Why you should start writing down lyrics
A few weeks ago I started writing down lyrics for songs and it had a remarkable impact on the way I perceive music. What impact it had and why you should start doing it too?
Since I have started playing the guitar I had problems with remembering lyrics. I just thought you can learn chords and then you’re able to play everything with lyrics found on the internet. But during 3 years, I realized that learning songs properly requires way more…
The biggest step in learning of lyrics was when I started taking singing lessons. I realized that I have to put in much more effort. You can’t just read lyrics from the phone being disconnected from the audience. The performance will lose its magic and you won’t be able to relax and focus on other things, like making the performance your own (which I discussed here). Therefore, I decided that I want to learn lyrics by heart.
I spent some time figuring out the best way of doing it. The best tactic I found was writing down lyrics on paper in my notebook and it opened me whole new world:
The first important thing was to write down songs which you really like, which you love, which you always wanted to sing (left side on the first picture). That will make the process much more fun and easier. Also when you’re about to start learning you have songs to choose from and don’t have to look for something during the time devoted to learning. You can see my very messy process of taking notes but it works for me.
The second important thing was to write it down by hand. Firstly, I started to writing down lyrics to the computer but I didn’t feel such progress. I didn’t feel that I remembered words as well. So I started writing them down by hand and I felt real connection with what I was writing. It is way more effective.
The third important thing was to wrote down the lyrics from the recording. I played the song and wrote it down according to what I heard, returning to some parts many times. Sometimes it was hard to understand a singer so it took a long time. But it was also great ear training, especially training to pay attention to what the singer is singing.
The fourth important thing was to learn songs after I wrote them down. After you write down lyrics you could think: Okay, now I’m done, but that was just the beginning of remembering the lyrics. It was very important to play songs and start singing along. After I played the karaoke version and sang while reading the lyrics. Lastly, I sang with karaoke version without looking at the lyrics in my notebook.
This process contributed a lot to musicality. I realized that I used to sing songs (especially english songs as a non-native speaker) without knowing the real meaning. I realized what is a song about which is so important for the performance. Why? Because when you’re singing, you’re telling a story to your audience and how you want to tell the story when you don’t know what it’s about? Also, I realized how songs are structured. There are a lot of repetitive patterns. Especially how authors create rhymes, how the melody is created. It’s usually very repetitive. I will continue with this habit and let’s see what will happen.
What do you think about this process? Do you have some of your own to remember lyrics? Would you like to read more about patterns and structures I found in songs during this process?