Writing Lyrics

[chardin]

I've been playing around with liptikl for a few days, and it seems like an interesting way to get the creative juices flowing. Its currently on sale for $50 for a non-commercial license.
http://www.intermorphic.com/tools/liptikl/index.html

deastman, I tried liptikl but I couldn't get it do anything but rearrange my words. Would you please show your input and output?

[vurt]

I actually wrote a lyric generator myself. Only thing is, it writes lyrics in a randomly generated language which bears only the slightest passing resemblance to English. I've been meaning to refine that idea some more. Hmmm...

[deastman]

I actually wrote a lyric generator myself. Only thing is, it writes lyrics in a randomly generated language which bears only the slightest passing resemblance to English. I've been meaning to refine that idea some more. Hmmm...

I don't have a copy at home with me right now, but I'll try to remember and post a sample on Monday when I go back to work.

Edit: The basic premise was was that I set up a set of rules for generating words: Pick a letter. Is it a vowel or consonant? If its a vowel, the next letter has to be a consonant. And so on. I just set up the rules through trial and error to arrive at a language which I found pleasing (some of the time). I haven't added rhyming yet, but the plan is to generate a fixed dictionary of words, and use a simple reverse-sorting technique to identify rhyming words. Right now it just fills out stanzas with random words of variable length. I'll probably add parts of speech tags too, and randomly generated sentence structures which get populated by words. All of this sounds much more impressive than it actually is. The result will still be a bunch of random gibberish. The difference is all in the process.

[deastman]

I've been playing around with liptikl for a few days, and it seems like an interesting way to get the creative juices flowing. Its currently on sale for $50 for a non-commercial license.
http://www.intermorphic.com/tools/liptikl/index.html

deastman, I tried liptikl but I couldn't get it do anything but rearrange my words. Would you please show your input and output?

I got interesting results by filling one idea box with words that I liked and were thematically relevant. The other two boxes I populated with entire news stories from the Yahoo front page, or from Wikipedia entries.

Don't think of liptikl as a one-button lyrics generator. Think of it as a collaborative tool to help get your ideas flowing. Generate some lyrics. Lock any words you find interesting. Randomize again. Maybe you'll see another word or two that sounds good. Lock that one. Maybe you can think of a better word that would fit somewhere. Write it in yourself and lock it. Keep refining. I find that most random lyrics generators fall short because they try to do it all by themselves. This is a much more useful tool because it allows you to collaborate in the process.

To be honest, I'm still not completely convinced that I want to spend even $50 on it. I'm a competent enough programmer to code something similar myself. Their algorithms will undoubtedly be better, but in the long run, I can write something which works for me. Also, after using it for a while, I noticed a few bugs in the Windows version. I'm sure they'll get that all cleared up eventually, and $50 isn't much to ask, so I'd still recommend it if you're interested.

[Ivan_C]

Google and "Serving footballs to Lindsay D" gives the source of Kim's post It's http://www.songmd.com, and the website is full of advices about writing lyrics.

[Kim Lajoie]

Google and "Serving footballs to Lindsay D" gives the source of Kim's post It's http://www.songmd.com, and the website is full of advices about writing lyrics.

Cool, thanks. The article's a little different to my source, it's probably ben updated since. I'm going to have to do some reading.

-Kim.

[chardin]

Thank you Wolfen666. This is a good site. Here is a direct link to the article.

I found this very interesting:

So don't write your lyrics first. Get the tune, then write the words.

[deastman]

It wasn't my intention to totally derail this topic, but I always seem to do that.

For your amusement, here is some sample output from my random language generator:

ligdesq udoi orrue ol alogiat,
stecil un ehiobpu asmaf al.
utmo buar ilrao tott ophaa eno,
ohpeu gukau a omtaivi.

osuraoc ou macois e,
skur i kiusael it i ouae uorn.

yobtihn posioc nii lusme a.
uor atreda a hunuuad gii gednoit,
lianr a beikb e ucfau.

eteeta nanre ore cocen anuefwi,
esal or royra en daer hune goedeim.
ofre ottuas yutyeps baa rasqahr rini otanib.

au oao eweypt eye ypbeyu agere,
moatn leuecia a loobne byaura.
foabael eky ensemr muaryac vuefaer zim,
riimb yehek agate oom ac nit tir.

[Hovmod]

It wasn't my intention to totally derail this topic, but I always seem to do that.

For your amusement, here is some sample output from my random language generator:

ligdesq udoi orrue ol alogiat,
stecil un ehiobpu asmaf al.
utmo buar ilrao tott ophaa eno,
ohpeu gukau a omtaivi.

osuraoc ou macois e,
skur i kiusael it i ouae uorn.

yobtihn posioc nii lusme a.
uor atreda a hunuuad gii gednoit,
lianr a beikb e ucfau.

eteeta nanre ore cocen anuefwi,
esal or royra en daer hune goedeim.
ofre ottuas yutyeps baa rasqahr rini otanib.

au oao eweypt eye ypbeyu agere,
moatn leuecia a loobne byaura.
foabael eky ensemr muaryac vuefaer zim,
riimb yehek agate oom ac nit tir.

Sung in a nasal falsetto against slow hypnotic music this could easily make it!

[deastman]

Sung in a nasal falsetto against slow hypnotic music this could easily make it!

Sigur Ros in a box!

[chardin]

Sung in a nasal falsetto against slow hypnotic music this could easily make it!

Sigur Ros in a box!

I had to google Sigur Ros. After a listen, deastman is spot on. Originally, I thought the language was closer to Latin or Gaelic.

deastman, you need to make an online pronunciation guide for your software.

[deastman]

Sung in a nasal falsetto against slow hypnotic music this could easily make it!

Sigur Ros in a box!

I had to google Sigur Ros. After a listen, deastman is spot on. Originally, I thought the language was closer to Latin or Gaelic.

deastman, you need to make an online pronunciation guide for your software.

Part of my original plan was to run it through a text to speech synthesizer, and let the computer teach me correct pronunciation.

There was one point while I was formulating the rules when it was spitting out something much closer to an African language, but now I can't seem to figure out what I did differently.

[impete]

I've been playing around with liptikl for a few days, and it seems like an interesting way to get the creative juices flowing. Its currently on sale for $50 for a non-commercial license.
http://www.intermorphic.com/tools/liptikl/index.html

deastman, I tried liptikl but I couldn't get it do anything but rearrange my words. Would you please show your input and output?

Hi!

We've been busy getting together noatikl 1.5, but have just got around to doing some more work on providing examples for liptikl.

So here is real example I've just created, while sending some info to a reviewer. I thought I'd share it with this thread (and have also put on the intermorphic forums, obviously!)

I get my best results using a couple of paragraphs of source ideas.

Good examples (that work for me!) are things like film titles, or phrases I like from a movie or book, and I also often just type in words that come to my head that presumably have just been floating under my sub-consciousness. If I'm listening to music (which I often am!) I'll type-in some mis-remembered lyrics from the artist. Or just do a grab from google searching for a few words. I don't spend more than a few minutes pulling ideas together. I guess other people might start from some lyrics they've been working on as a starter point. I'm no good at that, so start from a clean slate!

Pressing generate a few times gives me ideas.

Here's an example... I pasted-in the above paragraph of instructions I just typed above (that I've put in the quoted section for clarity), pressed generate, and got:

often floating my I'm,
me! people or Good,
examples good have than,
grab lyrics which type.

I instantly saw a pattern in there, and changed the top two lines (left the second two as they are):

I'm often floating on my own
good people pass me by
examples good have than,
grab lyrics which type.

And locked-down every word in the top two lines.

I pressed generate a couple of times, realised I didn't have anything that rhymed with by! So, added a few words: try deny sky fly cry

Generated this after a couple of presses:

I'm often floating on my own,
good people pass me by,
sub-consciousness floating starter to,
I that guess cry.

Changed 3rd line by hand to this below (and locked the 3rd line, and the final word in the 4th line):

I'm often floating on my own,
good people pass me by,
Feel my sub-consciousness caving-in,
I that guess cry.

Generated a couple of times, realised I wanted a final longer line, updated rule from 6 5 4 4 to 6 5 4 6, generated a couple more times,

I'm often floating on my own,
good people pass me by,
Feel my sub-consciousness caving-in,
my that listening try I cry.

And thought... aha! And modified the final line by hand to get my lyric:

I'm often floating on my own,
good people pass me by,
Feel my sub-consciousness caving-in,
Their listening makes me cry.

Pretty good. Probably good enough for one of Tim's songs (Tim, help yourself!), though he might tweak it I guess.

Anyways: that took me 5 to 10 minutes, including typing this all up!

Pete

[deastman]

Thanks for posting that example. I was trying to depend on the program to generate most of the content, only locking individual words as I found ones I liked. Its helpful to see what your intentions were as far as working methodology. Its a nice little tool, no doubt!

[Emerald Tablet]

make it simple - big words confuse and lose

lyrics are being sung best when written by the singer

hope that helps