What Comes First? The Music or The Lyrics?
People often ask what comes first for a song- the lyrics or the music? I know that some people who ask this question really wish there was one concrete answer, but I really think the answer is varied from song to song, musician to musician, and can even change within sections of the same song. When I think about the songs that I’ve written, it’s often really really hard to remember how the song came together, but I know that the process is almost always varied each time. This article may not give you that defined concrete answer, but hopefully it will give you some insight into some processes that have worked for me. Here are some examples that I’ve encountered over time.
The “music-first” approach: There are a lot of times where I’ll be messing around with some different guitar parts or synth parts, and once I have something that I think might have the potential to be a song, I’ll start flipping through my journal or notepad and messing around with different lyrics I’ve already written to see if anything fits. I’m very strict about making sure I take notes anytime a lyric pops into my head, whether it be in an iPhone voice or text memo, or written in my note pad if it’s close by (I try to have it close by as much as possible). Using this method, I have to be careful to keep the vibe of the music in mind, and to listen to my instincts on what lyrics will work. I often go through pages and pages until I find the lyrics I want to use. And I can tell you that I know I have a lot more unused lyrics than I do unused musical parts. Sometimes I’ll write completely new lyrics for a song, but a lot of times I use something I’ve already written.
The “lyrics-first” approach: There are also times where I’ll start free-styling some words that pop into my head or singing passages from my notes, and as I’m singing them I realize that they have a melody to them already just in the way that they’re naturally coming out of my mouth. I’ll record a voice memo of this or sit down with a guitar and figure out the chord structure, and get a very basic skeleton of the song down. I find that sometimes using only the top and 2nd string of the guitar can be very helpful in this process, instead of worrying about full chords (these strings are the basis for most chords any way, & I like the simplification of it if I’m working quickly to get the idea fleshed out). This process actually happened this morning when I woke up. I’ve been dealing with some mild vertigo, and I woke up feeling a little dizzy this morning. I started playfully singing about vertigo and dizziness, and all of a sudden I realized I started singing it with some melody to it and I had a full on chord progression with words in my head. I recorded a voice memo, and sat down with my acoustic guitar to get the basic gist of it recorded. Who knows if it’s any good, but I’ll get an idea once I start to mess with it some more. I’ve definitely used this “lyrics-first” process plenty of times.
The “whirlwind/combo” approach: Sometimes one song will come together by way of a myriad of different processes. I remember our song “Past Life- Who Were You” coming together in a strangely unique way. My wife and I always sing little songs to our dog Bogart. Bogart’s almost 13 now, and he’s dealt with some health issues over the past few years. When he wasn’t feeling well, I remember us just messing around, singing this little phrase to him: “Who were you in your past life?” and then continuing to build on it. We added more and more lines, the next ones being, “Were you nice? If not, you’re sure making up for it now”. We would sing these little phrases to him, and then at some point I realized, “Hey this could actually work for a real song”. I went into the garage and started constructing a beat, and then a baseline on top of it. The words we had fit perfectly over this beat, which probably has something to do with the fact that we’d been singing it to him for a couple of weeks and I probably had an idea in my head of how it would go. Once I had some of the music and some of the lyrics down I just kept building on it, adding more lyrics, and then more musical parts. The next thing you knew we had a song! So really, thinking about it, this song went lyrics, music, more lyrics, more music, and on an on.
There’s probably a ton more examples I could think of, but as I said, the process is almost always different, and there’s really no wrong answer here. If you make a song that means something to you, it really doesn’t matter how you got from point A to point B, and there’s no rules, or any one way that you have to use to create music. Just listen to your instincts and feelings, and do what feels right to you!
I’m always trying to learn and grow as a songwriter, so I’d love to hear about some of your processes, insight or ideas on music creation. Feel free to share below! Cheers.
