Today I want to talk about Words & Music in songwriting.

Translating the inner world into piano music is an age-old tradition.
All art is a translation of sorts. The artist translates a thought into a poem, a landscape into a 2D image, a feeling into a melody.

The appreciation of art is a reverse translation as well, and someone who listens to a song might get something out of it completely different to what the artist put into it.

Songwriting is a double artform of sorts. It’s not just poetry and not just music, but the unique fusion of both. On this level, there’s a double-translation going on in songwriting, a pairing of a lyrical message with a musical sequence. They’re totally intwined.

Some songs are written with the music first — that means that the chords or melody is written, and the rest is a bit like the game hangman, where you have to fill in the blanks with the right amount of words. This can work fine in some cases, and in others it can be a bit limiting for the poetry side of things.

Some songs start with the words first, by writing lines of poetry and putting it to music. Again, this can lead to incredible songs, although not all mode of poetry work when translated into song. For example, slam poetry, though so rhythmic and beautiful on it’s own, can stretch and twist in a way that leads the music to be the same — almost like free jazz.

Sometimes, the words and music are written at the same time. This is quite a special event, from my experience, and can result in very special songs, quickly written, as the double-translation is taking place at the same time.

The thing is, music and words share some similar rules but are actually quite different languages. Music is built of sound vibrations, and broken down into core components, music is composed of Melody, Rhythm and Harmony, as well as elements like Tone (the kinds of sounds chosen) and Style (the genre or family group which influences the way the sounds are put together).

Despite all these components, the average listener hears it all as one thing: Music, the dynamic ebb and flow of sound that is a metaphor for human emotions, such as peace, excitement or anger.

Consider Beethoven’s “duh-duh-duh duhhhhh.” There’s no specific meaning there — but you can read emotion in the melody. In fact, the emotional tone of music is one of the first things that a listener hears when tuning into a radio station, and depending on whether it suits the vibe of the listener, they’ll choose to listen more or to change the station.

If music can speak the language of emotion, with its endless but non-specific vocabulary, then words add emphasis to this emotion, while adding a layer of meaning. Words are an incredibly specific language — even when it’s quite vague, “The answer is blowing in the wind.”

Of course, words are just sounds as well, but the grammatical rules of language as well as things such as rhyming, sibilance and repetition have a huge influence on the poetic nature of lyrics.

Most importantly for songwriters — lyrics are sung, which means they are actually a musical component as well. Too many words in a sentence can ruin the perfect grace of an emotive melody, too much melodic adventurous can make the lyrics unlistenable — it’s all about balance. Just like learning to speak English fluently, learning to match poetry and melody takes time and practice.

The guitar is a more portable translation device — perfect to accompany the human voice.
Songwriting is a pairing of these two languages — and there are endless pairings the be discovered. Some songs have words and music that suit each other, the emotion and meaning telling the same story, such as ‘Happyyyyyyyy’ by Pharrell.

Some songs have the music and words set in opposition to each other, such as often happens in the blues, which can have an upbeat feel while singing about tragic events, for example ‘Hit The Road Jack’. Songs like Bohemian Rhapsody have the words and music flitting together through a schizophrenic dance, and musical styles like Rap tend to find a single evocative, repeating musical loop as a basis to explore endless lyrical subject matters — particularly the thug life.

There is no right or wrong way to set words to music, although like in any artform, the artfulness is in the power of the ideas and emotions, and the fluency or skill of the translation.

Songwriting involves a set of musical, lyrical and performative skills that takes practice to wield. But like anything, practice makes permanent, and the more time we spend manually developing these skills, the more automatic they become later on.

So get practicing — match words to melodies you’ve created and find music that matches your poetry. Do it often enough, and you’ll start doing it in your sleep!