The melody/lyric-writing bass player

[Eric VB]

[Note: inspired by Matt and Alex from this thread ]

 

Although this came up in the context of the bassist/singer, I'm sure there are bassists out there that don't sing lead for their band but still contribute to melody and/or lyric writing for their band.

 

How do you do it? What's your approach?

 

Do you just start vocalizing a melody during band practice (or a group songwriting session)? Or like Matt and Alex, do you take it home and hash things out there, by yourself?

 

Do you work out a bass line first, then write melody/lyric around that, especially if you'll be singing lead?

 

Maybe you start with a lyric, fit a melody to it, make a suitable arrangement (i.e. chord chart), and throw down a bass line last?

 

Lots of possibilites here.

 

So ... how do you do it?

[Gruuve]

Good question...I'd venture this is very different for everyone. For me, it *usually* starts with groovy bassline. When I'm playing bass, I can usually already here drums in my head that jive with the bassline. Then either a subject (if I don't have a subject in mind already) or some sort of lyrical hook (if I already have the subject in mind) will generally pop into my head. Sometimes that happens immediately, sometimes it takes years. After the rhythm section and some sort of lyrical content are in my head, it's all pretty much going through the motions from there (some exceptions if I'm attempting to play electric guitar on the song as well...sometimes that might changes the bassline).

 

Dave

[Yogi]

Well, I've given full disclosure that I'm only a part-time fake bassist and a full-time g****rist and singer in other threads. But since songwriting, IMO, is the most important and interesting part of music-making, I'm hopeful no one will ban me from the thread for my sins.

 

I almost always write the music for a song first, before any melodies or lyrics get added. The music can come while playing any instrument, I've written songs on keys, g****r, and yep, even around basslines. I've also written songs around drum parts, too - if I'm tapped for ideas, the first thing I'll do is start making a groove on a drum machine of some sort.

 

Anyway, once I've got some bit of music that feels like it could be something I'll either record it or transcribe it into Finale so I don't forget it.

 

It's around this time that vocal/melody ideas start popping into my head. I take note of any that seem particularly appropriate, and either record them or write them down. Sometimes lyrics come along with the melody, and they may be nonsense phrases that don't make obvious sense. In many cases, these nonsense phrases get kept in the final lyric, just because I've written other lyrics around them, or just because.

 

However, I should mention that for me, arrangement really affects how the song develops lyrically. I need to know how many parts there are, what the transitions between them are like, what the overall vibe feels like it might be. So in that sense, I usually don't even start up with vocals unless I've got a pretty detailed demo going in some form, that may have drums, keys, bass, and g****rs. Once I've got that, I put up a mic and start improvising around whatever vocal ideas I have. I'll start building tracks and harmonies, singing whatever comes to mind. This process tends to happen really fast, and I find the trick is to stay out of my own way as much as possible - that is, I try not to be too judgemental about the ideas that are coming out. The time for reflection is after you've got a whole bunch of ideas down.

 

Words tend to come in the service of the melody for me - I know what I want to sing, and I know what my overall "concept" is, so I work on getting what I want to say into the available space. This is also when I try to dodge the typical "lyrical rhyming cliches" - pain/rain, crying/dying, fire/desire, etc.

 

Sometimes once the vocal melodies become more concrete, it requires a change in the arrangement (maybe the chorus needs to be twice as long, maybe there needs to be a pre-chorus here, the bridge needs to move). Thank goodness for digtal editing software - it's the songwriter's best friend.

 

WHEW! That sure was a brain-dump. I feel so much better now!

[NV43345]

I have a few different ways of writing.

The First is what I call "Lyric First".

Maybe I will be in the car, or just wake up from a Dream, or just be walking into a store and I will see something and "Snap" a Lyric pops into my head. I write it down so I do not loose it

or forget it. Keep a small notepad and pen on your nightstand and always have them in your car as well.

 

The Second method is what I call "Riff First".

If a Cool Riff "Pops" into my head, I get it on Tape as soon as I can. I used to wake up in the middle of the Night with a Riff in my head,

Pick up a Bass and plug into a recorder and get it on tape so I could work with it when I had time.

 

My Third method is what I call "Creative Jamming" maybe I will kick in the Distortion pedal and rip on some Bass power chords, throw in some Wah, and see what comes out of me that day. Every now and then I would come up with a cool riff, then try and figure out some Lyrics for it.

 

My Fourth and Final method is "Collaboration".

I will bring what I have, Riff or Lyrics to

my bandmates and see what they can add to it, this method always surprises me, as other Musicians see your Lyrics in a compltely other

text and apply themselves to it, and it goes in a different direction than what you were thinking in the Beginning.

 

Hope this helps.

[Thomas Wilburn]

I write the same way Yogi does, basically.

 

I usually start with a simple riff that I like, and loop it. If it's a chord progression, I find a bassline, or vice versa. Add percussion. I see whether that riff sounds like a chorus or a verse, and try to figure out other parts of the song structure. Then, once I've got several sections of a song that I can glue together in different ways, I start to write words over top of it, based on the mood that the other elements are inspiring.

[Moe Monsarrat]

I am writing a tune to pitch to the new "Dukes of Hazzard" Tv series producers. They want new country rock Nashville...etc. OK, but do I have to write about the dang car? No. So, my song is about the only reason to watch the show....Daisy. You gotta write about what you know!

[jedmatic]

I work along the same lines as NV43345... there are the times when I'm walking around or riding the subway, or in the shower (driving used to be great for this) where I'll think of a lyric worth remembering and come back to it later.

 

Then there are the times where I'm playing g****r or ukulele or keyboard, and stumble onto a nice riff or chord progression.

 

Sometimes I'll jam with other people, and like what I played enough to keep it and return to it later. For the most part, I write basslines last, because it's easier for me to imagine them holding down a foundation for the song and providing interesting motion for the chord changes. I should also point out that I consider myself a bass-playing songwriter; my idol is Roger Waters, one of the all-time great lyricists, if not bassists. Paul McCartney is the yin to his yang, but lyrics are really important to me. Hence Rog getting preference over Sir Paul.

 

This reminds me of a time in college when I was talking about wanting to sing and play bass. A friend of mine said, "that's impossible," and I replied, "well, Sting does it," and he got all incredulous, like, how DARE I compare myself to Sting. It's tough to talk about musical heroes to non-musicians sometimes... not to totally derail myself, but one time I was praticing Stu Hamm's arrangement of "Linus and Lucy" and some guy I knew said, "Jed, are you trying to be Victor [Wooten]? Give it up, man!" Lots of haters out there...

 

Finally, there's nothing wrong with rhyming cliches- you can save them by making the context of the words more interesting. The cliche, I think, tends to have more to do with the sentiment.

[moot]

First,I have to say that as a younger musician I was a prolific writer. These days it is not often that I actually get struck with a melody line and lyrics. In the last year - 3 times. Not exactly prolific but the key word in that mess is struck .

It always happens for me while playing the tune. The melody or chorus will jump into my head and the next thing I know I'm humming along and screwing up the bass line. I woodshed it until I can pull it off at practice and then I let the singer have it.

 

I would love to hear about from where you gentlemen draw inspiration. My lyrics tend to be poetic and pertain to where my head and heart are at the time. When I was younger I wrote about silly stuff like partying and girls, or just made fun of everything. Now that I am more "seasoned" I tend to write more realistic deeper stories from within.

 

Since the day I left myself

Ive been feeling my way blind

Lost in a maze and searching for

The truth I left behind

 

See what I mean? I guess it's been a rough couple years.

 

Anybody else want to share inspirations?

[Eric VB]

Yeah, Matt, I find my subject material leaning that sort of way, too.

 

A musician friend of mine came over for a house party, and he knew I liked to have impromptu jam sessions, so he suggested we play something. He brought some friends with him that I'd never met before.

 

Well, we were just messing around and I played a few things I was working on. Our "audience" commented that "nobody writes lyrics like that anymore", and it was meant as a compliment.

 

I have a partial song with sentiment very similar to your verse, Matt.

 

Inspiration? For me it comes from careful observation of life as it happens around me. Someone says something, or a phrase gets juxtaposed with an action in a surprising way, watching people interact, quiet reflection, current events, deeply emotional events, spiritual revelations, etc.

 

That's why you have to carry a notepad with you; you never know when it will hit you.

 

One of the current songs I'm working on started out with a guitar part. I fleshed out an arrangement and then let it simmer on the back burner for a bit.

 

Finally the mood of a piece triggered an emotion, and that led to a chorus and a title, "When You Smile, I'm Quite Happy". Now I just need to finish the verses.

 

Another piece still in the works went the other way 'round. I started with an idea, then the idea became words that became a chorus and parts of verses, and then I set all of that to music. It's missing a bridge, but I've been happy with AB songs lately and may forego the bridge (again).

[Tom Capasso]

I write too infrequently to effectively help the discussion. The last song that I completed started with a turn of phrase in my mind that I just sang out loud, and was followed by inspiration about the chord phrasing. I followed with words for the verses, a chord structure, and melody last (the part I find the hardest, and that's saying something).

 

The point I want to talk about is inspiration, as raised by Matt. I have found this the most difficult part - I often feel that I have nothing to say. Ideas come out trite/obvious, too serious, or too personal. One set of words I have (no music yet - still need to clean up the poetry) is about when I was traveling for work. I managed to cross the "personal" line a bit, but it works.

 

The song I spoke about in the first part of the post is a sort of blues - "she does me wrong" thing, and the refrain is based on a bad pun. My wife saw it once and thought I was writing evil stuff about her, which I wasn't - it's just blues. I don't think she understood.

 

Tom

[Yogi]

Originally posted by jedmatic:

Finally, there's nothing wrong with rhyming cliches- you can save them by making the context of the words more interesting.

I dunno, man. I guess MAYBE if you're using them to inject some irony or something I could see using the pain/rain, fire/higher/desire, etc. stuff, but come on. Things become cliches for a reason, and I think the biggest reason is laziness. It's not hard to pick up a thesaurus and find another way to say something. Language is fun! Words are fun, especially when you can find new ones and new combinations of them you haven't heard before!

 

Originally posted by mattulator:

I would love to hear about from where you gentlemen draw inspiration.

Since I always work music first, I find that the music itself provides inspiration for words and melody. It suggests a vibe, which tends to make me think of subjects that match up well.

 

Of course, a fun thing to do is to deliberately go directly against the vibe - Mike Patton used to do that in Faith No More a lot, setting their sprightlier pop stuff to bleak lyrical themes. It's a nice juxtaposition if you're into cognitive dissonance.

 

Everybody writes at a different pace, some can crank out a song a day, others, as observed in this thread, might finish one song per year. Generally (and I include myself in this generalization), I think people would finish more stuff up if they weren't so brutally self-critical of the work they're doing. They look at their little tune-in-progress and decide it ain't no Gershwin/Lennon-McCartney/Page-Plant tune, and they get all bummed and go off and watch TV instead of finishing it. The thing is, you get better at it the more you do it, and often the very best writing you do is the stuff that you don't overthink.

[Eric VB]

Originally posted by Yogi:

Everybody writes at a different pace, some can crank out a song a day, others, as observed in this thread, might finish one song per year. Generally (and I include myself in this generalization), I think people would finish more stuff up if they weren't so brutally self-critical of the work they're doing. They look at their little tune-in-progress and decide it ain't no Gershwin/Lennon-McCartney/Page-Plant tune, and they get all bummed and go off and watch TV instead of finishing it. The thing is, you get better at it the more you do it, and often the very best writing you do is the stuff that you don't overthink.

Great advice, Yogi! I find that the more time I put into it, the easier it becomes.

[Texian]

Sort of in the same vein as what Yogi wrote, instead of thinking of it as the song that "I" am writing, think of it as allowing the song to write itself and you're the guy with the pen and inspiration. Sort of like playing the bass line that a song needs, not the bass line that you want the song to need.

 

It's liberating to do that. Even if you write the song and it means a lot to you, it will mean something different and maybe mean even more to other people once they listen to it. It's music. Set it free. Let other people latch on to it and enjoy it.

[NV43345]

I like the Song writing style of Jovi & Sambora during the Slippery/New Jersey period. The way they tell a story. That style came from the Born to Run era and Jovi listened to allot of Dylan, Like Blood on the tracks in his younger days.

[Moe Monsarrat]

Ok you guys wanna hear a song written by a bassist who sings? Go to www.optimalsound.net/music/ofwmusic.html click on "Proud Of Me" My friend & I wrote this song yesterday for a Microsoft educational project. Yes, that's me singing.