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Getting some good reviews on my songs...can anyone put them to music? My song are listed on jpfolks site. Thanks, Hillbillyvoils

You're getting good reviews on your lyrics. They are not actually songs until you have music and lyrics. Up until then they are poetry.

MAB

Songs lyrics poetry... does it matter ?

if folk want to get technical... lyrics are words writen to be sung, where as poetry is metered prose. lyrics may also be poetry and /or prose... have meaning or not... as John Lennon said "the're just words" ...

Anyways if you ca't get someone to help there you could try Jammer or Band in a box ... google web search should bring them up... basically they are melody generating programs.. and require only a rudamentry understanding of music to make them work.. that should help getting you a starting point


Cheers

Noel,

The only people it matters to are potential purchasers or fans of the music and the industry itself, who deal in finished product, not music only (except for instrumentals) or lyric only.

Very few people in the world are really that interested in poetry. The low sales on poetry books, the interest in poetry at all from a commercial venture are the proof of this. It is a very small niche. Generally the rule of thumb is that the "only people interested in poetry are people who write poetry."

So that leads people to turn to songwriting if they have any hope of furthering their creative aspiritions past their living room.

So you have to get music on them. There are millions of songwriters and musicians out there. Just have to find the ones that work for you.

MAB

Sorry Marc but it annoys me when people feel the need to label someone eles art.... usually in a manner that I actually find offencive.

When the reality is what is important about what it is called? Does it really matter if a person calls their lyric a song? Why is it so necessary to re-label something? ... sure if its a discussion about that subject... but otherwise why the need to correct something with something else that is equally incorrect?... Yes ok his work more correctly should be called "Lyrics" not songs... but to call them poetry is just as wrong as calling them songs if not more so... because the writer may have written in a melody and once the words have a melody ... music or nay... they can be corectly called a song... The fact that it called also be considered a poem or is in poetic form is neither here nor there..

There was a number one hit in the UK called "they're comming to take me away" that had words and melody but the only instrument used was a single voice... Many vocal harmonising groups use only their voices as instruments with no other music... and people sing "songs" Songs may or may not have lyrics and lryics are words written to be sung... But again it comes back to "so what".

Who would call traditional folk "Pop music" but in it's day when it was written the reason we hear it today is because it was the "pop" of era... Most of what we call pop these days is (IMO) actually bublegum music...

In Australia, Poetry is big... not the byron or keats type but the bush ballads of the past and present it did start to die out a few years back but it is having a major revival....We have a televised national poetry slam... possibly almost as popular as Australian Idol...... many of Austraia's great traditional country songs are bush ballads set to music.. yes these were actually written as poetry and became songs later... different to a person speciffically writing something to be sung...

Story telling and music creation are cultural things that the worlds population has not out grown...

I find it hurtful that because I and others come to songwriting from a different perspective to what is "Popular", that there are those who feel their way is the only way and we are some how lessor song writers and they are driven to ram it down our throats that they are right and we are wrong... Is it because they are afraid of us they want to kick us, are we so big a threat because of how we view the world? ... If they want to get technical well let's take the Oxford or MacQuarie Dictionary definitions... I mean we all speak english ... Don't we?

Cheers

Noel,

You are taking offense when none is intended. Lyrics are considered poetry until they are rendered in some kind of musical form. They are in fact poetry. There is nothing wrong with poetry. I am not looking down on any of that nor trying to make them do anything they don't want to.

I respond to what people say on these threads. You should read them from the top. The original poster was asking for help putting music to his lyrics. That means songs. They are not songs until they have music involved which is the way most people in all countries relate to lyrical poetry.

This is not a cultural war and you don't need to start one. It is a discussion about songwriting and we all have opinions. I can have them too. If they don't fit yours that is fine but that is what these pages are all about. As far as labels, they are put on everything we do by every one who has an opinion which the last I heard was everyone on earth.

I try to help writers get past the hurdles we all face. The best way to do that is the truth and to try and point people in the right direction. No one has to go in that direction.

MAB

Noel,

By the way, today my clients were two people from Melbourne complaining that there is very little cohesive community in Austrailia to help pull together to get lyrics and music together. That is what we are trying to show how to do in various ways. So much of my comments come from those in the countries you are talking about.

MAB

This is why I came to internet collaboration... part of the problem is numbers and distance... Our population per square mile of soil is so much smaller by comparison to most other places in the world that you need a microscope to see us...

Whether or not you intend offence... doesn't make it any less offencive to me. I have explained why I find it offencive now it is up to you as to wheter you wish to continue to offend me.


Below is a direct response to correct the misaprehension that "lyrics are just poetry until they have been rendered in some musical form" ...

People who beleive that lyrics are just poetry until they have been rendered in some musical form are in fact wrong.

Why are they wrong...

Lyrics are Lyrics... that is words written to be sung... nothing more and nothing less.... check the dictionary... it is easy to find and the defiition is quite clear.

Not all lyrics fit the definition of poetry.

Poetry are words that meter, .... sometimes it may say "metered prose" (again check the dictionary)...

Lyrics do not need to meter. They can be a passage copied from a book, a list etc... just so long as the person writing them intended them to be sung... they are lyrics.

Just because most lyrics written meter and have a rime scheme doesn't mean that those lyrics that do not meter and/or do not have a rime scheme are any less a lyric. They are just a different style of lyric. good or bad they are still lyrics.

In a song a lyric is melded to a melody which will have a meter.

You may not want it to be that way but that doesn't change the truth.

Ok I can understand why it is wrong to call a lyric not yet melded to a melody a song... why is it so hard to understand why it is just as wrong to call that same lyric poetry irrespective of what form it takes?... And the way some people use it to attack others who for what ever, selfish, greedy, jelousy reasons wish to insult /upset/ denegrate other songwriters, should be enough reason not to..... rightly or wrongly surely the author is the only person who can correctly label their art?

Noel,

We can get into this as deep as you want to. I don't really care one way or another and if you are offended, I guess you are just going to have to be offended. You should probably work on that chip on your shoulder. You are not paying attention. Look at the top of the thread and what he first asked. Lyrics without music are considered lyrics or poetry, the definition is pure semantics, means nothing.

What we have as authors makes no difference. Our songs are never about us. They are about the relationships they build within the listening audience who accept or don't accept whatever they will. The audience is who makes the final determination.

I don't know what your beef with me is. I made a comment in response to what he asked. I can have my opinions regardless whether you think I am allowed to or not.

At the end of the day it only matters that this guy gets what he needs in having someone help him with music. If you want to do that it is fine. But there is no denigration, insulting, or dissmissing other than what you are doing. Again, you are reading things into something that are not there, only taken as some offense by you.

I wish it didn't.

MAB

I have a chip on my shoulder because... I find it insulting and offensive that folk who should know better insist on calling lyrics... poetry? Adding fuel to the flames for the A%#HOL%S of this world to beat up on others with. And I have seen it happen often enough. So maybe I do ...

I looked at the top and Hill Billy asked for help to put music to his songs... Which I offered some advice and commented on part of your text which is technically incorrect.

If in another thread he asked "are Lyrics with out music Lyrics or Poetry"?.. Then the correct answer would be lyrics.

The fact that there are those who have a problem with giving people the Correct answer... for what ever reasons... would tell me that they have a problem and they need to get over it.

Perhaps it is as simple they don't know the correct answer and don't like being told they are wrong...

I don't know and nor do I really care what their problem is.. but when they make it my problem by putting misinformation on a public web site and Where I can see it ... then I am going to respond and correct them.

A lyric without music is.... a lyric.

Calling it "Poetry" is a common pejorative. It's also old school Nashville scam artist terminology "let us set your 'poetry' to music"

There's a long interview I did with Dean Pitchford who is a lyricist with oodles of hits, awards and credits. He's also an author. He's NOT a poet. When he wrote the lyrics to FAME or Footloose or Let's Hear it for the Boy etc. before they were matched with music, they were not poetry, they were lyrics.

At best using the word was a bit smarmy and at worst an insulting pejorative often used by holier than thou types. I have to agree with Noel on this one.

To Hill Billy, sorry this took a left turn. Post your lyrics on the lyric feedback board and folks will check them out. If someone loves them, they might even be willing to add music and turn your lyric into a song.

Brian

Alright, since we seem to be splitting hairs here

A lyric is the word half of a song and does not become a lyric until there is a song.

Check any definition of "lyric" and you see lyric and song are inextricably entwined.

Before it becomes part of a song, it is a poem.

You may write a "lyric" intending for it to be attached to a melody, but until it actually is mated with a melody, it is simply a potential lyric.

So I'm with Marc.

I see Noel and Brian's argument in that I have seen (and probably made) comments like "this is a better poem than a lyric", or, "this is too poetic", so I guess the root of the problem is that many of us are simply guilty of "loose language".

While and when folks can agree on what they are talking about, "loose language" does not matter and both can easily work with it. But as this thread illustrates, when we want it to be, the difference in meaning that we previously ignore can become a gulf.

But I don't see it as offensive. Only sloppy.

Now pass me that doohickey please