How to Write A Song In 30 Minutes or Less Snippet 4!

Here is snippet number four for "How To Write A Song In 30 Minutes or Less."

Think In Sound And Color

If you are into naturally getting rhymes into your head fast, turn your mind into a sound thesaurus full of words that have the same vowel sound from one word to another. Try the following method. Put a minimalistic piece of music that only has one note into your earphones. Plug it in and listen to that music. Then, while you are listening intently to this, think about words that could be used in songs. Think of rhymes like time, slime, crime, sublime, prime, etc. Sing these words over and over again for at least 30 seconds. Repeat this with another minimalistic piece in a different key. On this piece, think (for example) words that have the same "ah" sound. For example, in the key of D, say you think of the words on, paw, lawn, spawn, pawn. Repeat this on many different keys with different rhyming vowel sounds. Put all the words you come up with on a piece of paper. Then, when you are coming up with each lyric line, try to fit at least two words from each list for every line or two. Before you know it, your song will be ringing with catchy rhymes that are sure to make for future top 40 hits.

Here is one way that you could break this process down:

You start by taking the chords of your song which are playing in the back of your head a lot of times before you finalize them. It is good to sketch the chord arrangement on a piece of paper or in a manuscript on the computer or in a book in order to find the note that you will be using to come up with rhyming words. This is easier than it seems. Play this progression at least twice to get the sound in your brain. Then sing the common note that you find in each chords. In the figure below, the note D is common in all the chords I use below. Hold that note (whatever it is) against all those chords and see what syllables and sounds come to mind. 

Figure  9.1--Songs and chords with no lyrics yet.

Now, take a look at the notes in the top line of the sample. What vowel sounds do you hear in your head? Take a few seconds to listen to what is in your head and in your heart. You could possibly hear what has been put before you below:

9.2: Review of other possible syllables that you could later use to form words.

If the above example seems like it is not simple enough, you could take a minute or two to brainstorm different vowel sounds and lyric combinations until you find a set that works for you. Or, you could completely redo the melody notes that you picked and put different syllables with them as is demonstrated below:

Figure 9.3--Music with syllables that would soon turn into words.

Note that the vowel sounds that you pick should be able to give you words that are at least somewhat linked to the vowel sounds you heard in your head. If you have to tweak things a little, that is fine.

The next minor step is to come up with lyrics that could closely match the vowel sounds you choose.

Figure 9.4 More complex syllable presentation.

This above process will work most often if you write songs with the lyrics as the key focus. If you write songs lyrically before you write the melody, writing the many lists of succinct rhyming words and having them within your writing space as you write will give you a tremendous boost.

On the other hand, if you are already coming up with lyrics, you could feel free to skip this little exercise and continue writing lyrics as you were.