Wondering about turning a poem into a song? Well, you're in the right place. Keep watching,
and I'm going to show you just that. For the best tips about songwriting, subscribe to
my channel. Make sure and hit the bell, so you're notified every Tuesday and Thursday
when I upload a new video. If you write poems and would just love to
turn those poems into lyrics for songs, then keep watching. I'm going to show you how to
do just that, because I've done it over and over. I, like you, write a lot of poetry,
but I'm also a songwriter, so sometimes I like to marry the two. I'm going to show you
how to do just that, and also give you strategies for coming up with more titles and idea for
both your poems and your songs. In this video, I'm going to talk about how
to go from poem to lyric, and then the next video, which I'll upload two days later, is
about setting those lyrics to music. I'm going to start with a poem I wrote over a decade
ago now. It's called Get Around Girl. Get Around Girl
Challenging the world, running into fires, jumping off cliffs, sometimes half-way hoping
to plunge into the abyss just to see what's there, 'cause nothing's empty, even when it
can't be seen. You can hear it, smell it, feel it, taste it, sense it, so nothing's
nothing. There's always something it means. So the Get Around Girl goes at it unfurled,
unfettered, untethered, not regretting one day. If you ask why she does it, she'll say,
"There's only one way. That's to live every moment and experience love, not frightened
of judgements or being struck down from above. You can only love completely and never half-way."
No, "I'm trying, I'm thinking. It might maybe hit me one day," and that means you get hurt,
but you can never bruise deep. You have to shake yourself off, jump in with two feet,
do everything fully 'cause life is today. There's only one rule, and here it is. Breathe
your own way. So the first thing I need to do is decide
what's my title for the song. What's my jumping out strategy? I don't really like "Get Around
Girl." I don't think that phrase will easily work itself into a title that really explains
the overall idea for the song, but what I do really love, what jumps out at me is that
last line, "Breathe your own way", because, to me, this poem is all about being an individual.
Doing things because it's the way you want to do it, you need to do it, not following
the constraints of other people in society. So I'm going to start with that. I'm going
to title this song "Breathe Your Own Way." Now, lyrics and poems are very different in
a lot of ways, but the primary way is that song lyrics have very distinct structure.
They really do follow a song form, and that song form is number one, the most important
thing to keep in mind when writing a song. If you want to see more about that, check
out this video. The form I'm going to go with for this song is verse, pre-chorus, chorus,
verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, chorus. My main sections of the song are going to
be the verse, the pre-chorus, the chorus, and the bridge, so I need to write those four
sections, and the verse, I'm going to have two of, so, really, I'm coming up with five
sections. The biggest pitfall I could fall into is being
too wordy, because this poem has a lot of words, and the way songs are structured, they
have repeated sections. If I was going to get all of the words in the poem into this
song, I'd have to create a lot of verses to make it happen. Instead, I need to focus on
what my main idea is in this song, and then which lines in the poem really jump out at
me as important lines, lines that I really want in this song, so I'm going to take a
look at that first, and I'm going to bold the lines that just speak to me and say, "This
gets across my message and I like the language." Some lines that really jump out at me are,
"running into fires, jumping off cliffs, plunge into the abyss, just to see what's there,
hear it, smell, it, feel it, taste it. Untethered, not regretting, struck down from above. You
get hurt, never bruise deep, jump in with two feet", and of course, "Breathe your own
way". I know I'm going to pull those lines out and put them in my song.
The next thing I need to do is decide what rhyme pattern I'm going to use in my verses.
If you want to know all about rhyme patterns and verses, I have a playlist that addresses
that thoroughly, so go check that out. I've decided to go with what really is the
most popular rhyme pattern in modern songs, and that's A A B B in verse. So the first
two lines are going to rhyme and then the second two lines are going to rhyme. I'm going
to grab a piece of paper and just sort of map that out.
First verse, I want to rhyme "jumping off cliffs" with "plunging into the abyss". And
then I want to rhyme "running into fires" with something. But I haven't pulled out a
line that rhymes with that, so I'm going to leave it for now. Then in the second verse,
I'm going to put the two lines together, "untethered not regretting". But I think I'm going to
make it something about no more tether, no regrets, something like that. At the end I
want to rhyme "jump in with two feet" and "never bruise deep". That second line here,
I don't know what it's going to be. I'll play with that later.
Now, in my final verse, I don't have a whole lot left that I know I want to throw in there.
I haven't really found a place for "struck down from above". I want to put that in, but
I'm going to leave the rest of that verse for now. I'll play with it later, because
I want to see how everything else falls into place.
Now reading this first verse, we're jumping off cliffs, plunging into the abyss, running
into fires. So I think at this point, the question starts to present itself, why? So
I grab my rhyming dictionary and I played with fire. I wanted to see what rhymes with
that. I put a link to the Songwriter's Rhyming Dictionary that I absolutely love in the description
below. So, what jumped out at me was desire. So somehow
there's this desire to do all these wild things, jumping off cliffs and plunging into the abyss
and running into fires. So I'm going to plug desire there. We'll let that sit for a minute.
And the next part of this verse, I've got that second line that's empty. I'm starting
with "no tether, no regret". Again, I looked for a rhyme for regret and what I really liked
was yet. Something about how why would I regret all this? I've barely even gotten started
yet. I'm still not really ready to address that
final verse. I think, ultimately, what it's going to talk about ... why I think you should
just be free. The bridge is going to have a similar purpose, but the bridge is going
to give more backstory, so you'll see. Now this next step is a little tricky, because
we need to talk about the rhythm of the lines. Remember, we're going to be setting this to
music, so we need the lines and various parts of the verse to flow at the same rhythm so
that we can have a little bit of repetition in our melody, because that's what hooks listeners
and makes them feel safe. I played around to come up with a flow for
the first two lines of the first verse, because I can use those as my guide. "Leaping blind
off every cliff, plunging straight to the abyss." If you count in fours, "Leaping blind
off every cliff, plunging straight to the abyss." So the first line I'm coming in on
the first beat. That second line, I'm not going to come in until the second.
"Leaping blind off every cliff, plunging straight to the abyss. Pulled every time into the fire,
a drug, this wild desire." You can do it one at a time. You can also
do it strumming and creating the melody as you create the lyric, but I know that some
of you are just lyricists, and know that you can do it, but you do need to keep in mind
that beat. This is a four four beat we're doing, and it has to fit within that for a
singer to be able to sing it. I'm going to write the pre-chorus, and I'm
kind of excited because I have not used one of my favorite lines yet, and that was the
line, "Hear it, smell it, feel it, taste it." And I think that's such a great lead-up to
the title line, "Breathe your own way." So we're talking about you got to taste the air.
I just really like that. I'm going to make this pre-chorus just two
lines. I'm going to make them rhyme each other, and not worry about anything else. I'm going
to make the line sort of extend at the end in terms of time. I want to talk about the
big idea, so we're leading up ... the purpose of the pre-chorus is to lead up to the chorus
and the chorus is all about be you, be individual. Breathe your own way. So, I'm going with,
"Gotta know what's there, gotta hear it, smell it, taste the air."
Okay, it's time for the chorus, to just really bring home the main idea of this song. Just
like verses, there are structures we follow for choruses. One I'm going to use today is
title, a rhyme, title, a rhyme, title, title rhyme, title.
I'm going to say, "Just breathe, breathe your own way." Then a line, "Breathe your own way."
Then a line, "Breathe your own way, because there's a last day. Breathe your own way."
The two lines I decided to throw in there are, "You might get judged, kicked down in
the dirt, really living is worth the hurt." So, "Breathe, breath your own way. You might
be judged, kicked down in the dirt. Breathe your own way. Really living's worth the hurt.
Breathe your own way, because there's a last day. Breathe your own way."
So that's going to be my chorus. The only thing we have left to write is the bridge.
The concept of the bridge is that it's a relief from the rest of the song. It's sometimes
referred to as the relief. In order to go to the relief, I need to know what are we
saying? I'm going to explain why this is so important to me. That's what I'm going to
use the bridge for, is personalizing this because I haven't done a lot of that yet.
This time, I'm just going to make the bridge four lines that all rhyme each other.
"I feel it now, I see the light. We're here today, but gone tonight. I wasn't really living
life, til I held her hand and watched her die." So that's sort of this hit in the gut
explanation of, "Oh, that's where this is coming from," and the realization to the listener
maybe of mortality. Now we've got a complete lyric because we
wrote out every section. We just have to line the sections up in order, and we can set them
to music. Now you've learned how to take a poem and
set it as a lyric. What we've learned is it's not as easy as just putting music to your
poem, because it really is a specific structure, so make sure to check out some of my other
videos that explain that structure and explain these rhyme schemes. And I do have something
for you. I have a free e-book called "Six Strategies for Creating Limitless Song Titles".
It's also a great jumping off point for poems. Grab that and never run out of topics to write
about. If you liked this video, please let me know
by liking it. Share it with anyone else that you think might find it helpful, and if you
found it helpful, comment "Helpful" below. Happy writing.