5 Simple Songwriting Exercises to Transform Your Lyrics
How To Write Songs
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0:00 do you ever listen to the lyrics of songs you love and just think how did they do that like you can't even imagine how the songwriter arrived at that turn
0:08 of phrase It's so normal to feel like in our own lyrics that we're just flapping around in the shallow pool of mediocrity but in this video I'm gonna
0:17 I mean I've simple and Powerful ever written one of the most important techniques is all about understanding
0:25 that there are some lines of lyrics in your song structure that are way more important than other lines and these are called Power positions and in technique
0:34 number five I'm going to explain to you what they are where they are and how to use them number one extending metaphors a metaphor is when we describe one thing
0:44 through the lens of some other object and it's in that area of overlap where we actually get the metaphor so if I say anger is a storm it's the ways in which
0:55 we connect those two images or ideas where the metaphor actually emerges but the real fun of metaphor and where your best lyrics are gonna come out is the
1:05 ways in which you extend that initial metaphor so angry as a storm might be interesting in and of itself but it's going to be even more interesting if I
1:15 spend 10 minutes developing that metaphor let me give you an example anger is a storm the clouds of your mind gather darkening your eyes your words
1:26 are lightning striking out at the nearest touch Point your voice swells and Spills and I Harden like ice my dark glances rumble on the horizon of our
1:38 days what you can see that I've done there is I've just spent five or ten minutes extending the metaphor by using words and images related to storm to
1:48 describe and expand on the idea of anger here is a piece of lyric writing magic after you do this for five or ten minutes you just pick out the best bits
1:58 and the thing with metaphor is it's easy to go too far so we don't want to use every single thing we've come up with we just want to pick the few lines or ideas
2:07 that really stand out so here we could create something quite quickly like this the clouds of your mind gather again words start spilling out and I get stuck
2:17 here in your rain hardening like ice in fact actually leaving out the end initial metaphor that started the whole thing can actually result in lines that
2:26 are even better than if we had included that first metaphor anger is a storm one of the reasons for this is that it's actually a way to invite a listener in
2:35 to the world of your song by allowing them to connect the dots for themselves and when people do that there's this crazy release of dopamine that happens
2:44 and it actually creates a feeling of connection with a listener when they're allowed to actually figure things out for themselves one of my favorite
2:52 examples of this comes from the Arnie DeFranco song school night she went over to his apartment clutching her decision and he said did you come here to tell me
3:00 goodbye so she built a skyscraper of procrastination and then she leaned out the 25th floor window of her reply so here is the action step for you the
3:10 songwriting exercise is to come up with five different interesting initial metaphors and you can use a random word generator like perchance.org and I've
3:21 included a link to that in the notes below so come up with five interesting combinations like jealousy is a kitchen the conversation was a security
3:29 checkpoint growing older is an elephant and for each one of these five interesting combinations spend five or ten minutes extending the metaphor
3:38 making sure that you are using words phrases and images that are related to the metaphor image so if I'm using jealousy is a kitchen kitchen is the
3:48 metaphor image I'm really talking about jealousy but I'm going to use language related to Kitchen to paint that picture another great way to practice this is of
3:56 course to listen to some great songs that actually do this inside the lyrics of the songs and here are a few examples Golden by Jill Scott Circle games by
4:03 Joni Mitchell she Burns by Foy Vance Take Me to Church by Hozier number two upgrading verbs certain words in the English language are way more powerful
4:13 than other words and I'm not talking about like Expelliarmus I'm talking about the difference between verbs adjectives and adverbs there are so many
4:24 wonderful writers who have given this advice to me and the world for example Jeff Tweedy in his lovely little book how to write one song says this about
4:33 adverbs you don't need to say the dog barked loudly loudly is implied and adding it actually weakens the bark and of course the famous Stephen King quote
4:42 the road to hell is paved with adverbs and I would like to add to that by saying the road to hell is also paved with adjectives adjectives and adverbs
4:51 generally tend to do nothing but weaken your language and expression as opposed to verbs which are really the PowerHouse of the English language verbs obviously
5:02 convey action but they do so much more they can convey image mood tone emotion and attitude let's look at an example here if I have a line of lyric like she
5:12 walked into the room walked is my verb let's see what happens when I simply do the act of replacing that fairly generic verb with something slightly more
5:25 interesting she slid into the room she slithered into the room she flowed into the room one thing to notice is that when we analyze the lyrics to songs and
5:36 songwriters who are great lyric writers we tend to see the general absence of adjectives and adverbs let's check out the song motion sickness by Phoebe
5:45 Bridges I hate you for what you did and I miss you like a little kid I faked it every time but that's all right I can hardly feel anything I hardly feel
5:53 anything at all you gave me 1500 to see your hypnotherapist I only went one time you let it slide fell on hard times a year ago was hoping you would let it go
6:03 and you did literally the only adjective in this entire lyric is the word hard and in this case hard is actually part of the
6:12 expression hard times it wouldn't work to just say times so hard here is barely an adjective at all because it's part of an expression there are basically no
6:21 adjectives and not a single adverb here is your songwriting call to action and this call to action has Two Steps step one is to go through the draft of any
6:32 lyrics that you're writing to songs you're working on and literally just cross out any adjectives or adverbs that are inside the lyric there might be some
6:42 adjectives that absolutely need to be there so for example in the Bruno major lyric nothing the very first line is tracksuits and red wine movies for two
6:51 we need the word red there red is actually important red wine has a different connotation to white wine or even just wine it paints a picture of a
7:01 certain type of person and a certain type of moment but we certainly don't need floral red wine step two is to go through a draft of your lyric and
7:10 underline every single verb that you use throughout the course of your lyric and the task here is to pick one verb per section and upgrade that verb to
7:21 something more interesting just a quick note here to say if you are finding this video useful or helpful at all please go ahead and click the little like button
7:28 it really helps the magical YouTube algorithm Pixies deliver our content to other people who might be interested in the video and it really helps us and we
7:36 really appreciate it number three use specific imagery that works hard when Bruno major sings tracksuits and red wine movies for two it puts a movie in
7:46 your mind you get a clear sense of who the characters are what their relationship is how long they've been together what they're doing right now
7:54 where they are and why they're there the movie starts playing in your mind and so you become invested in this song as Stephen King says good description
8:03 usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand in for everything else and this is true for song as well and maybe even more true
8:12 for song where we have very limited real estate in which to build mansions in the minds and hearts of our listeners there's a line from an Amanda Palmer
8:22 song that I just love so much because it demonstrates this so beautifully the line is from her song The Bed song which is just a great and epic song to start
8:29 with but this particular line kills me every time and it's this I find my glasses and you turn the light out I just love this line so much because it's
8:39 very much like that Bruno major lyric in that it is this really specific snapshot of an image that actually shows us rather than telling us so much about the
8:50 relationship here we know this is two people in bed together we know something about their age they've probably been together for a while and maybe even a
8:58 long time in glasses kind of maybe even adds 10 or 20 years onto the vision of who these people are so we know that maybe a couple in their 30s 40s or 50s
9:07 we also know that as one of the characters is leaning over to get her glasses to read that the other character is turning their light out so these two
9:17 characters are not on the same page they're actually kind of living parallel lives even as they are existing or coexisting in their most intimate space
9:26 their bed so there is something deeply wrong here and it's this image that shows it to us rather than telling it to us that makes it even more powerful for
9:37 a detailed walkthrough on how to come up with great imagery check out this video on our Channel or if you want a more deep and structured demonstration with
9:45 case studies examples and application you can check out our short course the link is in the video notes below here is your call to action with this lyric
9:52 writing tip a great and very quick way to do this is to take a line of lyric that you identify as being more telling than showing or more General than
10:02 specific and just spend five minutes trying to invert that line into some kind of specific image based snapshot that shows it rather than tells it so
10:13 for example you could take a line like it was a beautiful normal Saturday afternoon and instead of telling that figure out at least 10 different ways
10:22 that you could show us that through an image so for me it might be something like barbecue smoke curling up through the eucalyptus leaves or watching my dog
10:30 chase rabbits in his sleep or eating samosas that my neighbor dropped at my door they're like little photographs little snapshots that are designed to
10:39 show a picture a specific image that illustrates the concept rather than merely telling it in some general way like Saturday afternoon number four
10:49 contrasts there is something incredibly compelling and very sticky when we actually combine two opposing ideas or images in the same line of lyric or at
11:01 the very least close to each other in the lyrics so for example contrasting day night good bad hot cold questions answers there's something about
11:10 opposites that is very very appealing the contrast usually serves to amplify in some way the idea by spotlighting it let's look at a Beautiful lyric that
11:21 does this in such a spectacular way this is the song she Burns by Foy Vance I've frozen over my desires covered up in Virgin Snow but when I stand beside her
11:31 she Burns yeah she burns like petrol soaked paper and fireworks it's that opposite contrast of cold and hot Frozen and burning that really amplifies the
11:45 hook of this song which is she Burns number five power positions there are lines of lyric inside the structure of a song that because of their position in
11:56 the structure will naturally draw more attention from a listener's ear and those lines are always the first line and the last line of any section it's a
12:09 Well documented scientific phenomenon of human attention that we will always pay more attention to the first thing and the last thing of anything really but
12:19 it's also true in songs the human ear is naturally spotlighting the first line and the last line it's not that the internal lines
12:28 aren't important they are but they're just not as important in this video I want to focus on one really effective technique that I call the last line
12:38 pivot we're going to use that last line to create surprise to see how this works let's listen to one of the best songs ever written I'm just going to go out
12:47 and say it it's the song River by Joni Mitchell it's coming on Christmas they're cutting down trees they're putting up reindeer and singing songs of
12:57 joy and peace oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on the surprising element of that last line comes because Joni has stacked images of Christmas and
13:09 by stacking images of Christmas it creates a certain pattern we've got all this Christmas imagery and generally Christmas imagery has a positive
13:19 connotation so she's stacking all this Christmas imagery but the last line is not positive at all it's not a positive feeling she's using that last line to
13:30 create an element of surprise by saying I wish I could get away from it all so surprise can only happen when we create expectation and expectation only happens
13:40 when we create pattern so the whole idea here is we can take this lyric as a model for our own we can stack images and then use that last line to break the
13:51 expectation that has been created through the stacking of that imagery here is your call to action to put this technique into practice there are really
14:00 two ways you can do this the first way is to start by stacking images that describe something it could describe an event it could describe a feeling it
14:10 could describe an experience that you had and then use that last line to Pivot the other way to do this is to reverse engineer the section to actually start
14:18 with your last line think about what your target is and then start with its opposite if you want more tips and tricks on writing better lyrics check
14:26 out this video Happy writing guys see you next time