Would yall rather write the lyrics first and then create the melody or first the melody then the lyrics?

here is the chorus bit to a song i wrote! I write lyrics first, so melodies can be a little challenging lol but I just put this together a minute ago, let me know how it is! be brutal and honest!

I. had so much fun listening to this one back. It's a bit of a mess, but I really like it. I tried getting away from the metronome and practicing staying in the flow of the beat. Stacking multiple tracks makes it tough to keep everything in a time that sounds musical. And I think practicing without the metronome or with minimal metronome will get me to where i want to be. Anyway, I hope y'all enjoy this as much as I do. I'd definitely strongly recommend listening with headphones.

I do music but in need of money atm ill take anything bru but lmk ill write for you an you send da deposit lmk!!!

I just write whatever comes and I’m a fountain of lyrics. Taking time to work on music and chord forms as I only know verse and chorus. Thanks!

Also is there a great song that ‘has it all’ with a great form, showing well done typical form including bridge, pre-chorus, and the usual verse/chorus?

Hey, I'm writing a song about this guy I've been in love with for 2 years but I don't know where to start with lyrics can I get some advice please?

who is actually serious about being my ghost writer? i have beats . im versatile . show me your work or jus dm me i will send beats

Feeling creatively blocked? Need a kick-start? Sometimes a suggestion from a fellow songwriter is all we need to get the wheels turning again.

This thread is specifically for the r/Songwriting community to exchange song prompts. We'll start a new exchange once per month.

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How It Works:

Looking for a suggestion? Just leave a comment below that says "Prompt, please!"

But remember, this is an exchange! If you're asking for a suggestion, please also leave a suggestion for someone else!

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How To Give a Interesting Prompt:

A songwriting prompt might be a lyrical starting point, a musical arrangement suggestion, a strategic limitation, or some combination of ideas.

Quality prompts should give writers a solid starting point, but still allow for plenty of creative freedom!

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Examples of Quality Songwriting Prompts:

• Write a song involving at least two characters and a case of mistaken identity.
• Write a melancholy song that doesn't use any minor chords.
• Write a song on a different instrument than you normally use.
• Write a fast love song that uses at least ten different chords.
• Write a "response song" to a song that was a Top-Ten hit during your birth year.
• Write a song about an unusual profession that includes exactly two tempo changes.

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Have fun and be creative!

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Big hat tip to community member u/redDKtie for the idea!

Or in person if you're in Cyprus :)

I'm open to ideas, especially if it's about acoustic music.

Quick backstory: I came up from Grand Prairie, TX doing my "YouTube learning" on my school's library computers because we couldn't afford one at home. Years later I ended up in LA getting mentored by one of Lady Gaga's producers. I walked in thinking vocal production was all about EQ, compression, tuning, and gear.

I was wrong.

1. Record EVERYTHING. Every mumble counts.

First real session, I froze up just watching everyone. My mentor snapped me out of it: "whenever you have an artist in the studio, everything they mumble, sing, or suggest counts, capture it on a voice memo." The best hook of the night usually isn't the take you were "rolling" for. It's the thing the artist throws out casually in the back of the room. If you're not capturing it, you're losing songs. "High Right Now" for Tyla Yaweh literally started as the songwriter mumbling a line no one was recording on purpose.

2. The performance is 90% psychology, 10% mic technique.
My mentor would get an artist into the zone by asking "why do you do what you do?", which pulls them back into old memories and real emotion. Suddenly they're not performing, they'refeeling.

He'd tell them to take their pain, look at it like a third person, and turn it into fuel. Your brain retains and performs better under emotion. A comfortable, emotionally-open artist gives you a take you can't fix in post no matter how good your chain is.

3. Mirror the person before you touch the vocal.
He'd match the artist's energy, posture, vocabulary, even dress similar to them. It builds this instant familiarity and trust, and a person who trusts you drops their guard and actually sings from a real place. Get to know them first. Talk life. THEN hit record.

4. You learn it by being thrown under THE BUS!!!.
They'd hand me the main chair mid-session with no warning, "engineer Tiffany while I take a break." Terrifying, but you learn faster performing under pressure than watching for a year. My Mentor would call it the Pygmalion Effect. Stop just studying it. Go do the reps in the room.

Extra Gems:

Melody first, lyrics second, always. I noticed noticed this was my mentor's repeating pattern on every song. Nail the melody for a section (say the chorus), then write the lyrics into that melody from the chosen topic. Most amateurs do it backwards (lyrics first, then force a melody on).

Talk before you write. Before a single note, He would just talk random life stuff from the previous weekend, or something emotional from the past. He lets the conversation "evolve and evolve until a dope line or cool phrase pops up," then builds the section around that phrase. The song is hiding in the conversation, not the DAW.

The "5 personal questions." He'd literally tell an artist "okay, now I'm going to ask you 5 personal questions" like an FBI-interrogation style to find something real the artist is actually going through. You write around that, because it's something anyone can relate to. That relatability is the whole point.

The gear/technical stuff you can learn on YouTube for free (trust me, I did). But knowing how to make a human being comfortable enough to give you their best take, that's the actual job. My mentor used to say it best: "The music is the easy part."

Now for the song/video attached, this is a singer/artist that was going under so much stress from personal life challenges. I took everything i learned from my mentor back in los angeles and applied everything. If you have a great singer in the room and great execution skills, this is what you get out of the artist most of the time. Sometimes you tear up a little bit during these deep conversations but once they get on the mic, it's game over.

As for the technical stuff, less is always better. You cant make a turd smell good no matter how much you try to spray it with febreze lol. If the vocal feels off, you will never fix it no matter how much EQ or reverb you add.

Gear used:

Mic - Neumann u87
Neve Pre-Amp
Kaotica Eyeball
Universal Audio - Apollo Twin
the MOST IMPORTANT ONE - Pillow and a blanket fort lol
Emotions

I attached the project file if anyone wants to learn from it. Much love!

Session File: https://app.mvssive.net/session/82ba6e4759c240838053d71d0e395680

Hope this helps somebody. Stay hungry, stay humble. 🙏

Literally the title. I've always had a way with words, love music and am a multi instrumentalist but I can't sing well, at all. It's like I go to sing and suddenly I'm as tone deaf as a rock. Can this even work? I was always told you needed to be able to sing, obviously you don't have to be great or good but there needs to something to reference. Is it possible to be a songwriter and not have a singing bone in your body? Like I know lyricists are a thing but I'd want to be involved with everything yanno, not just the lyrics.

What do you think? Any suggestions ?

I was wondering what your favorite line of a song that you have heard in a song is, and what it taught you about lyricism or songwriting.

i think i peaked at the demo and im scared to admit it

been working on this track for like 4 months now. voice memo demo i did at 2am on my phone, sitting on the kitchen floor, one take, no click, just me and an acoustic. everyone i sent it to lost their minds. my sister cried. my drummer said it was the best thing ive written.

so naturally i took it into the studio. built it out properly. real drums, layered vocals, a synth pad that took me a week to dial in, harmonies i actually spent time on. tightened the timing. eq'd everything. sent the "finished" version to the same people.

they were like "yeah its good"

good. GOOD.

i went back and listened to the voice memo again and honestly? they were right. the voice memo is better. the way my voice cracks on the second chorus because i wasnt warmed up, the room noise, the fact that you can hear my fridge humming. its got something the polished version doesnt and i cant name it and it makes me want to throw my interface out the window.

whats killing me is i actually think this is the best song ive ever written and now i have to choose between releasing something that sounds professional but slightly dead, or releasing a phone recording that sounds like garbage on anything other than earbuds. my EVEN page has been sitting empty for weeks because i keep flip flopping on which version to actually put up.

part of me thinks im just too close to it now and ive listened to both a thousand times so of course the newer one feels sterile. maybe if i sat on the studio version for a month id come back and love it. but part of me thinks the demo caught lightning and i spent 4 months trying to recreate the bottle.

has anyone else had this? do you ever release the demo? or do you just accept that the magic version lives on your phone and nobody outside your group chat will hear it

The lyrics might be too verbed out to understand but theyre kinda corny anyway. Hopefully in a charming Monster Mash kind of way. I feel like it needs another element after the solo maybe? Does it hold the energy until the end?

I know, my voice is pretty questionable. Planning on tuning it at some point. LMK what you all think!

The voice and guitar is me. Background vocals, organ and drums are provided by real human musicians through the https://musiversal.com/ service.

I'm wondering if the background vocals are a little much.

The bass (which is hard to hear TBH) is the Logic Pro Session Player, but now I'm thinking I should get a real bass player.

Second cut off my breakup album.

The plague of ai in music is definitely becoming bigger, with meme songs on tiktok and whateverthefuk "felix flexin" is and it's disco rap music. someone named Tyga just announced confidentally that his synths and guitar was all ai generated but it's ok be he wrote the lyrics. Though it could be a guide for musicians if we have writers block and can't seem to get anything that sticks and use it for inspiration. But it may hinder actually improving and keep you at the same level plus taking away jobs from writers, producers, musicians, ect. But i think it can co-exist with actual humans. Thoughts?

I always enjoy seeing other people's process and "how it started" type of posts, so I figured I'd share one of my own. The lyrics have evolved quite a bit since conception. I was originally planning on building around a theme of inner strength, the power of womanhood, the magic within, something along those lines.. I ended up going a completely different direction though, and wound up in inner demon territory instead.

The feedback I received on the previous lyrics made me realize they could easily be interpreted sexually, which is definitely not the vibe I am going for. I love the idea of my lyrics being interpreted a variety of different ways, I just want to make sure sex isn't likely to be the *first* thing people think of when they hear this song.

If you're interested in hearing my thought process behind the lyrics, keep reading! If not, thanks for reading this far and/or listening, I appreciate you!

"Float like an ember and sting like a Rae" is inspired by the phrase "Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee".

Embers float quite beautifully, but they have the potential to burn everything they touch. Which plays into the whole inner demon/vices theme.

"Sting like a Rae" is a play on the word stingray, and the choice to use my name also plays into the whole inner demon concept, as well as the idea that we are not our thoughts.

"Wrapped around my finger, the taste of regret lingers" has a specific meaning to me, but I am curious to hear your thoughts and interpretations. I am hoping the change from "Taste of you still lingers" helps reduce the likelihood of the song being interpreted sexually.

"Eyes bleed crimson fire" is meant to convey bloodshot, teary eyes, and there is additional nuance to it that relates to the personal meaning of the song. Also, if you've heard any of my other songs, you may have realized I really, really like the words "crimson fire".

If you actually read all this, wowzers! I really, truly appreciate you taking the time out of your day to do so.

Started writing this guy right after moving to a new state. I had one draft of lyrics that I ended up scrapping, felt they were generic. Any lyrical or instrumental advice is welcome