How do you put lyrics to music?

Question

Question sounds silly, i know, but its easier said than done. I have a lot of music that I came up with on guitar, and it seems to come pretty easily, but the lyrics are killing me. I can hum to my music and it sounds like a hit, but when I start thinking about lyrics to put in place of the humming I just get overwhelmed and frustrated.
My mind goes somrthing like this...
"what do i write about? how bout that girl i saw? no no, thats way overplayed. Well, what am I thinking about now? I'm thinking about writting a song! no that wont do. How bout what Im interested in. Ok. Im interested in writing this song. DAMMIT! ...etc.
What am I doing wrong? Should I write poetry? Read poetry? Read other peoples Lyrics? Listen to music for insperation? Learn other peoples songs? What comes first the music or the lyrics?
Your comment will help,it may just be the missing link in my dilema. In fact, if what you say turns me into a lyrical genius, i will give you 10% of what i make when i get famous

Answer 1

This really depends on you. Songs are written in many different ways.
I think the humming is good, just don't try to think so hard. Focus on the music and let it write itself.
Easier said than done, I know.
I have lyrics that don't have music yet and I have music that doesn't have lyrics. Some things I've written with a melody in my head on how it should go, others with none at all. It comes and goes. Sometimes there's lots of ideas and other times I can't come up with anything.
For a while I carried a notebook and pen with me, and several times while driving I've stopped on the side of the road to write something down because otherwise I would've lost that exact wording if I tried to recall it later.

There doesn't have to be lyrics for it to be a song, some of my favorite pieces of music are instrumental, but if you think lyrics belong to it than put them in.

In general, most song writing inspiration comes from emotional experiences of the writer.
I know people that can rap stuff on the spot about anything or give them a word and they just run with it, like in 8mile. I can't understand how they do it because my mind doesn't work that way. I can take a popular song and throw in off-the-wall lyrics Weird Al style usually on the spot though.

This article may help some.
http://www.easy-song-writing.com/articles/songbasics.asp

Google results for songwriting:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=songwriting&btnG=Search

Just don't think that because someone says this is the way to write a song, that they are right. The industry is really over commercialized and IMHO most of what's on the charts is mass-manufactured crap with little or no creativity.

If you're interested in free software for recording or adding to your music there's some links at my site here under audio recording/editing:
http://www.t3technet.com/alternates.html

Answer 2

Well, you can make a instrumental music otherwise...

music's lyric are poetry, so there's no problem if you try to wrote a poetry, but not every poetry will fit on every melody...

If you want to read poetry to get inspired or even use it, there's no problem...

Study to others music is also something important if you never studied music in a school or something...

As i said, the lyric is poetry, not the music it self, so if you made the lyric first it wouldn't be called as writing music, but writing poetry, right?
But you still can write the lyric first, and then think about a melody fitting the lyrics...


There's alot of thing concerns in assigning a lyric to a melody.
Some vocal letter are harder to sung at a high pitch and some is harder at low pitch, the sylabel got to fit the rythme, etc...

OK, just try this...
Play/listen to your work again and again (one by one), then whatever thought came to your head, whatever feelings you felt when you'er listening to that piece, that's what the music about... Now you know what the music is about, use your imagination and creativity to work on the story. Then use your logical to make it sense (i mean a systematical thought of the story), then you can start to pick words fitting the melody...


As i said there's to much things concerning, but i cannot explain it to you by a letter, it's to hard. Better you let me listen to one of your work (and the lyric if you already has it), and i could help to criticize (positively) and giving input about your pice of work...



Hope this help
Bless You