by lashibes | Jun 12, 2021 | Exercises, Lyrics
Using someone else’s song to help you get started isn’t cheating, and it’s not copyright infringement unless you don’t change it significantly. So, for the Ghost Songs Lyrics exercise, make sure you change the song you started with to get...
by lashibes | Apr 24, 2021 | Beginning, Lyrics
I got a question from one of the SongChops Members asking how to write song lyrics, and the number of lines in a verse, chorus and bridge in particular. What a great question – and one I realize I’ve never actually covered! So, how many lines should you...
by lashibes | Aug 9, 2020 | Beginning, Lyrics
Finding Inspiration is a hard thing to come by sometimes. To help inspire you, try some unconventional sources – your photos, a dictionary or some online image searches! STEP 1: Pick up a dictionary or thesaurus (or head online). Randomly choose a word, or a...
by lashibes | Aug 19, 2018 | Exercises, Intermediate, Lyrics
If you’ve ever been in a high school English class, you’ve studied how drama is created in a play, a novel or short story. So you knows the “story arcs” that can occur and the sequence of how drama unfolds. You know, the introduction of...
by lashibes | Aug 19, 2018 | Intermediate, Lyrics, Song Craft
Song Sketching is very similar to object writing, and is the next step in the process to craft your song. Unlike object writing, which focuses intensely on a single object and allows for associations to occur, song sketching has a big picture goal: create a vehicle to...
by lashibes | Feb 24, 2018 | Advanced, Lyrics
We’ve all heard it: poetry as lyrics just doesn’t work. But, as your songwriting skills grow, and you begin using figurative language like similes, metaphors, anaphora and imagery, you’ll naturally begin writing more poetically. After all, if...
by lashibes | Jul 9, 2017 | Intermediate, Lyrics
Perspective isn’t a common songwriting topic. Most songwriting conversations revolve around Point of View (POV), but there’s more to creating a unique song idea and story than just the main speaker’s point of view. Perspective is something you can...
by lashibes | Jul 8, 2017 | Intermediate, Lyrics
Texture is what helps tie your lyrics to an emotional connection for the listener. Texture is the particulars that give your scene something more than simple visuals. It delivers on something that pulls your listener in and helps them identify with the song. In its...
by lashibes | Apr 27, 2017 | Lyrics, Song Craft
While it’s one thing to know what an allusion is, applying it to your songwriting is easier to grasp if you can study songs using allusion well. By understanding how songs use allusion to add to the basic song idea, you can bring the tool into your own...
by lashibes | Apr 13, 2017 | Lyrics, Song Craft
You probably see or hear an allusion in use a couple of times a day, but do you use it in your songwriting? Have you had a moment when you’re hanging out with friends, and to jokingly give you a hard time, one of your friends references something indirectly you...
by lashibes | Mar 31, 2017 | Advanced, Lyrics
A three character song doesn’t work. We’ve all heard it, and if you haven’t, you will. In song feedback sessions you’ll often hear that you should keep your songs to one or two characters. A three character song is too confusing. And, usually...
by lashibes | Mar 5, 2017 | Beginning, Lyrics
To help learn more about what is one of the biggest challenges in writing a song – story line or thought progression – we’ll take a look at a song outline using the song outline worksheet. This week we’ll outline “Kill A Word”...
by lashibes | Feb 15, 2017 | Lyrics, Song Craft
A simile is a type of “figurative language” used in creating imagery. Wait . . . figurative language and imagery aren’t the same thing? So what is imagery? Put simply, imagery is the representation of one thing by another thing using vivid, or...
by lashibes | Nov 24, 2016 | Advanced, Exercises, Lyrics
One of the easiest ways to increase your understanding of point of view (POV) is to take a song you’ve completed and work through each of the POV alternatives. Changing up your point of view will help you see how the song’s message can shift simply by...
by lashibes | Nov 7, 2016 | Beginning, Lyrics
A metaphor is a type of “figurative language” used in imagery. It’s best used to make a connection between things your listener can easily identify with quickly. The first thing in the comparison adds context and meaning to the second thing for the...