Lyrics or music?
 

which do you guys write first? which do you find easier? btw this is my first post and me and my friends just started songwriting and we're getting confused havin a little trouble so just gettin some second opinions

Music comes first. Lyrics come to you once you have ideas for song in your head.

thx...someone replied finally...20 views and one reply..geez

haha, more power to ya bro

That depends which one you want people to focus on more.. if you want a song people will love write the music first and add some lyrics in there just to add lyrics... if you want people to sit and listen and focus on what you are telling them go with writing lyrics first

When I'm just writing by myself, I know the music comes to me first.

But when I work with my partner, she usually comes up with most of the initial words and melody at the same time (but no chords) and then I lay chords under that melody (I tend to avoid the obvious choices of chords too).

Sometimes I'll come up with another section of a song with a melody but no words, and then Angie takes it from there.

And we do this all painstakingly over the internet. It will be easier once we're both living in the same country! LOL

I would say that music (especially melody) precedes all other factors-- that's the thread that gets us going and the lyrics follow.

~ josh

music usually

but writing lyrics and then wrting music to them is way easier

I don't set out to write lyrics, I write poems. And then seperately from that I write music, so every now and again I'd just play around with them both and see which poem fits with which music and thats that.

A technique used very succesfully by Morrissey.
Your already half way there to be a decent songwriter.
Providing your poetry isn't shite, that is.