Songwriting...Music & Lyrics

[Alain Jacomet]

What do you write first, Lyrics then add the music to it, or Music and then add some lyrics to it?
When you write your lyrics and melodies for the voice, you play the melody in your guitar and then transpose it to sentences or you just make them up?

Really bad problem of mine is that i keep writing song lyrics that I can't find the way to add music to it (never rhymes good...sentences never have metrics....) and when i have really good music, I add some lyrics and usually they're llike hell (stupid sentences that are only there for keeping the metrics and don't say anything important)

What's your way of writing and how do you get over those things?

[Fenderalltheway]

Well, I'm in a band, and I write most of the music that we make into songs. But my easy way to add words is...well, My friend writes all the lyrics....So I can only tell you, In the feable attemps I've had at writing lyrics, I've made the music first.

[O'Faolain]

I usually write the music first, then the lyrics and vocal lines overtop. I play to my strengths, I guess, as my skills can be defined by this diagram:

music skills>lyric skills>singing skills

I find it easier to write vocal melodies and rhythms when I already have the rest of the song written.

[Orange Guitar]

My band does it weird. We all just decide to write a song so we come in with different lyrics, licks and all of this and we just sit in a garage basically finding a way to put all of these together. Surprisingly it works pretty well.

[CW14]

Well, what's more important to you... the music/melodies or the lyrics?

To me, it's definately the music that's more important (I'm not all that big on lyrics). We approach it by first writing the backing music, then writing the vocal melodies on guitar. Then we write the lyrics to fit.

I guess the quality of the lyrics suffers a little this way, but it's better that than the music, IMO.

[Ito1221]

for me when i try to write stuff, I like to write the song first starting with chrous and work backwards....for lyrics i like to take issues of today and put opinions in them...to get good with issues...if your in school i suggest taking a philosophy course...first come up with an intro...do chorus and work the versus....then lyrics i find its easiest to write chorus forst and the rest will follow

[Kevin Taylor]

One way to do it is to write the music first and just record nonsense lyrics while you improvise a melody.
Then you start gradually changing the nonsense lyrics around so that they start to make sense. Then record it again using your new lyrics and anyplace where you can't figure out lyrics for, just sing nonsense stuff again.
When you listen back to it, use the nonsense sounds to spark off new ideas for lyrics.