Songwriting Tools – Rhyming Dictionary And Thesaurus

The world is full of words.

For me, writing lyrics can be a challenge in itself. Any tool that make it easier for me to put down my songwriting ideas from head to paper should be adopted into my songwriting process.

The two main tools I generally use in writing lyrics are a rhyming dictionary and thesaurus. You can find them online too.

These tools enable me to expand my vocabulary and put down my ideas in a much more original and descriptive fashion.

Writing lyrics is all about making sure that the story I’m trying to tell or the concept that I’m trying to impart is told in a way that is totally, 100% me.

To do this requires a broad understanding of the language at my disposal, hence the importance of the rhyming dictionary and thesaurus

If you go into a good bookshop you’ll be able to purchase these important songwriting tools but there are also some really good online versions available for you to use for free.

I have chosen the most popular of each version for a brief discussion.

Rhyming Dictionary

Of course when you spot a tool like this for free, it normally means that it’s a demo or sample of the commercial version. This is not an exception.

However, in saying that, the demo version is a very good one and in my use of it over the last six months I have not found the need to purchase the full version. I haven’t exhausted its capabilities as yet.

You’ll find in this demo a limited sample of one and two sylable rhymes but generally this is sufficiant. All you do is type in the word you want to find rhymes for and off you go. It gives you a really good list of results.

The way I find a rhyming dictionary useful is that I see words that I probably would not have thought of as words to end a line with.

When I spot one of these words I immediately see a whole new line flash before me and that is all I need to start writing again. I am always amazed how just one new word can launch a whole new tangent.

Of course you need to be open to the possibilities in the first place.

Thesaurus

This tool is so valuble to a songwriter no matter how experienced they are. This site is both a thesaurus and a dictionary in one so you are getting double the value from the site.

Quite simply a thesaurus is a book of synonyms. These are words that have the same or nearly the same meaning as another word.

For example, if I type the word SONG into the thesaurus I would get these results:

Anthem
Ballad
Chant
Chorus
Lullaby
Lyric
Melody
Tune

The thesaurus enables me to describe stories, concepts and situations much better. It allows me to put a new twist onto the same old phrases and cliches that I tend to fall back on when I get a stuck on something.

My challenge to you is this. Adopt both of these tools into your songwriting process and see what happens.

If you are stuck, use the tools to brainstorm ideas and let your mind become open to whatever possibility appears before you. Once the possibility is realised then run with it.

Sometimes not knowing where you are going can be fun.

Until next time, happy writing,

Corey Stewart
Singer/Songwriter/Musician

Keywords: rhyming dictionary, thesaurus, songwriting, songwriter, songwriting tip, songwriting idea, songwriting help, songwriting blog, corey stewart

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Tags: Corey Stewart, Creativity, music, Songwriter, Songwriting, songwriting tip, Songwriting Zen, thesaurus, writer, zen

Saturday, April 5th, 2008 Songwriting Tools

4 Comments to Songwriting Tools – Rhyming Dictionary And Thesaurus

Nolan says:

April 5, 2008 at 2:35 pm

I use http://rhyme.poetry.com for all my rhymes. It doesn’t appear to be a trail of any kind… just a resource. What’s extra cool is that I have it installed as a search tool bar in Mozilla, so I just type my word and hit enter.

Corey Stewart says:

April 5, 2008 at 10:17 pm

Hi Nolan,

Very cool resource, thanks for that. You’re right about it not being a trial of any kind. It’s better than rhymer.com.

I appreciate you sharing your insights and your songwriitng tools with me. We need all the help we can get.

Corey

Sanoittaja says:

April 9, 2008 at 6:48 pm

Best thing about rhyming dictionary is that more you use it les you need it

Fun thing is that every language is different in this thing.. Example in Finnnish language there is so many variations of rhymes that it’s very difficult to make a good rhyming dictionary. Example there is more than 100 000 words and one word can have 18 inflections, wich means that there are a lot of rhymes!

Many of our rhyming dictonaries includes only those 100 000 (basisc) words so there are 1 700 000 inflections missing
…maybe someday..

Songwriting Zen» Blog Archive » Using A Thesaurus To Conquer Songwriters Block says:

July 30, 2008 at 11:21 am

[...] have written about using a Thesaurus in an earlier post called “Songwriting Tools – Rhyming Dictionary & Thesaurus” however, I came across an article by Orlando Gutierrez from http://www.songwriteradvisor.com, detailing [...]