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The Lyri
Gregg Barnett of wandered and drifted...," but the line
never quite sat right with the chords. The
Queensland, Australia, simple addition of a second "I've" gave it
the extra syllable it needed to fit without
holding the "aaaaaand" for longer than I
liked. Conversely, in the song's bridge I
wrote "Wine leaves me dry," which also
wasn't working with the music. But there,
instead of changing the words, I
simplified the chord progression so there
are now just two chords under that line
instead of four.
asks what to do when you've written
lyrics that look great on the page but fail Both of those tweaks came about after
the test of being sung. That happens to I'd played and sung the song at least 50
me all the time. And the answer is editing times. And there have been many other
yourself. As I've said in this column changes in the lyrics and the music since
before, you almost always have to rewrite I wrote that first draft, for various other
and rewrite and rewrite--and then rewrite
again. Most of my songs go through
multiple drafts before I'm happy with
them.
There are many reasons for those
rewrites, but one frequent goal is to
make the words fit the music better. A
song I recently wrote, called My Old
Friend Whiskey, starts with the line, "I've
wandered and I've drifted from town to reasons--better establishing the
town." In my first draft, I wrote "I've narrative, improving the rhymes, adding
alliteration, making the chords work
better together, and more.
If you don't play an instrument, how can
you figure out whether your words will
fit? One way would be to simply chant
the lyrics to a tempo you think is
appropriate for the song. To force
yourself to stick with a particular beat,
try setting up a drum loop in GarageBand
04 Awww.writeawaymagazine.co.uk
