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    Lyrics First: Companion Cookup
    Lyrics First: Companion Cookup
    Lyrics First: Companion Cookup
    Ebook178 pages2 hours

    Lyrics First: Companion Cookup

    By David R Smith

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    About this ebook

    This book is the companion practicum volume to Lyrics First: How to Write Effective Song Lyrics (ISBN 9780645371239). Due to length I decided to split that initial manuscript into a "core" with the basic approach, and then this follow on of "How To" examples. The purpose of the book is to give the song lyric writer a more hands on "cookup" feel. We look at creating lyrics in the style of Taylor Swift, Joan Armatrading, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, and the Grateful Dead among others for our cookups. Understand we are concerned with LYRICS, not the melody, harmony, etc. We also cover a lot of practical ground like how to write a funny song, how to write about subjects like altered states of consciousness, transgression, etc.

    From the table of contents:
    Chapter 1: Introduction
    Chapter 2: Some Quick Revision (Review) of The Core of Lyrics First
    Chapter 3: How to Taylor Swift Lyric
    Chapter 4: How to Joan Armatrading Lyric
    Chapter 5: How To Lou Reed Lyric
    Chapter 6: How to Identify Meaningful Changes
    Chapter 7: Iterative Lyric Development
    Chapter 8: How to Bob Dylan Lyric
    Chapter 9: How to Grateful Dead Lyric
    Chapter 10: Dreams and How to Write Song Lyrics Using Dream Content
    Chapter 11: How to Write About Altered States
    Chapter 12: How to Transgressive Lyric
    Chapter 13: How to Use Literary Sources
    Chapter 14: How to React To Other People's Artistic Output With Your Own
    Chapter 15: How to Write Funny Song Lyrics
    Chapter 16: How to Christmas Song Lyric
    Chapter 17: How to Use Google Translate As Part of Your Song Writing Toolkit
    Chapter 18: How to Get Immediate Feedback On Song Lyrics
    Chapter 19: How to Protest And Political Song Lyrics
    Chapter 20: How to Write Lyrics for a Children’s Song
    Chapter 21: The Storyteller
    Chapter 22: How to Write Jingle and Commercial Song Lyrics
    Chapter 23: How to Leverage Streaming Media
    Chapter 25: How to Contact The Author/Inquiries about Professional Services
    Professional Service Offer
    Chapter 26: The Rules Recap
    About the Author, and Thanks!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid R Smith
    Release dateJan 30, 2022
    ISBN9780645422702
    Lyrics First: Companion Cookup
    Author

    David R Smith

    David R. Smith is a 15-year youth ministry veteran who helps youth workers and parents through his writing, training, and speaking. David specializes in sharing the gospel, and equipping others do the same. He provides free resources to anyone who works with teenagers on his website, DavidRSmith.org.

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      Book preview

      Lyrics First - David R Smith

      Lyrics First

      Companion Cookup

      David R. Smith

      Published by Meta Mad Books

      FIRST EDITION

      Copyright © 2021 by David R. Smith

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

      David R. Smith asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      David R. Smith has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

      ISBN: 978-0-6454227-0-2

      Cover Image Attribution: Original Art by Clara Smith

      "Since the objects of imitation are men in action, and these men must be either of a higher or a lower type (for moral character mainly answers to these divisions, goodness and badness being the distinguishing marks of moral differences), it follows that we must represent men either as better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are. It is the same in painting. Polygnotus depicted men as nobler than they are, Pauson as less noble, Dionysius drew them true to life.

      Now it is evident that each of the modes of imitation above mentioned will exhibit these differences and become a distinct kind in imitating objects that are thus distinct. Such diversities may be found even in dancing, flute-playing, and lyre-playing. So again, in language, whether prose or verse unaccompanied by music. Homer, for example, makes men better than they are; Cleophon as they are; Hegemon the Thasian, the inventor of parodies, and Nicochares, the author of the Deiliad, worse than they are. The same thing holds good of Dithyrambs and Nomes; here too one may portray different types, as Timotheus and Philoxenus differed in representing their Cyclopes. The same distinction marks off Tragedy from Comedy; for Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life….

                                                          —Aristotle, The Poetics, Translated by S. H. Butcher

      Contents

      Chapter 1: Introduction

      Chapter 2: Some Quick Revision (Review) of The Core of Lyrics First

      Chapter 3: How to Taylor Swift Lyric

      Chapter 4: How to Joan Armatrading Lyric

      Chapter 5: How To Lou Reed Lyric

      Chapter 6: How to Identify Meaningful Changes

      Chapter 7: Iterative Lyric Development

      Chapter 8: How to Bob Dylan Lyric

      Chapter 9: How to Grateful Dead Lyric

      Chapter 10: Dreams and How to Write Song Lyrics Using Dream Content

      Chapter 11: How to Write About Altered States

      Chapter 12: How to Transgressive Lyric

      Chapter 13: How to Use Literary Sources

      Chapter 14: How to React To Other People's Artistic Output With Your Own

      Chapter 15: How to Write Funny Song Lyrics

      Chapter 16: How to Christmas Song Lyric

      Chapter 17: How to Use Google Translate As Part of Your Song Writing Toolkit

      Chapter 18: How to Get Immediate Feedback On Song Lyrics

      Chapter 19: How to Protest And Political Song Lyrics

      Chapter 20: How to Write Lyrics for a Children’s Song

      Chapter 21: The Storyteller

      Chapter 22: How to Write Jingle and Commercial Song Lyrics

      Chapter 23: How to Leverage Streaming Media

      Chapter 25: How to Contact The Author/Inquiries about Professional Services

      Professional Service Offer

      Chapter 26: The Rules Recap

      About the Author, and Thanks!

      Chapter 1: Introduction

      This book is the companion practicum volume to Lyrics First: How to Write Effective Song Lyrics (ISBN 9780645371239). Due to length I decided to split that initial manuscript into a core with the basic approach, and then this delightful follow on of How To examples.

      Who is the expected audience for this book?

      Typically a Creative, anyone who wants to write song lyrics, or anyone who just wants to improve their capabilities and understanding with respect to what constitutes an effective song lyric. This book is for practical people who want to write effective song lyrics for use in their music.

      Links to outside music

      I’ve created playlists on Spotify of some of the outside content in the book. You can locate these materials by visiting my Artist page on Spotify: "Stone Age Time Machine."

      https://open.spotify.com/artist/3JoADXlVJQmr9mUF2VJiO8?si=n1gNCXngSyOHsVLw_j3tpA

      A black and white photo of a factory Description automatically generated with medium confidence

      The Author's Spotify Artist Page

      Once you get to my artist page, you will be able to find my public playlists. If you heart these playlists they will becomes available from your own account.

      A screenshot of a video game Description automatically generated

      Spotify playlists at left

      I have no financial interest in Spotify. It's just a handy music service. Most of my songs and material (including many song lyrics written especially for this book) can also be found on Sound Cloud. Sound Cloud will not have the other artists often mentioned In this book, that's one of the advantages of Spotify. But Sound Cloud has its uses.

      Graphical user interface, website Description automatically generated

      The author's Sound Cloud profile.

      My profile: https://soundcloud.com/user-601832397.

      What you will find in this book:

      There's a YouTuber I admire who posts as J. Rent. I stumbled on him when I was trying to decide if I wanted to use Fruity Loops Studio or Ableton Live as my DAW. He is a master of the FL Studio.

      His videos, at least for the time I was actively following, are all more or less the same formula: he looks at an artist in the Hip Hop or Trap Beat community that he likes and does a quick cook-up in an effort to simulate their style. (Presumably a cook-up is a drug reference of some kind, but I don't care.)

      Along the way he provides insight into that artist's background and profile and then shows in a concrete way how that artist's vibe is created. For someone like me this is pretty useful intel about what's going on in the music industry in that genre.

      The main thing about Justin Rent is that he just plainly really likes his chosen genre. He's deeply involved, and encyclopedia of knowledge, and it shows. This is probably why he was able to gain a significant YouTube following - he leveraged that intensity and effort coupled with technical artistry into an effective How-To video channel.

      So in this book, although I am only focusing on lyrics, I' m going to use a similar approach for a number of artists that I think we can learn from.  These include Taylor Swift, Joan Armatrading, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, and whomever else I think would be worth a look. We will try to emulate their lyrical style using the Lyrics First method.¹

      I also have How to sections on scenarios such as political song lyrics, children's song lyrics, using tools like Google Translate, working with Literary sources, and do on. 

      You might be thinking where's the section on Love songs? Well, that's in the Core book, which again, is called:

      Lyrics First: How to Write Effective Song Lyrics. (ISBN: 978-0-6453712-3-9).

      Chapter 2: Some Quick Revision (Review) of The Core of Lyrics First

      The definition of music is not connected to what it is, but rather to what it does: music synchronizes crowds or groups of people. I know that might not meet with your usual definition of music, but that's the one we will use. How are they synchronized, in their ideas? In their perceptions? No. In their emotions, in how they feel. Rule #0 can be stated as the requirement to write lyrics from the perspective of the social group who will consume them.

      The notion of Change with a capital ‘C’ is very important for our approach to effective song lyrics because we believe, and can demonstrate, that compelling, effective song lyrics must be descriptions of transitions from one emotional state to another—typically this is going to

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