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HackettFan 
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 Topic: Are you a lyricist?
Posted: August 28 2015 at 19:57 |
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So, Prog fans reputedly lean toward a preference for instrumental music and, when appreciating vocals, tend to be more concerned about the quality of the voice as an instrument than the quality and content of those lyrics. I resemble that observation myself. Many PA members, I know, play an instrument. I do not know of any who have had or still have an active history writing lyrics. I want to see now how that intersects with singing, playing an instrument and not playing an instrument. So, let us know how you place yourself.
I play an instrument, but I've only written one lyric:
I found myself gazing at a hippopotamus
He was a whole lot larger than a lot of us
But he seemed rather tame
So I asked him his name
He preferred to remain anonymous
Suffice it to say I selected poll choice 4, 'No, I do play an instrument, but I don't write lyrics'.
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TGM: Orb
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Posted: August 28 2015 at 20:21 |
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Well, I'm a poet originally. I play a bit on stringed things and can write lyrics, though I find it a bit difficult to get the ideas across as well as with just the words.
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Imperial Zeppelin
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Posted: August 28 2015 at 20:46 |
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I'm not very good with words, my voice is awful, and I don't possess any musical abilities.
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"Hey there, Dog Man, now I drink from your bowl."
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Dellinger
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Posted: August 28 2015 at 21:37 |
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I don't play instruments nor write lyrics. However, about your statement of prog fans being less interested in the quality of the lyrics, I'm not really sure. I mean, I don't think there's less interest for prog fans in lyrics than on the average pop/rock fan. Perhaps Metal fans are particularly interested in lyrics, but not necessarily because of their quality. This idea has come up several times also about prog having poor or ridiculous lyrics, and about that I don't agree either. Prog bands usually sing about many different things, while other genres only focus on love, broken hearts, or having fun, and that means that prog bands are at least interested in other aspects of life. And if a prog band came out with your usual love lyrics (I mean, for a whole album, not just a song), then I bet the proggers would complain and ridicule it, so I don't think prog fans are unconcerned about the lyrics either... it's just that proggers give more importance to the music and it's execution than other genre's fans. Plus, there's another point to consider. Prog is the genre of exellence to find concept albums, and in general prog fans apreciate them, and for a concept album you certainly need to take good care of the lyrics you are writing.
As for the quality of vocalists... actually I believe there are some bands with rather poor vocalists... perhaps a bit more than in other genres, actually, but sometimes the quality of the music allows us to enjoy the band despite a not so strong singer... there are some awsome singers in prog too, of course... though we don't always agree on which singers are great and which ones are weak.
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HackettFan
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Posted: August 28 2015 at 22:18 |
 Dellinger wrote:
I don't play instruments nor write lyrics. However, about your statement of prog fans being less interested in the quality of the lyrics, I'm not really sure. I mean, I don't think there's less interest for prog fans in lyrics than on the average pop/rock fan. Perhaps Metal fans are particularly interested in lyrics, but not necessarily because of their quality. This idea has come up several times also about prog having poor or ridiculous lyrics, and about that I don't agree either. Prog bands usually sing about many different things, while other genres only focus on love, broken hearts, or having fun, and that means that prog bands are at least interested in other aspects of life. And if a prog band came out with your usual love lyrics (I mean, for a whole album, not just a song), then I bet the proggers would complain and ridicule it, so I don't think prog fans are unconcerned about the lyrics either... it's just that proggers give more importance to the music and it's execution than other genre's fans. Plus, there's another point to consider. Prog is the genre of exellence to find concept albums, and in general prog fans apreciate them, and for a concept album you certainly need to take good care of the lyrics you are writing.
As for the quality of vocalists... actually I believe there are some bands with rather poor vocalists... perhaps a bit more than in other genres, actually, but sometimes the quality of the music allows us to enjoy the band despite a not so strong singer... there are some awsome singers in prog too, of course... though we don't always agree on which singers are great and which ones are weak. |
Well said. I don't blame you for questioning the opening observation. I don't know if there's any data for it from previous polls. We are a complicated bunch, though, aren't we? This poll bears on the question of Prog fans' relationship with lyrics from a different angle; you certainly don't have to be a lyricist to appreciate lyrics, but It will be interesting and relevant to see how many PA people focused their talents in that direction. I hope this poll gets a lot of responses because I'd really like to see how things break down.
Edited by HackettFan - August 28 2015 at 22:44
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HackettFan
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Posted: August 28 2015 at 22:39 |
TGM: Orb wrote:
Well, I'm a poet originally. I play a bit on stringed things and can write lyrics, though I find it a bit difficult to get the ideas across as well as with just the words. |
That's fabulous, man. And yeah, that's a good point too; expressing one's self through poetry isn't automatically the same as expressing one's self lyrically. That is to say, making the words fit into music.
Imperial Zeppelin wrote:
I'm not very good with words, my voice is awful, and I don't possess any musical abilities. |
Indeed. My voice is awful too. That's why I wanted to see also how many lyricists would call themselves vocalists. It seems like it might be a pretty big factor.
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condor
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Posted: August 29 2015 at 06:18 |
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What's the difference between a lyricist and a poet?
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Dean
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Posted: August 29 2015 at 07:29 |
condor wrote:
What's the difference between a lyricist and a poet? |
Erm, the glib answer would be "music", so a lyriscist would have some understanding of music and song structure that is not necessary in a poet. Lyrics are written to be sung whereas poems are written to be spoken or read, this distinction puts constraints on how a lyricist composes the words, the scan of those words and their rhythm. While not a general rule, lyrics tend to have a rhyming pattern that is either predictable or can be anticipated that is not necessary in poetry. Poems can (and are) put to music but the more successful of those are often more lyrical in form. While poems and lyrics have verses, songs have a chorus whereas a poem will have refrains (though again, this is not a general rule).
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Dean
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Posted: August 29 2015 at 07:33 |
Back to the topic: I have written some lyrics for an (as yet unreleased) album of my own music. Several tracks did get the vocals recorded but I was only happy with the results on two of them - after that I lost interest in the project.
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What?
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TGM: Orb
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Posted: August 29 2015 at 08:40 |
condor wrote:
What's the difference between a lyricist and a poet? |
You don't have music. A poem and a song both have to walk by themselves, with the poetry there's a lot of internal rhythm and structure that usually ends up clashing with the structure of conventional songs - I've performed with free improv musicians and backed poetry with improvised guitar and banjo parts, both of which have worked really well. If you have musical backing it's a lot more comfortable repeating yourself. I tend to find when I write lyrics they can end up really overloaded in terms of how much sound stuff is going on within them and I've not really found a way to marry that up melodically with stuff. Also, I think with yer everyday song you need to put a lot of weight on the chorus, while I'm a lot more comfortable with having stretchy verses laden with content, which in turn puts a lot of weight on the musical side to keep up. I'm still at a working-it-out part with how the music and vox interact with the words. There aren't many really good lyricists who read really well as poetry, in my view; I think a lot of Jacques Brel's stuff does, Jake Thackray and that vein of English comic verse often does if you cut down the choruses a bit. I think Bob Dylan's an amazing lyricist but a lot of it's written for a specific musical structure and drops off without that.
Edited by TGM: Orb - August 29 2015 at 08:45
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Michael678
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Posted: August 29 2015 at 14:05 |
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Nah, I'm more of a drummer than a lyricist myself, you know!
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Progrockdude
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TeleStrat
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Posted: August 29 2015 at 14:32 |
I checked number four. I am a musician but I don't sing and I have never attempted to write lyrics. All the songs I've recorded are instrumental and were never meant to have lyrics. I don't know the first thing about writing songs except that there is more to it than making the last word in every line rhyme.
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The Dark Elf
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Posted: August 29 2015 at 14:33 |
condor wrote:
What's the difference between a lyricist and a poet? |
Not much, really. One goes broke trying to succeed in music and the other goes broke in a literary sense.
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...a vigorous circular motion hitherto unknown to the people of this area, but destined
to take the place of the mud shark in your mythology...
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HackettFan
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Posted: August 29 2015 at 19:52 |
Dean wrote:
<span style="line-height: 1.4;">Back to the topic: I have written some lyrics for an (as yet unreleased) album of my own music. Several tracks did get the vocals recorded but I was only happy with the results on two of them - after that I lost interest in the project</span><span style="line-height: 1.4;">. </span> |
I'm wondering if you felt comfortable singing them yourself, as opposed to getting someone to do them for you? In my case my voice is crap. That by itself seems to stunt any real progress for me in writing lyrics. I'd have to really rely on an "inner voice" I suppose.
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Dean
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Posted: August 29 2015 at 21:12 |
HackettFan wrote:
Dean wrote:
Back to the topic: I have written some lyrics for an (as yet unreleased) album of my own music. Several tracks did get the vocals recorded but I was only happy with the results on two of them - after that I lost interest in the project. |
I'm wondering if you felt comfortable singing them yourself, as opposed to getting someone to do them for you? In my case my voice is crap. That by itself seems to stunt any real progress for me in writing lyrics. I'd have to really rely on an "inner voice" I suppose. |
I initially got others to sing the songs (my original concept for the album was for five different vocalists including myself). The first two sessions went rather well, the singers adapted their vocal style to fit my kind of music and managed to interpret the lyrics as I had envisioned them. When I then tried singing my parts I discovered I didn't like the sound of my own voice very much - I suspect that was due mainly to my not having sung anything since my voice broke some 33 years earlier, but I was singing on-key and the results weren't too embarrassing, thou I would have preferred to rerecord them with someone else singing. The session with the third singer was a disaster and I never could manage to arrange a suitable date for the fourth singer.
More than that, I found the whole thing frustrating - I generally work very quickly because as a one-man band I'm in full control of my time and energy and in a very short time span had written all the lyrics and composed 55 minutes of music to accompany them...
in my blog-diary from March, 2002 I wrote:
the lyrical interlude
As I had never written a lyric before and have only ever written a couple of poems in my entire life, the prospect of adding words to this first song ['Staring Into The Sun'] and any subsequent songs was, needless to say, daunting. However, fired-up by my enthusiasm for the project and encouraged by the music composed thus far, the words came very easily. After a small amount of editing to remove 'night & light' clichés, I soon had enough words for the CD. Of the eight lyrics written, one still bothered me a little. I had based the chorus on the title of my main website, the silence of darkness, but could not shift Delerium's "Silence" (as sung by Sarah McLachlan) from my head, so i rewrote it... twice.
With some minor shuffling these eight lyrics even fitted together in an order that could be interpreted as a vague story, should anyone so desire.
back to the music
Many long nights were wasted trying write music around those words. The outcome was dreadful. Really painfully, embarrassingly, dreadful. So I put the words to one side and forgot about them while getting down to the task of writing more music in a similar vein to 'Staring Into The Sun'. Within a relatively short space of time I had 11 pieces of music that I liked and a couple that were simply too happy (wait for the 'Unbeatably Happy Music for the Cynically Deaf' compilation CD). Then the night before we set off for the Whitby Gothic Weekend, I sat down and added melodies to eight of these so the lyrics could be sang over them. I spent the idle moments of that weekend listening to a rough mix of the entire album while reading the words. By the time i returned home the final melodies and phrasings were fixed in my mind. I had also planned who I would like to sing which parts. |
...but by August I had only recorded half the vocals and in September of 2002, following the disastrous session with the third singer, I put the project on indefinite hold.
Now some 13 years later I'm no longer enthused by the thematic concept of the album so if I were to finish the album I'd re-write most of the lyrics, including those of the two songs that came out okay.
Edited by Dean - August 29 2015 at 21:20
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What?
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Dellinger
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Posted: August 29 2015 at 22:35 |
HackettFan wrote:
Dellinger wrote:
I don't play instruments nor write lyrics. However, about your statement of prog fans being less interested in the quality of the lyrics, I'm not really sure. I mean, I don't think there's less interest for prog fans in lyrics than on the average pop/rock fan. Perhaps Metal fans are particularly interested in lyrics, but not necessarily because of their quality. This idea has come up several times also about prog having poor or ridiculous lyrics, and about that I don't agree either. Prog bands usually sing about many different things, while other genres only focus on love, broken hearts, or having fun, and that means that prog bands are at least interested in other aspects of life. And if a prog band came out with your usual love lyrics (I mean, for a whole album, not just a song), then I bet the proggers would complain and ridicule it, so I don't think prog fans are unconcerned about the lyrics either... it's just that proggers give more importance to the music and it's execution than other genre's fans. Plus, there's another point to consider. Prog is the genre of exellence to find concept albums, and in general prog fans apreciate them, and for a concept album you certainly need to take good care of the lyrics you are writing.
As for the quality of vocalists... actually I believe there are some bands with rather poor vocalists... perhaps a bit more than in other genres, actually, but sometimes the quality of the music allows us to enjoy the band despite a not so strong singer... there are some awsome singers in prog too, of course... though we don't always agree on which singers are great and which ones are weak. |
Well said. I don't blame you for questioning the opening observation. I don't know if there's any data for it from previous polls. We are a complicated bunch, though, aren't we? This poll bears on the question of Prog fans' relationship with lyrics from a different angle; you certainly don't have to be a lyricist to appreciate lyrics, but It will be interesting and relevant to see how many PA people focused their talents in that direction. I hope this poll gets a lot of responses because I'd really like to see how things break down. |
Yeah. Well, it would be very interesting to get some information about this from the professionals too. Perhaps we could guess some of them... or there is information from interviews, bios, etc, from some others.
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emigre80
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Posted: August 29 2015 at 23:08 |
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I only write prose.
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fudgenuts64
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Posted: August 30 2015 at 08:04 |
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I would like to be, though I can't say I've tried. I play keyboard/piano though.
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Skalla-Grim
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Posted: August 30 2015 at 08:51 |
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I'm a keyboard player and I write my own music. I have also written some lyrics but I'm aware that others can't really understand what I've written, not because they are stupid but because the contents are very personal. The lyrics are not really complex, but the sources of my inspiration are rather obscure.
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TGM: Orb
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Posted: August 30 2015 at 08:59 |
Dellinger wrote:
I don't play instruments nor write lyrics. However, about your statement of prog fans being less interested in the quality of the lyrics, I'm not really sure. I mean, I don't think there's less interest for prog fans in lyrics than on the average pop/rock fan. Perhaps Metal fans are particularly interested in lyrics, but not necessarily because of their quality. This idea has come up several times also about prog having poor or ridiculous lyrics, and about that I don't agree either. Prog bands usually sing about many different things, while other genres only focus on love, broken hearts, or having fun, and that means that prog bands are at least interested in other aspects of life. And if a prog band came out with your usual love lyrics (I mean, for a whole album, not just a song), then I bet the proggers would complain and ridicule it, so I don't think prog fans are unconcerned about the lyrics either... it's just that proggers give more importance to the music and it's execution than other genre's fans. Plus, there's another point to consider. Prog is the genre of exellence to find concept albums, and in general prog fans apreciate them, and for a concept album you certainly need to take good care of the lyrics you are writing.
As for the quality of vocalists... actually I believe there are some bands with rather poor vocalists... perhaps a bit more than in other genres, actually, but sometimes the quality of the music allows us to enjoy the band despite a not so strong singer... there are some awsome singers in prog too, of course... though we don't always agree on which singers are great and which ones are weak. |
I'm of the view that the style of lyric for prog really is a result of the type of music. You can't have a forty minute suite with unambitious earnest lyrics. You can either go ambitious or silly and occasionally both. Prog never really did anything as pretentious as Tommy, either.
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Are you a lyricist?
