I never have inspiration issues as far as lyrics writing goes and now that I've been playing well over 10 years, on and off, I can pull riffs out of my hat all day. I find that jamming along to existing music gives me ideas for new riffs, but if your problem lies in writing lyrics, try these 2 ideas.....
The
1,2,3,4 Process.
1 Think of a scenario and write a few sentences about what happened. (Love, breakup, betrayal, booze, death etc)
2. Quote things that were said or specific things that were done. (I cheated, gf broke up with me, i hit the bottle, broke the law etc)
3. Write a list of external factors (the weather, smells, sounds etc)
4. Poetic language ("I felt like a painter and I'm drawing a blank... 'I'm at a cross roads etc")
The second process is called a the
Word Box.
Write as many words/phrases that you can think of that relate to a central word.
For example, take the word "Love", you could have words such as "heart", "break", "hurt", passion" etc.
A good example of this process is Elvis Costello's
Indoor Fireworks
"Indoor Fireworks"
We play these parlour games
We play at make believe
When we get to the part where I say that I'm going to leave
Everybody loves a happy ending but we don't even try
We go straight past pretending
To the part where everybody loves to cry
Indoor fireworks
Can still burn your fingers
Indoor fireworks
We swore we were safe as houses
They're not so spectacular
They don't burn up in the sky
But they can dazzle or delight
Or bring a tear
When the smoke gets in your eyes
You were the spice of life
The gin in my vermouth
And though the sparks would fly
I thought our love was fireproof
Sometimes we'd fight in public darling
With very little cause
But different kinds of sparks would fly
When we got on our own behind closed doors
It's time to tell the truth
These things have to be faced
My fuse is burning out
And all that powder's gone to waste
Don't think for a moment dear that we'll ever be through
I'll build a bonfire of my dreams
And burn a broken effigy of me and you
The other things to consider are syllable count, poem structure (Limerick, free flow etc) and pulse (meter)
Look at great songs, like
Bohemian Rhapsody and count the syllables in the verses. You'll find that the great ones are strict in making the syllable count the same throughout the song and will stick to tried and tested methods.
There are other things that make your lyrics more interesting, such as alliteration and assonance. Alliteration for example "Sixty six silly sausages" where consecutive words begin with the same letter. Assonance is a vowel rhyme and is flexible as it is not dependant on all of the last letters being the same ("hut" and "cut"). You could use "Hut and Gum", with the "uh" sound being the assonance.
I hope this helps as far as your lyrics writing goes. If you follow the above methods and still can't write, you haven't exhausted all of your preparation material.
As far as musical writing goes, I usually use 3 neighbouring chords and their relative minors as a foundation for the musical tonality and write riffs that resolve into chords that fit nicely with them.
So lets take the chords C G and D, their relative minors Am, Em and Bm....
I am using chords that fit into a "wedge" of cheese (Trivial Pursuit). Groups of 3 chords that are a 5th apart. I could resolve any of them into a key change that could fit into another wedge, such as D,A and E, or even another one that is further apart.
Music is so subjective, I can't teach you everything that I know, I'd be here all day, but hopefully there is enough information here to help you out. I certainly hope so, this took ages to write
