Country Blues > Country Blues Lyrics

Discussion On Writing Lyrics?

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RootDoctor:
Hello fellow forum members,

Firstly, long time watcher. Thank you all so much for the HUGE vault of valuable information available on this forum. Words cannot not adequately express my thanks to you all. From Guitar styles, transcriptions, lyrics and history/musicology. It's a diamond mine.

Secondly, a little about me. With a lot of help from SGGW, Homespun and this Forum I managed to become a reasonable country blues guitarist. Unfortunately, I wasn't (and am not) much of a performer. I love the music and always will, but as a musician I fell out of love with performing and consequently let my blues skills somewhat dissipate and ended up focusing more on Jazz (With less success). Recently, partly due to the goddamn virus I felt a hankering for getting back into learning some country blues.

I may well be in the wrong forum for this question, but I was wondering if any of you folks had any opinions on writing lyrics/melodies and whether there was any discussions being had on the subject on this forum? It may well be sacrilege to some, in which case, please forgive me!

I would love to try and write some 'originals' (in quotes as often it may well be a Sitting On Top Of The World, kinda rewrite), however I feel it could be a risky endeavour.

All opinions welcome, even if there scolding of the idea.

Thanks

banjochris:
First of all, welcome!

Second, I don't have any advice, but go for it! With blues, always good to write about what you know. I've only written a couple of dirty blues a la Bo Carter for my own amusement so I can't offer too much in the way of advice. A couple of my favorite more contemporary writers of country blues are Steve James and Paul Geremia; I'm sure others will chime in with some good opinions.
Chris

Thomas8:
Welcome Root Doctor!

I'm by no means an expert, but I do like to write myself.

I would start by identifying your favourite songs and songwriters and if you haven't any in particular search about and listen to lots of different blues artists until you find them. Then study and analyse the qualities of the songs and try to determine why you like them. Then apply those qualities to your writing.

For melodies same thing, learn different melodies you like and analyse them as well as explore the guitar neck and try different things.

On a lyric writing front I would advise to think about how easy the words will be to sing, think of syllables as notes, having long three syllable words will be very difficult to implement frequently as there is only a certain amount of space you have in a line for it to sound "musical". Aim for as many one syllable words as you can adding the occasional two or three to bring the line together. 

Considering things like meter and internal rhyme will sharpen up phrases and make words have more impact when sung also.

Make your lines interesting, Include things like brands or products or people or places. Anything really instead of singing "drinking this liquor" sing "drinking this (brand of liquor)". Lovie Austin wrote some terrific songs try "Chattanooga Blues". Write what you know and if you don't know it, explore it and make it seem to the listener as if you do by adding some detail or jargon perhaps.

I'd advise to write as much as you can, and after finishing your song go through each line and try to sharpen it up as best you can.
Think poetically and make use of metaphors, imagery, symbolism, allegory etc

A good place to start is to have some metaphor or subject in mind which you can build the entire song around. Those are easiest, write yourself or someone in as an animal or a car or a food etc.

In "Howling Wolf Blues" Funny Papa Smith writes himself as a Howling Wolf and sings about why and what he does. in "'Garlic Blues" Helen Humes sings about her mans bad breath and the effect that has on every one.

Let Thou's Imagination Run Wild!

Hope that helps,

Thomas

Johnm:
Hi RootDoctor,
I second Chris's welcome to the site and applaud your impulse to write your own lyrics. I guess my advice on lyric-writing of blues would be the same as it would be for someone wanting to write country songs--don't write about your own life, write about the audience's life. The shared experiences that the best blues lyrics speak from are much more resonant than a modern-day singer/songwriter "Let me tell you about what happened to me" lyrical stance. And if you do decide to write from your own experience, speak from a heightened or slightly fictional sense of self.

Write as you speak. Song lyrics are different than poetry, and need to be comfortable in the vernacular. Don't try to be too clever--simple but believable expressive means and methods win the day. Good luck with this.
All best,
Johnm

Blues Vintage:
Can't add much to this excellent posted advice already.
The easiest thing to do is to just take the melody of an existing song and write your own words over it.

For example, Bob Dylan's "Obviously Five Believers" is an exact copy of the vocal phrasing of Memphis Minnie's "Me And My Chauffeur Blues".

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