16 Software to notate what you play in MIDI.15 Learn to read music, and play an instrument.12 Lyrics use high literary devices and should be measured by high literary standards.12 Not all poetry is lyrical, but all great lyrics are poetic.9 John Gardner “All great writing is – in a sense – imitation of great writing.”.
JIMMY WEBB TUNESMITH PRO
7 Pro songwriters are not good at promoting others they are busy promoting themselves beware being sued for intellectual property (IP) infringements.5 study other lyricists and composers, especially great material.5 use a rhyming dictionary and thesaurus, and a book of quotations.
4 An idea and a song title are pretty much synonymous.3-4 Song types: memories affecting feelings current things affecting us things that will affect us satire making a point through a fictional character story silly surrealism allegorical tale.2 A good writer is versatile, and can write in any genre for any purpose.2 “Most amateurs do not regard the writing of songs as a serious hard work.”.2 Publishers want to discover a great song.3) Creativity as a concept is perhaps not well understood by the people who practise it most successfully. 2) Technique is a personal and private conceit. Preface: 1) Inspiration comes from the guts.Preface: expression, form, aesthetics rescue form from mediocrity.However, this is still a ‘must read’ for any singer or songwriter. And you’ll see in some of my square-bracketed comments that I strongly disagree with some of what he has to say about composing, or his dismissive remarks about classical music. I don’t actually find his music or lyrics very engaging, and I don’t think his songs rank among the ‘greats’ of 20th century songwriting. Jimmy Webb ( see Wikipedia entry) has had many hits, such as ‘By The Time I Get to Phoenix’, ‘Wichita Lineman’, Up, Up and Away’, and ‘MacArthur Park’, colloborated with big name singers and writers, has been inducted into several songwriter Halls of Fame, and is the only artist ever to have received Grammy Awards for music, lyrics, and orchestration. The book is packed with really useful advice about songwriting technique, and the songwriting business, from a seasoned professional. My notes are a mixture of summary, quotations, and (in square brackets) my personal responses. The book noted here – Jimmy Webb’s Tunesmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting (Hyperion 1999) – is a really useful part of that literature. The articles and book summaries I have put together on this website under the category of Songwriting are an important part of a singer’s learning.
And beyond that, the singer also needs to develop a deep appreciation of the relationship between words and music. This also has many components, rhythm, pitch variation, harmony, musical texture, architecture, motivic development – and there is a history of musical styles, forms and assoiciations that composers draw on. Lyricists draw on a history of a language, its social context, literary heritage and forms (high brow and low brow), and singers enrich their understanding if they study these things too. That means studying the lyrics just as text, ideas, rhetoric, rhyme, metaphor, form, unfolding of character and narrative, message, and so on. I have long believed that singers become better interpreters of a song if they understand how that song is put together.
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