How to Compose a Lyric

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Athena Reich and I'm an actress, singer song writer and performing arts coach here in New York City. In this clip I'm going to talk about how to compose a lyric. Lyrics are basically a poem with structure. In any given song there's going to be your verse, your chorus, your verse, your chorus, your verse and your chorus, and you might add a bridge in there. A song structure with a bridge might go verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. You can do what you want with a lot of freedom but that's the standard structure. Every line, it's, it's just like building a poem. You're going to have rhymes, you're going to have your first line might be "I'm going to the store" and the next one might be "and I, my butt feels really sore and then I'm going to go uptown, and then I saw a clown". I mean there's a rhyming structure of A A B B and then you can repeat in the verse, you're going to repeat that A A B B song structure in all the verses. You basically got to determine your structure and stick with it. All the verses have the same structure. The chorus can be what ever you want because you repeat the chorus but it's got to have its own kind of like logic maybe A B A B C C D D as a rhyming scheme. What ever you want but just compose your, your lyric. Don't worry about music yet and just make sure it has its own kind of logic rhyming scheme. And this is just; I'm just talking about the structure. It's got who are you talking to? It's got to have an artistic vision. Very clear. Who are you talking to? What is the song about? Risk. Open your soul. This has been Athena Reich talking about how to compose a lyric."