Why learn to write lyrics? Reprinted the preface of Wu Songjin's Eighteen Lectures on Lyrics Creation.

"Write a good song, compose a good song. A successful lyric can be paid continuously as long as it is published and used continuously. Future generations can also inherit the right to be paid, continue to get the manuscript fee for another 50 years, and enjoy the fruits of labor. " In order to facilitate your study, I specially collected and reprinted the preface of Eighteen Lectures on Lyrics Creation by Mr. Wu Songjin. My new book, Eighteen Lectures on Lyrics Creation, will be published by People's Music Publishing House at the end of the month and will be serialized from now on. This is the preface: The preface of Eighteen Lectures on Lyrics Creation-written by Wu Songjin or ci writers-shows that you are interested in writing lyrics when you open this book before school starts. Lyrics writers are not only widely respected artists, but also noble professions and high-income white-collar workers who enjoy artistic creation. You can create professionally or part-time. A successful lyric can win great social repercussions and considerable economic benefits after it is spread through music creation. Indeed, now more and more people have joined the ranks of learning lyrics creation. There are not only young college students, middle school students, music and literature lovers from all walks of life, but also some retired old people who are unwilling to be lonely. In China, lyricists have formed a very large writing group. 1. Why do you want to learn lyrics? Have you ever asked yourself: Why should I learn to write lyrics? Different people have different purposes and different answers. As far as I know, there are mainly the following reasons: (1) realizing music dreams; (2) literary interest; (3) expressing thoughts and feelings; (4) the need of work; (5) enjoy creative fun; (6) to publicize lofty ideas; (7) Become famous and get ahead; (8) earn money to support the family. So, what is the main reason why you are interested in lyrics creation? (1) Some people have loved music since childhood in order to realize their musical dreams. In the process of struggling for their musical dreams, they realize that lyrics are closely related to music, which plays a decisive role in their musical career. In order to be a noun writer, a creative singer and so on, you need to learn to write lyrics. In the history of contemporary lyrics in China, a group of famous songwriters with profound musical accomplishment and good at lyrics are introduced, including Wang Liping, Lv Yuan, Fu Lin, Cheng Kai and myself. They are all musicians who have both lyrics and lyrics. Creative singers such as Cui Jian, Guo Feng, Liu Huan, Tengger, Li Chunbo, Yu Quan, Jay Chou and Hins Cheung, who are active in today's pop music scene, have made great achievements because they can sing and write. (2) In order to satisfy the love of literature, the lyrics have the reputation of "music literature" and are a wonderful flower in a hundred gardens of literature. Writing lyrics can satisfy people's interests and hobbies in literature. In fact, many writers, poets and screenwriters of film and television dramas often write lyrics while engaging in literary creation, and show their talents in this respect. For example, Mr. Qiao Yu, a famous lyricist, is also an excellent film playwright. Qiong Yao, a female writer in Taiwan Province, is not only good at writing novels and screenwriters, but also writes beautiful lyrics. He Dongjiu, a professional lyricist of the Song and Dance Troupe of the General Political Department, is also a famous military poet. (3) Some people need to write lyrics in practical work. For example, some people create themselves in literary and art groups; Some people are responsible for promoting literary and artistic work in enterprises and schools. Lyrics are needed for organizing literary parties, singing activities and rehearsing programs. If there is no ready-made, you have to write it yourself. Some people do copywriting in advertising companies, and when they come, they want to make an advertising song for the client company. As their task, they must learn to write lyrics. (4) it is to express thoughts and feelings. Some people think and feel in life. How wonderful it would be if they could record their feelings in lyrics. I once heard that a young man pursued his sweetheart, but he tried many ways to impress the girl. On one occasion, he tried to write a lyric and gave it to the girl to show his love, which moved her and admired his artistic talent, and finally won her favor. (5) Writing lyrics in order to enjoy the pleasure of artistic creation is an elegant artistic creation activity, in which the pleasure cannot be replaced by other activities. Writing your own thoughts and feelings into the lyrics is bittersweet and intoxicating in the process of conception, writing and revision. If your lyrics are accompanied by music and sung by everyone, you will have a great sense of accomplishment. In order to promote a certain spirit and idea, when you were young, you asked ten lyricists why they wrote lyrics. They will all say that it is to publicize the Party's principles and policies, publicize Mao Zedong Thought and serve the workers, peasants and soldiers. Today, although the revolutionary era of burning passion has passed, the great propaganda function of lyrics is still valued by people. A few years ago, Guangzhou promulgated the Code of Civil Ethics Convention. In order to popularize the code to the public, I wrote the lyrics as required, and sang in the singing activities held in the city, so that the public knew the code like the back of their hands. (7) Getting married in order to be famous was once considered as "bourgeois ideology" and should be criticized. But times are different now. You can become famous, get married, have real talent and practical learning, and contribute more to society than ordinary people, which is worth encouraging. Lyrics are much shorter than novels, film and television scripts and other styles, and they are written faster. Once they became popular, they became famous all over China. For example, the song "Go home often and have a look" was sung at the CCTV Spring Festival party, and even the old people and ladies knew it, and its influence spread all over the country. The lyricist's garage is hard to be famous. Nowadays, thousands of people write lyrics because many people think that they can take shortcuts to become famous quickly. (8) You may be embarrassed to say such a thing in order to earn a contribution and support your family, but someone once asked me bluntly: How much contribution can you make by writing a lyric? It is understandable that writing lyrics to earn money is the same as working to earn money. The cost of writing a song varies from tens of yuan to thousands of yuan, and some can reach tens of thousands of yuan. Moreover, according to the provisions of the copyright law, lyrics can be collected repeatedly. A successful lyric can be paid continuously as long as it is published and used continuously. After the death of the author, his descendants can inherit the right to get the manuscript fee, continue to get another 50 years of manuscript fee, and enjoy the fruits of your labor. This once and for all thing is much more cost-effective than buying stocks! About the economic benefits of lyrics, there are some introductions later. In short, no matter what the motivation is, writing lyrics is an elegant artistic and creative labor, which deserves praise and encouragement. Preface II of Eighteen Lectures on Lyrics Creation. What do you need to write good lyrics? You may say, I also want to learn lyrics, but is my condition ok? The answer is: as long as you can understand this book, it will do! Of course, there are certain conditions for learning lyrics, but the threshold is not very high. I think the following three points are the basic conditions that must be met: (1) basic language and writing skills; (2) Rich emotional accumulation in life; (3) Master professional lyrics writing skills. (1) The first condition for learning lyrics is to have basic language skills. You should at least be able to write, have basic knowledge of Chinese and the ability to choose words and sentences, and be able to record your thoughts and feelings accurately and vividly in words. This is a necessary condition. Without this condition, it is impossible to learn, because if you are unfortunately illiterate, illiterate, and don't even know the most basic writing methods, you can't learn to write lyrics. In my opinion, the bottom line of learning lyrics is the level of junior high school education. Although I have basic writing skills since I graduated from primary school, I can also write letters, read books and read newspapers. After all, my vocabulary is relatively small and my writing knowledge is not enough. Junior high school is the most reluctant level, and the basic starting line is graduation from junior high school, preferably above high school or university degree. The higher your cultural literacy and the wider your knowledge, the more comfortable you will be in writing lyrics and expressing what you want to express. (2) There should be a rich accumulation of life emotions, and the second is to have a rich accumulation of life emotions. Lyrics don't fall from the sky, nor do they come out of nothing. They are the reflection of life and the expression of feelings. You meet a lot of things in your life, see a lot of phenomena, or think, think and have emotional impulses before you can become lyrics. If you don't have the accumulation of life, what will you write? Nothing can be written. Suppose a person was born and lived in isolation in the deep forest, and grew up there all the time, knowing nothing about the whole world, so he could not write. Therefore, this article is also a very simple one, which is not a problem for everyone, because each of us lives in a rapidly changing life and has to encounter many things and feelings. Every day, there are many emotional stories with family, teachers and classmates, friends, colleagues and lovers. In addition, the information in today's society is developed, and you can learn all kinds of feelings and stories from newspapers, TV and the Internet. So the source of creation is not a problem. Life is the source of literary creation, and lyrics are no exception. Lyrics are a reflection of life and an expression of feelings, which cannot be made out of nothing. If you are insensitive to life and indifferent to everything around you, your emotions will be like a stagnant pool and your thinking will dry up. You can't write good works without rich life accumulation. Only by engaging in a fiery life will there be more and more emotional impulses, sparks of thought and creative inspiration. Only by recording those things in time can the lyrics creation have a steady stream of creative materials. (3) It is more important to master professional lyrics writing skills. Because lyrics creation is a professional knowledge and skill, it must be mastered through learning. Some people blindly think that writing lyrics is simple and a small skill, and they can write well without learning. Actually, it is a misunderstanding. There are many people who can write lyrics, but not many people really write well. Lyrics is a professional art, with many professional creative skills and experience. If you don't learn and master the professional knowledge and skills in this field, it is not good lyrics to arrange a few lines casually. If you want to create good lyrics, you need to study hard and master professional lyrics creation theory. Where does the professional knowledge come from? Only through various ways to learn. Some people mistakenly think that I can write a few poems and fill in the lyrics. Someone once came to my studio to apply for the position of lyrics creation. I said, please take out your lyrics. He replied, I haven't written it, but I have written many poems and novels. In fact, he didn't know that the lyrics had professional creative skills. It doesn't mean that if you don't learn, you will write it naturally. Now many people can write lyrics, but few people can write them well. What's the difference between good and bad? People who write well have mastered the skills of creation; People who don't write well know little or nothing about the creative skills of lyrics, and take it for granted that they just need to write a few lines and form a line. So you must master the creative knowledge of this major. If you want to learn to write lyrics, the above three items are indispensable. With these three conditions, you can try your hand on the stage of lyrics creation. Look, the curtain has been raised. What are you hesitating about? Come on! All the fans are waiting to applaud you! You may say, I want to learn to write lyrics, but I just don't know how to learn them well. In my opinion, if you want to write lyrics well, the following sixteen words are very important: learn more, think more, write more and change more, study hard and practice hard, and persevere (1). To learn more and think more is to learn more from books, famous artists and excellent works. We learn from books and other people's theories, that is, from celebrities. This is a learning method, but there is a limit to learning from celebrities. Because you can't meet so many famous artists directly, such as Qiao Yu. You can't go to Beijing to look for him anytime and anywhere. Even if you find him, he may not have time to teach you. Fortunately, many experts in China have published many articles in music newspapers and periodicals, and summed up rich creative experience from years of creative practice. Some experts have written many theoretical monographs on lyrics creation, which we can all find and read. Learn the relevant knowledge, skills and rules of lyrics writing from it. Learning their valuable experience can save you a lot of detours. There is also the easiest way to learn excellent lyrics. Which work do we think is better? Just study it and think about it. There are lyrics on the records and tapes sold now. When songs are played on TV, they usually have subtitles. There are also many lyric websites on the Internet, in which there are a large number of lyrics for users to consult and download. There are also some books and monographs on this subject. Those who want to learn can buy it for reference. A large number of excellent lyric works at all times and in all countries are examples for you to learn lyrics. When you know which song is popular recently, you should study it as soon as possible. What's so good about it? I believe you can learn a lot of regular things from it. (2) Write and change more, that is, practice more. As the saying goes: songs never leave your mouth, fists never leave your hands, and so does learning lyrics. At the beginning, we should strengthen training. Write one or two songs every day, and then take them out for revision in a few days. Make a few more revisions, find out your own shortcomings and improve your writing level. For example, learn to swim, first learn on the shore. The teacher teaches you to learn breaststroke, spread your hands and start paddling. You can move forward with the same kicking action. The teacher's theory is finished. If you master the swimming method, you must jump into the water, or you may sink into the water, or you may take two sips of water, but this is a necessary stage. The same is true of writing lyrics. You have to pick up a pen and write it yourself. Write three songs today, five songs tomorrow, three songs the day after tomorrow and two songs the day after tomorrow. Keep writing, practice makes perfect, and slowly explore the law. Revise more, that is to say, it is not enough to finish writing, but also to find out the shortcomings of the first draft, revise it repeatedly, and improve your work skills through revision. Wang Jian, a famous woman in ci writers who once wrote songs and laughed, made a rule for herself: when writing words, make more changes, and then finalize them and send them out. Great lyricists are like this. Why can't a beginner write lyrics several times? You should have a hard-working spirit when writing lyrics. Everything is like this, there will be no pie in the sky, and the effort will be rewarded. (3) broaden your horizons. We should write the lyrics well. We can't just study lyrics. Your cultural vision should be broader, and you should learn more excellent poems at all times and in all countries. For example, there are metrical poems, modern poems, folk songs, foreign translated poems, China's, foreign, ancient and modern, and all kinds of poems in the field of poetry. You should study, study and draw nutrition from it. Many of Chen Xiaoqi's ci poems are unique, that is, they absorbed the nutrition of Tang poetry. If the sound of the waves is still the same, combining the artistic conception of overnight parking near Fengqiao with the feelings of modern people has won people's favor. Secondly, to broaden one's artistic horizons, one should not read and study the lyrics just because one has learned to write lyrics, but also learn other cultural and artistic works and constantly improve one's cultural accomplishment. For example, novels, essays, movies, TV plays, as well as music, dance, photography, and fine arts, should be dabbled in a large number, so as to become a person with profound cultural literacy. The level of creation will naturally improve. In addition, you should also pay attention to learning social science and natural science knowledge, so as to improve your ideological level, understand the ability of life, find creative themes and seek inspiration. Your cultural accomplishment, life experience, thoughts and personality are all very important. How well the lyrics are written actually depends on how strong your literary skills are, how deep your life experience is and how strong your comprehensive quality is. There is a famous saying of ancient poets that "Kung Fu is beyond poetry", and we can also say that "Kung Fu is beyond words". Writing lyrics well means not only knowing words, but also knowing things other than poetry. Broadening one's horizons has this advantage. (4) Perseverance The fourth is perseverance, that is to say, we must stick to it. We can't say that after studying for three days, I think I'm always bad and throw it away, that's all. Now that you have decided, you must stick to it. Persistence for several years is bound to be beneficial, and persistence is victory. It takes a long time to write lyrics, and it will be effective if you persist. I am most afraid of fishing for three days and drying my net for two days. Jiang Kairu, a famous ci writers who wrote lyrics such as Red Classic, Story of Spring and Entering a New Era, 1979 began to specialize in lyrics and persisted for more than ten years. It was not until 1992, after Deng Xiaoping's southern tour speech was published, that he created The Story of Spring, which became famous in the music world. Without long-term accumulation, it is impossible to become an instant hit. So, when you start to learn lyrics with hope, I send you a sentence: persistence can succeed, persistence can reap!