It’s one of the classic conundrums of songwriting — which do you write first, the music (melody, chords) or the lyrics?
I turned to the singer/songwriter gals in our “Chicks with Dip” group for feedback. Here’s what some of them had to say:
Kay Ashley: “For me, the music always comes first and sometimes stops there. I have a backlog of piano and guitar compositions that haven’t decided yet if they are songs….lyrics are almost always the most difficult part for me. Bridges tend to be difficult for me — I don’t believe in writing bridges as a simple matter of course — so finalizing the song structure is sometimes challenging.”
Meg Braun: “Most of the time a line will come into my head I think would make a good lyric. I try to write it down right away…later I sit down with the guitar and start singing the lyric with some chords to see what crops up. On occasion, I’ll be practicing and a song will sort of write itself. [One song] came about when I…hit the guitar in a way that made a sound I liked and I started playing around with it, and the song came out almost whole.”
Anna Dagmar: “Usually I poke around on the piano and the music comes first. Once in a while, I write a complete poem and set it to music. Those songs tend to have a more narrative quality while the music-first ones have more unusual forms and phrase lengths.”
Elisa Peimer: “Usually, I write both together. I come up with the lyrics and melody in one unit, and then write the chord structure.”
As for me, I’m definitely a “music first” person. I almost always just sit around with my guitar, playing a series of chords with different rhythms and styles and a melody tends to come, which eventually evolves into a lyric. A couple of times, I’ve been walking down the street and come up with a hook — a line, usually for a chorus — that I take home and work on. But that’s rare.
