mathias9h ago

Let’s get better at #songwriting together by doing some exercises. Here’s the first thing to try.

Borrowing from Jeff Tweedy’s How to write One Song: Word Ladders. https://www.paytonhayes.com/blog/writing-exercises-from-jeff-tweedys-book-how-to-write-one-song (someone else’s blog, but it is a good description with Tweedy’s example and some more examples.) I’m focusing on the first exercise with noun and verb lists, for now.

#musician #guitarist

Writing Exercises from Jeff Tweedy's Book, How To Write One Song — Payton Hayes Writing & Editing Services

Jeff Tweedy's book "How to Write One Song" offers innovative exercises to unlock creativity in songwriting and poetry. One such exercise is the "Word Ladder," which involves selecting a specific profession (e.g., physician) and listing ten associated verbs, followed by ten nouns

Payton Hayes Writing & Editing Services
Show threadmathias9h ago

Here’s what 10 minutes of the exercise got me. I didn’t go too far afield for my word pairings for anything Tweedy worthy, other than maybe my attempt to imagined a “radioed window.”

My verbs come from having war on my mind (in a bad way, not in a celebrating violence way)
Decimates
Destroys
Prepares
Marches
Salutes
Radios
Climbs
Crosses
Crawls
Listens

Nouns — things I can see:
Cat
Evergreen
Coffee mug
Fountain
Branch
Pathway
Couch
Window
Squirrel
Songbird

To be continued in thread.

Show threadmathias9h ago

Here’s my fast poem-like thing, but not the finished product:

My cat climbs a listening couch
The coffee mug salutes the radioed window
As a pathway crawls and a squirrel decimates a preparing evergreen*
The fountain marches on, as a songbird crosses the destroyed branch.

(*also tempted to edit this to an “unprepared evergreen”)

Show threadmathias

Next up let’s get some more use out of these lists, by randomizing. I plugged the lists into https://commentpicker.com/combination-generator.php

evergreen decimates
fountain salutes
cat listens
couch radios
branch crosses
squirrel destroys
pathway climbs
songbird marches
coffee mug prepares
window crawls

There’s some interesting “word collisions” (to use a Pat Pattinson phrase) that we could use here, particularly when it flips a noun’s use on its head. For example, usually something crosses a branch, but in this list we have “the branch crosses” and that makes me think of either it swinging wildly across the window because there’s a storm, or making it religious and superstitious.

Combination Generator: List All Possible Combinations

Generate combinations from 1 or 2 lists of items or names where you can choose all combination, a selection of random pairs or group combination by list.

Comment Picker
1:05pmWeb
Show threadmathias8h ago
It’s probably worth mentioning that this is neither a finish poem nor anything like finished lyrics. But it’s interesting to try and make new meanings for word pairs and then make them a little coherent again. That kind of exercise seems to be what makes unexpected lyrics in songs. And you don’t have to go full Tweedy “Company in My Back” either with it.