw Material

Practically all song lyrics begin with a vague emotion or idea, but the question here is how that can result in completed and compelling lyrics. Well, your vague ideas are your starting point, so gather some raw material that connects to your idea.

Now, this may seem obvious, but to write good lyrics, you should have a full understanding of your subject, and this is an often ignored element in the process. Most writers just consider a few words, ideas, or stories that may fit the idea, and prematurely move forward.

If you want to learn more about how to gather raw material properly, read the book Writing Better Lyrics by Pat Pattison who recommends making worksheets, a great way to help you gather specific material. There’s also a video by Pattison available here on this topic.

In short, his recommendations are to first create a longlist of words or phrases that express your ideas best, then trim that list to the best dozen or so, and then check your words in a rhyming dictionary. This work is the basis for your lyrics.

phase 2: Look for Patterns

Before you’ll jump to this phase, be sure you’ve gathered all your raw material, as in this phase, you’ll be working through all of it. Check out all the different phrases and words on your list, and try to absorb them in your mind. Now learn which associations come up in your mind. What sort of emotions, experiences, facts, connotations, stories, or ideas are coming to you?

This process may also be helpful in pairing several words from the list, and you should be searching for ideas within those pairings. No matter how incomplete or crazy these (partial) ideas may seem, write them down.

They may very well be foreboding a real idea that’s to come. Now let the wheels start spinning in your brain, let the subconsciousness within you work hard in the background and deliver some creative, fresh ideas.

phase 3: take a step back

After all these exercises you need some time to relax, to rest, so take a step back. The subconscious you will continue to work on your lyrics, though you may not be aware of this. You need to let your conscious mind rest a little, though, so ideas and themes may get back to you as you start to work on your ideas again.

So stop working entirely on your ideas, and try not to think about the lyrics at all, and please don’t also work on things that are related to your lyrics. Take a break, go to the gym, get some sleep, take a walk outdoors, read a book, do anything you like, as long it’s not related to your lyrics. Fact is that usually, the best ideas don’t come up at a desk, but in the middle of doing something else in life.

phase 4: Build Up the Lyric

So usually a brilliant idea (or a lyric) strikes you when you’re taking a shower, while you’re walking, when you’re doing the dishes, or you’ll wake up in mid-night, struck by an ingenious idea. When this is happening, write it down out without delay. These are the inspirational moments.

There are times, though, that you need to sort of ‘kickstart’ your inspiration. If you are really well-prepared, rested, and still nothing comes to your mind, it may be time to ‘create’ your inspiration. The process is actually pretty simple: go to your desk, sit down, get a sheet of paper, and write some terrible first draft of a lyric.

Usually, you feel like burning this seemingly worthless paper immediately, as the idea that someone may find what you wrote may be fearfully awful. Well, let me tell you, everybody writes terrible first drafts.

The importance lies in the fact that by forcing yourself to write a first draft, you kicked your brain into gear. First you were having nothing, but right now you’re holding something to start working with.

Generally, when you’ve been painfully writing some terrible lyrics for an hour or so, you’ll suddenly get struck by a few inspired lines, and your preparation is the key reason for this to happen. So stay focused, keep on working, and you’ll be successful!

Somewhere between rinse and repeat it happened: The idea! What idea? Wait, was it the one for the blog post, for that troubling scene in my manuscript, or that money-maker that just needs a little tweaking.

Damn! What idea just went down the drain? How do I get started with writing articles or song lyrics without music?

Ideas will come and go, and no matter how many pads of paper you have lying around or digital audio recorders that seem to pick up more ghostly electronic voice phenomena than cogent story ideas, you just don’t seem to catch all of them.

You’re a writer. Don’t sweat it. Don’t sweat it, he says? Easy for him to say!

Yes, it is. My first editor had a bumper sticker on her wall: Deadlines amuse me. Of course, deadlines need to be met, and they are, but they may not always be met with the excellence you expect when the date is assigned. The best way to alleviate that problem, in my opinion, is to keep writing.

When you write every day, your mind seems to change. I don’t know exactly why, but I liken it to the way bodies undergo natural transformations when they exercise regularly.

When you write every day, whether it’s on your fiction or on a newspaper article or on a blog post, or as you zip through Facebook to share what’s up with some of your friends, your brain makes associations. These are the stuff that dreams are made. And ideas. Read also this post about how to sell your lyrics, books, or articles online.

Remember the scene from the movie Ghost when Whoopi Goldberg’s character realized she actually could hear the voices of spirits like the dream she was naked? After that, every spook in Manhattan came to her shop to talk to the living. It was driving her batty. So too with writing. You’ll have so many ideas you don’t know what to do with them all. Try as you might, you can’t possibly write everything down. Do what you can.

More importantly, find time to think about them. What are these ideas? Is this one just a scene? Is it just a clever wordplay that might fit with a character or a public domain you first wrote about in high school? Is it something that actually holds the power of a novel?

I remember the first time I realized I had just imagined a novel. I literally stopped on the sidewalk. (And just now, as soon as I wrote the word ‘sidewalk,’ I realized I had to tell my wife something that one of my daughters did the other day. … see how this happens?)

So I say again: Don’t sweat coming up with ideas. Don’t worry about what you’re going to write. Just write. (Ok, now I have that image from The Shining … All work and no play make Jack a dull boy … These word association things can get really annoying!).

Thirty-two years ago—yes, 3-2 years ago—I fell in love with the written word. I had always been a reader, I read everything and anything I could get my hands on from the back of cereal boxes to Dr. Seuss books.

When I was 17 years old though that changed from love to obsession. I picked up a copy of a book by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss from my mother’s bookshelf. The book was tattered and torn, the cover was held on by aging Scotch tape and even with that repair, the book looked as though it could fall apart at any moment.

My mother told me I could “borrow” the book but I should be very careful with it. Careful? I wondered in confusion, how could I be careful with a book that already looked as though it had survived fire, flood and a swarm of locusts? What was so special about this book?

Continue reading This Year My Dreams Will Come True

If you are a songwriter or thinking about becoming one, it is important to know where you can sell your lyrics or music online. This post contains a listing of websites that enable you to sell your lyrics or music online. Y

ou may get paid for writing song lyrics or music for some other artist, and you also can receive payments for selling your song lyrics or your own music. Check out these sites:

Dittomusic.com

Ditto Music is offering you the best deals and the best service in this business. You, the artist, need to pay a modest fee upfront to make sure your songs or music will be available on dozens of online platforms and stores such as Amazon, Spotify, iTunes, and eMusic. You also are offered the option to establish your own record label and be eligible for rankings and charts across the globe.

You will be able to sell your lyrics or music on a pre-release basis and take full advantage of all sorts of fascinating and rewarding Ditto features. An important element is that at all times you keep your music and lyrics rights and that you keep one hundred percent of all royalties that your work will generate.

Songwritingopportunities.com

If you are a writer of lyrics, poems, or songs, and you wish to become the writer of hit songs, this platform may be very helpful to sell your lyrics or songs. You can determine by yourself for what amount you want to sell your lyrics or songs, and you will receive one hundred percent of the revenue if you sell your work. Songwritingopportunities.com is all about helping poets, songwriters, or lyricists become successful in songwriting.

Fanmusic.com

Fanmusic is on online platform of an impressive music community which was established in 2012 where each post is getting a review by the site’s members. All reviews include a comment on the work that you posted and also a rating of your work. Fanmusic is using a rating scale of six stars where “1” is the worst rating, and “6” stands for the best rating.

Fanmusic.com members also are offered the option to sell their work, and if they sell their music or lyrics, there is no commission and all payments are done via PayPal. The members of this platform are keeping full copyright to all their work that is uploaded.

Songbay.co 

The website Songbay offers a one-of-a-kind music service. It is the online market place for everybody who is working on a professional basis within the music industry. Songbay is a great platform for everyone who holds an interest in sourcing, buying, selling, or licensing lyrics or music. Songbay is the website that brings all those professionals together under one umbrella. To see if the world of songwriting and lyric writing could be right for you, you can always take a free aptitude test.

Ascap.com

ASCAP is the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers. If you join ASCAP you may start the registration process of your lyrics or songs, you can collect performance royalties from your work, and benefit from a great number of exclusive benefits for you career.

ASCAP is the only U.S. member-owned organization for performing rights and the organization is totally free from any conflict of interests. All that ASCAP does is targeted towards serving its members throughout their lives in music, from the collection and distribution of royalty payments  to strengthening and protecting copyright, and supporting and developing its members’ careers. ASCAP charges a one time membership application fee ($35), but that’s all, there are no further annual dues.

Songcastmusic.com

Songcastmusic can be a great help as they make selling your lyrics and music online a lot easier thanks to all the tools they offer for the promotion of your work. Songcastmusic.com is providing affordable and streamlined music distribution services. Their services enable artists and labels to release their music into key digital stores like AmazonMP3, iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Emusic, Rhapsody, or MediaNet.

This list is far from complete, but if you need help with publishing your poems, music, or lyrics, I’m pretty sure you can find here what you’re looking for. Pick out the one that you think is best for you, and I’m positive that you will be able to enjoy a fantastic career in the world of music.

When it comes to writing, be it lyrics writing or internet marketing writing, you will find that you must be able to produce content for your song or website.

Some people are natural-born writers, all they have to do is hold a pen up to a paper and the words start flowing. And then there are people who struggle to write even a few paragraphs.

Developing your own unique writing style will help set your writing apart from others, even if you fall into the group of people that finds writing difficult. Here are five suggestions to help develop your writing style, be it for a book, for song lyrics, or for an online marketing campaign.

1.  The best writers have a love of words and are avid readers. Believe it or not, reading is a great way to develop your writing style. The types of things you enjoy reading are probably things you would enjoy writing.

Continue reading Who Knew? Maybe You Can Write After All