As hard as I find it to make music with my guitar... well not hard but it ain't easy... writing songs are even harder. I don't have a real knack for lyrics or for melody. Still, I enjoy what I do write and I've posted some lyrics on this blog. I find myself always writing in 4 line stanzas with an AA BB rhyming scheme. I just don't know how to break that barrier. Well, actually, I do, but it involves practicing my writing skills as much or more than my playing skills. I'll continue to write as I'm inspired and bore the masses of blog readers that descend on my pages each and every day. :)
There are occasions when I write something that strikes a fancy. Sometimes it takes 15 years to find out that I've done so. Alkelda the Gleeful has just posted something I wrote while in college. It's not a song by any means, but... well... you just have to go there and read it yourself. She tells the story much better than I do. While there, look around. Among the gems of poems and narratives and personal musings, you will find songs and entries on guitars.
Labels: blog writers, blogging, college, serendipity, stories
I know how you feel though. Writing words for songs is tough but for me it's not the ability to find the words and write them, it's to strike up the courage and turn them into a song. Usually too worried on what people will think instead of just "letting go."
So often, the ends of lines in songs rhyme, and that can be tricky: on the one hand, locking yourself into a rhyme-scheme can reveal truths you would not have discovered otherwise, but on the other, it can force you to say things you don't really mean.
Check out the lyrics to Phil Ochs' "Changes." Each stanza has a rhyme in it, but it's so subtle that it gives the impression that the song just flows freely.
alkelda: I'll check out Ochs' song, but I don't own Rise up singing. :(