Here are some tools songwriters should always have available:
1. Rhyming Dictionary. It is not cheating. There is no virtue in running over “dog, fog, log, nog, sog, yog and zog” in your head.
2. Dictionary. To check your spelling as well as the exact meaning of words.
3. Thesaurus. Roget’s International Thesaurus says, “In a dictionary, you start with a word and look for its meaning. In a thesaurus, you start with your idea and find words to express it.” Roget’s contains more than 100 words or phrases used to describe or express worship.
4. Basic grammar book. Incorrect grammar is okay if it fits the character you’re writing about: (as in Quincy Jones’s “I Needs to be Be’d With,” or the gospel favorite, “Cain’t Nobody Do Me Like Jesus.”) Otherwise, be careful to avoid basic errors. (An opera-singing waiter in an Italian restaurant came to our table taking requests, and we asked him to sing “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog.” He was not amused.)
5. Bible Concordance. To find scripture verses. *
6. Several Bible translations. Often the wording in one version will fit a melody better than any of the others.
7. Topical Bible. Look up a subject such as “God, love of” and find all the scriptures on that theme listed and written out for us.
8. Recorder. Catch transient ideas before you lose them. One friend awoke in the middle of the night, sang into his recorder, then went back to sleep. The next morning he played it back and heard “a sepulchral voice singing absolute nonsense.”
9. Music paper. You can write music, can’t you?
10. Pocket notebook, for lyric ideas, or to convert into music staves quickly, before you lose that great music inspiration before you have time to capture it. You may not always carry music paper around with you, but a little lined pocket notebook will suffice to scribble down a quick snatch of tune that comes to you. Here’s how: Draw a treble clef over three lines, then quickly draw two lines between them and voila! you’ve got yourself an impromptu music staff.
You probably already have some of these basic tools. Don’t begrudge the financial outlay to get the rest of them. They can pay for themselves many times over by helping your writing become technically more polished and proficient, and spiritually more powerful.
If you’re a lyricist, ideas are your stock-in-trade and words are your instrument. The more fluent you become with words, the easier it is for you to find the “right” word, which is what lyric writing is about. So involve yourself with words and ideas.
Read a lot—not just song lyrics but good literature—poetry, books and articles by the best writers on many subjects. Invest in some good books on writing. Learning to use words skillfully will not only make you a better writer but a more fulfilled person.
The good news is that in this modern computerized age, you can do a lot of these things on line. You can write music by playing a keyboard, spell-check, look up scriptures, find the right words, all kinds of good things. Happy hunting.
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* Hot tip: Biblegateway.com, a free on-line Bible research program with concordance in many versions.