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A brand new old trick: the Song Generator

Posted by The Accidental Lyricist on 25 Jul 2009 at 4:27 pm | Tagged as: gadgets

Shake for lyrics

I just came across a little gizmo called Song Generator that is available as an iPhone application. The idea is that songwriters that are stuck for lyrics can turn the application on. When they shake their phone, three random phrases pop up. This is supposed to spark your imagination. As an example, you can play around with “Yeah \ take a piece of \ your mouth.” If you like any of the three, you can “lock” them, shake the phone and try again. Sounds fun, but…

…it also sounds like a technique used by surrealists (and reportedly David Bowie) who used to cut up sentences, throw them on the table and work from that. At the end of the day, whatever gets those songwriting juices going is fine by me. If I was in a philosophical mood, I’d write a piece about it being a bit disappointing that people prefer to shake a phone on their own rather than sit down and write something memorable with another songwriter, or ring up a colleague and bounce ideas around. Luckily I’m in a good mood. Besides, the result couldn’t be much different from some Duran Duran lyrics I’ve read.

Having said that, I still use a pencil and paper to write lyrics, at least in the early stages. But if you’re interested, check the Song Generator. Let me know what you think if you try it.

2 Comments »

2 Responses to “A brand new old trick: the Song Generator”

1. on 25 Jul 2009 at 7:41 pm 1Lyrics | All Days Long

   [...] iPhone gadget sparks ideas for lyrics | A-Lyric.com By admin A-Lyric.com News about song lyrics and the people that write them. A-Lyric.com – http://www.a-lyric.com/ [...]

2. on 28 Jul 2009 at 4:04 pm 2admin

   I’ve since discovered a whole sub-genre of software and websites!

   There’s this one, that requires you sign up first:

   http://www.songlyricsgenerator.com/

   The Surrealist offers a very simple Christmas song generator:

   http://thesurrealist.co.uk/christmas.php?

   “Let them sing it for you” takes words you type in and gets famous recordings to sing them – word by word. The effect is bizarre and funny.

   http://www.sr.se/P1/src/sing/index.htm

   The silliest of these must be the UK’s Song Lyrics Generator, which also grabs images to make a sleeve for your song lyrics.

   http://www.song-lyrics-generator.org.uk/

   If you come across others, let me know. I could do with the laugh.

   Michael

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