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Anyone out here can help me out with writing a song. I got a song name it's Sunset Dreams. I am trying to write a song about my friend. Things that we had done together.

Like Beach Hotel. Be at the mall. Talk about a sunset.

Can anyone help me out?

Maybe it'll come to you in your dreams. Get up really quickly and write down what you remember.

I've heard of that happening to songwriters.

Sorry...I'm no help. Did Jimmy say to write in iambic pentameter? I'm sure I heard that Townes van Zandt thought in iambic pentameter.

An iambic foot is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The rhythm can be written as:

da DUM

A line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a row:

da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM



Here is a little help:

http://www.songmd.com/col_hitlyrics.shtml

Steal a chord progression and get a melody and then put your words to it.

Isn't that what some artists do...so many songs DO sound similar at times.

copied:
Let's say you like Pop/Rock songs by groups like Nickelback or Country hits by a star like Toby Keith. Many of these songs use generic, four-chord progressions that have been used in lots of hit songs. These progressions are not hard to learn; just by listening to the track, you can learn to play along pretty easily on either guitar or keyboards. There are also "fake books" and web sites with the chord progressions for hundreds of hit songs. If you decide to use one of these chord progressions to practice writing a song of your own, just be sure you don't use any of the melody or lyric in the song. Remember, these are protected by the copyright law.


READ HERE: http://www.robinfrederick.com/write.html

Writing a melody to your lyric

If you'd like to write a melody of your own to your lyric, here's a great place to start: Use the natural rhythm and pitch that is embedded in the spoken words of your lyric.

Here's how you do it... Try reading the following phrase out loud in a normal tone of voice: "I don't love you anymore." Read it again and put more emotion into it: "I don't love you anymore." Notice how the rhythm and pitch of normal speech starts to become more exaggerated as you add emotion. Now, read it again and move the high notes even higher, make the low notes eve lower; see if you can turn it into a melody that preserves the high and low notes and stressed words. This is a melody that sounds natural AND conveys the emotion that is inherent in the phrase.

EXERCISE: Try speaking the first line of your chorus out loud a few times in a natural, relaxed tone of voice. Then start to exaggerate the pitches - raise the high words higher, low words lower. Exaggerate the rhythm of the phrase, emphasizing the stressed syllables. Now, turn those high and low pitches and stressed beats into a melody. This is the hook melody and lyric of your song, so you want to be sure it's emotionally "true." Using this method of deriving a melody, you can be certain that it is.

Continue to work on your melody in this way. When you have a lyric that is emotionally neutral, you can just try moving your melody up or down to see what feels right to you. If you used a hit song melody to write your lyrics, try doing the opposite of whatever it is doing: If it goes down, you go up. If it goes up, you go down. If it's moving around a lot, try remaining on a single note. Play around with the melody until you like it; YOU are the one who decides what sounds right for your song. (Remember that the hit song melody is protected by copyright law. Check to make sure that your melody doesn't use any of the hit song melody.)

I really liked that explanation. Maybe I'll try writing some songs. I used to write poems.

"Give me some words I can dance to and a melody that rhymes."

Jimmy Dreams....
and the words do the trick
there is no bigger kick
THAN JUST RHYMING AGAIN AND AGAIN.

I don't know much about song writing (and even less about singing) but here's two thoughts.

First...the title "Sunset Dreams". Perhaps you may want to consider a rework of the title to something like "Dreams and a Sunset". Does "Sunset Dreams" suggest that the dream has vanished in the sunset or the sun has set on your dreams??? If so that's not to positive and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame probably already wrote the song.

Second...why not have the BN faithful give you one line of the song at time...you may not be able use all of it since this sounds a bit personal...but it may jog your creativity.

Food for thought!

Make sure to include:
1) talk of leaving bad weather for good because your job sucks
2) tequila/beer
3) Senoritas (not girls or women, but senoritas)
4) sand
5) sun (hand in hand with #1)
6) keep mentioning your never going home

Also, when interviewed by Rolling Stone after this becomes a "hit", keep stating you were always an "Island Boy" at heart. You will have to STOP singing about fried chicken and tractors. Oh yea, and shave your mullet.

You will be on your way to stardom then Volcano!!!!!

FINSUPinIdaho wrote:Make sure to include:
1) talk of leaving bad weather for good because your job sucks
2) tequila/beer
3) Senoritas (not girls or women, but senoritas)
4) sand
5) sun (hand in hand with #1)
6) keep mentioning your never going home

Also, when interviewed by Rolling Stone after this becomes a "hit", keep stating you were always an "Island Boy" at heart. You will have to STOP singing about fried chicken and tractors. Oh yea, and shave your mullet.

You will be on your way to stardom then Volcano!!!!!

Just remember that if you want to write "the perfect Country & Western song" don't forget to include Mama, Trains, Trucks, Prison, and Getten Drunk! I've heard that somewhere else

FINSUPinIdaho wrote:Make sure to include:
1) talk of leaving bad weather for good because your job sucks
2) tequila/beer
3) Senoritas (not girls or women, but senoritas)
4) sand
5) sun (hand in hand with #1)
6) keep mentioning your never going home

Also, when interviewed by Rolling Stone after this becomes a "hit", keep stating you were always an "Island Boy" at heart. You will have to STOP singing about fried chicken and tractors. Oh yea, and shave your mullet.

You will be on your way to stardom then Volcano!!!!!

Also, use cool acronyms like "PBR" instead of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

OH... say "ass" a lot, too.

conched wrote:Maybe it'll come to you in your dreams. Get up really quickly and write down what you remember.

I've heard of that happening to songwriters.

Sorry...I'm no help. Did Jimmy say to write in iambic pentameter? I'm sure I heard that Townes van Zandt thought in iambic pentameter.

An iambic foot is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The rhythm can be written as:

da DUM

A line of iambic pentameter is five iambic feet in a row:

da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM

Another favorite example:

"The fault dear Brutus is not in our stars
but in ourselves that we are underlings."
-Cassius to Brutus, "Julius Caesar" by Shakespeare

Say "I can shake the world up like an earthquake in a blender".

It's been a few days ... is the song done yet?

Most of the songwriters I know say that songs just come to them and then they work on them. One friend of mine took two years to work on one song. After she reached the point that she said it was good enough, I asked how much of it was the same as at the beginning. She grinned at me and said "all the spirit is the same".

FINSUPinIdaho wrote:Make sure to include:
1) talk of leaving bad weather for good because your job sucks
2) tequila/beer
3) Senoritas (not girls or women, but senoritas)
4) sand
5) sun (hand in hand with #1)
6) keep mentioning your never going home

Also, when interviewed by Rolling Stone after this becomes a "hit", keep stating you were always an "Island Boy" at heart. You will have to STOP singing about fried chicken and tractors. Oh yea, and shave your mullet.

You will be on your way to stardom then Volcano!!!!!

this only works if you have a membership in the "Midgets of America" club.

The Lost Manatee wrote:Most of the songwriters I know say that songs just come to them and then they work on them. One friend of mine took two years to work on one song. After she reached the point that she said it was good enough, I asked how much of it was the same as at the beginning. She grinned at me and said "all the spirit is the same".

It has been said that "good songs aren't written; they're rewritten."