Songwriting Tips

[Admin]

Here's a good tool - A Rhyming dictionary

Comes in handy when you're stumped. I don't recommend using it unless it's a last resort.

www.rhymer.com/

[Admin]

Seems we lost another thread during my last attempt to clean up this forum. We had a great Songwriting thread going...and now it's gone! Bummer!!!!

[Admin]

Songwriting like any other creative artform requires a process. A process will make the task easier by organizing your thoughts and establishing the correct sequence of events to ensure you don't overlook the obvious. So, what is a Songwriting Process?

Let's begin with the first "draft" or first pass at creating a song:

It is good to realize there is more than one phase in your song writing process. The goal is to write complete, quality songs, with a minimum number being shelved marked as incomplete or dumped in the trash as a bad idea.

Songwriting doesn't have to be complicated but it does take real dedication. This doesn't mean less creativity is needed, or that less genuine emotion is expressed, or that somehow it is less authentic. It simply means that you have to be organized in your thoughts and the order in which you do things.

Songwriting phases can help you get the best of two worlds: the authenticity that comes from following your initial thoughs and songs that are finished to a higher standard. By introducinging simlie phases it allows us to more easily create the song we want to write, instead of the song that appears after some more or less random evolution.

What are the Basic Song Writing Phases

1. The Ideas Phase
2. The Draft Phase
3. The Development Phase
4. The Ideas Phase

1. The Ideas Phase: How to effectively Capture Your Ideas

Many tunes, hooks phrases, titles, and lyrics are lost simply because we forget them? A fleeting idea crosses our mind, the moment passes and the idea is probably lost. It's easy to minimize just how useful being able to instantly capture an idea can be, just as it's easy to convince ourselves we will remember the ideas we come up with through each day without recording them. If you don't have a mobile recording device then it's time to go get something you can use for mobile recording. Something you can take with you everywhere you go. A modern smart phone is an ideal recording device for both audio recordings, and written lyrics. If all else fails, get a small pad and pen and carry it with you everywhere you go.

Collecting Melodies and Lyrics Ideas. You can create a good melody while in the shower, just walking around the neighborhood, driving to or from work, at almost any time. Realizing this, keep your recorder or pad with you at all times, or at least handy! Whenever you come up with a melody, record it as soon as possible or write down your thoughts in the form of simple chords or notes. The same goes for lyrics, titles and hooks. Either keep a notepad with you, or get a notepad app for your phone. When a line comes to you, write it down as quickly as possible, simply as a collection of individual lines and phrases. This will give you a growing collection of melodies and lines of lyrics, titles and hooks.

2. The Draft Phase
Place music notes on a stave. You do not need to have ALL the ideas you use within a song before you begin the drafting phase. It is during the draft phrase that you will capture the raw emotion you typically feel when writing songs. Anything that will help you generate new ideas to go with the initial ideas you have when you start the drafting process is beneficial. For example, I love to set down at a piano or keyboard and begin to flesh out the melodies. Other times, I pick up my guitar and begin to play the chords, adding chord structures for color or emotion. Drafting is an essential step, but it is not the final step. Stopping after the draft phase is an excuse by songwriters who just want to churn out songs, always moving quickly to the next idea. This wil leave a large number of songs unfinished or at least of poor quality and totally unmarketable.

Drafting and Developing Your Melody. Let the emotion and your ear guide you. When writing melodies it is a good idea to connect melodies with emotion. You might start with a series of chords that captures an emotion and take it from there. At times there will be a riff (series of notes) that you hear in your head that express the emotion you are feeling as you begin the draft of your song. If you start from a riff, emotionally, what does it suggest to you? Is it happy? Sad? Angry? Sexy? Whatever it is, get in that emotional zone. If it's got a sad feel, think of things that make you feel sad. Being in that emotional place while writing a melody can have a profound impact when that melody eventually gets played to a listener. Very quickly your melody establishes the mood of the song, or section of the song. By reflecting how you felt at the time of writing, listeners will far more easily connect to the song and feel something close to what you felt when you wrote the song.

Remember, Melody is 90% rhythm, 10% notes

As you develop the melody, try to do some rudimentary song structure development. By that I mean, try and identify a good chorus melody, a good verse melody, and a good bridge melody. Try placing them in an order that supports the mood of the song. These are all DRAFT melodies for a song. Hopefully they will have a good emotional connection, precisely because you wrote the piece in that state of mind, using emotion evoked by the melodies and melodies fed by the emotion.

Emotion And Your Song. A great song should be an emotional journey. Songwriters achieve this, intentionally or not, by varying the mood and the intensity of emotions as the song progresses. The exact combination and order of emotions varies according to topic and writer, but there are some characteristics that are common to many successful songs and other pieces of music:

Base your melodies on strong emotions. Wishy-washy emotions become too vague and confusing. For example, if your initial emotion is loneliness, go to a place within yourself where you have experienced extreme loneliness. The darkness of your melodies will surface.

At it's simplest think of each section of music as having a distinct emotion. For example, a song about thinking back on sad circumstances and learning from what happened might plan to have the background story from the past delivered during the verses, a chorus that makes a thoughtful and hopeful comment on the verse set in the present, and a bridge that puts them in perspective by connecting them with perhaps a revelation that helped turn a sad event into something hopeful. That could be translated into smooth and flowing passages, almost painful resolutions with most of the melody being within a short range of notes, the use of cadence or half-cadence in the chords, faster flowing melodies in the chorus with the melody covering a wider range of notes, while the bridge could contain larger transitions.

Moving on from there and developing the melody, we first arrange the melodic sections in some song form, for example ABC (verse-chorus-bridge) derived as a verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge chorus, chorus layout. If we then replace each section with the emotion felt during the corresponding section we can visualize the emotional basic dynamic of the song.

Changing Emotional Intensity and Energy. Building on that, we can evolve the melody and harmony in such a way as to vary the energy and intensity of the emotion as we travel through the song. Yet again here there are common trends in songs:

*Songs generally build energy and intensity as the song progresses.

*Songs generally go from lower pitches and tones, to higher pitches and tones as the song progresses. Typical major chord progressions are I - the introduction into the emotion, IV creates tension and V resolves the tension.

*Usually there is an increase in energy and emotional intensity when the chorus starts.

*Typically, there is a step down in energy and intensity when leaving a chorus except when transitioning to the bridge.

Drafting Titles and Hooks. Take a look at your draft titles and draft hooks while still in that emotional space. Preferrably fresh after working on the melodies. Do any of the titles or hooks work with the emotion of the song? If not, time to brainstorm some more titles and hooks. What is important?

Something that has a meter that reflects the chorus melody

*It should contain an emotive word or phrase about how you feel (when in the song).
*It should be memorable
*It shouldn't reveal exactly what the song is about. Keep an air of mystery.
*Pose a question in the listeners mind that they can only answer by listening to the song. This can be done in many ways. For example,
*Make the hook a question.
*Make a statement that infers a question
*Make an ambiguous but emotive statement

So by now you have a draft title and main hook that works with the melody. You have a draft verse melody and a draft chorus melody. The trick is, not to be precious with your work so far. It is only a draft. Be prepared to make the changes necessary to make the song work.

Drafting A Chorus. Now, write a draft chorus, using your title / hook. This may mean times where the meter of the lyrics does not exactly work with the draft melody. Luckily all your work so far is draft. Generally, melody wins the day. Only change the melody IF the meter from your draft lyrics will enhance your melody and stay true to the emotion. Yet again it is a good idea to be in that emotional place when you write the chorus.

*If your lyrics change the melody, go back to the melody and check it in isolation.... ie with no words. Try and see if the new meter will create a melody that still contains the raw emotion.

*If the existing melody is string, then you need to re-think your words.

*Your Chorus should deliver the main message of your song for the strongest delivery of the message.

Drafting Verses and Bridges. Once you nail a DRAFT chorus, start on the verse. This is the part of the song where you ideally want to deliver the story, the setting, the backdrop... it's where you ellaborate on the theme of your song. Your theme is just that... I can tell a sad story in many ways, set in different situations etc. Your verse is where you have all that... it should:

*Not blow your entire story line in the first verse.

*It shouldn't answer any questions posed in the title.

*In early verses, pose some questions in the mind of the listener, either directly or indirectly.

*In the last verse, or bridge lyrics, that is when you answer any of the bigger questions. Sometimes it can be good to leave a little ambiguity.

It is this leaving unanswered questions in the earlier part of the song that helps draw listeners through the song, makes them want to hear more, so they can understand the song.

The Last Verse Or The Bridge. The last verse or bridge is where you make sense of the song. It works really well when it reveals the key fact, adjusts the previously understood chorus (a twist), or it connects seemingly unconnected verses with the chorus. In ballads the last verse usually completes the story.

The Development Phase

Editing. Now you have a draft song. Don't leave it there. Editing is a skill. It's the one facet of songwriting that really focuses you on the quality of your work. Editing is a cycle. Go around it several times. It is a sad excuse that simply by looking to improve a song by editing that, somehow, the integrity of the song is undermined. Editing is about making a song be the best it can be, to ensure that any emotion and message are delivered with maximum impact.

Ask questions of your lyrics and melodies. For example:

*Do they logically and emotionally flow?

*Do they make sense?

*Do they convey strong emotion? (Strong being the best for a strong connection with the listener).

Editing and Quality. It is during the edit process that you really focus on improving the quality of the song. It is you, the song writer, that sets the level of quality of your work, no one else. The edit process is the final gate, or should be, on deciding a song is fit for purpose. Don't skimp on your edits. Why? Because people do notice when a song isn't quite working. Even when you get passed obvious stuff. As listeners they may not know why it doesn't work as well as it should, if you know them they may know but don't want to upset you, but they will know when a song doesn't come up to the mark.

For song writers, setting a high standard for their work is very important. Getting a good, balanced perspective on their own work to really set the bar high is not straightforward. Why? Attachment. Writers get attached to their work to the extent that they struggle to get any sort of perspective on their work other than their own, inherant perspective. The more commercial a writer you are, the earlier in the song writing process you are likely to consider elements like your target audience and the perspective of listeners. At a minimum these elements should be considered during your edit cycle.

Edit Cycle. Go around an edit cycle a few times to hone the song to be it's very best. A bit of polish goes a long way. It is far better to have fewer songs of high quality than 100 songs of an okay quality.

Editing is strongly tied to the critique process.

Critique what you have (either yourself or other songwriters)

Observe
Analyze
Consider Solutions
Make the changes YOU think are needed to enhance the song.
Try to think about your song from the perspective of a variety of listeners.

Try NOT to be too restrictive on changes. You can always go back. Just remember, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Songwriters, especially those who have less experience, are often too tied to what they already have. For example, during the ideas or draft phase you write what you think is an excellent / interesting melody or lyrics. That may even spark the draft song into being a song in the first place. However as the song grows into a fuller song that melody or line might no longer fit with the rest of the song quite as well as it should. At this point the fact that the songwriter is strongly attached to the genious of that one line, and so avoid making a change that the song really needs, all because of their own attachment to that one bit of melody or line of lyrics.

It's better to make the change and at least try to get something that works with the song. The only real other alternatives are:

Re-write the rest of the song to be more in-keeping with the line you cherish
Leave it not quite fitting the song as well as it should.
Perhaps the line can be tweaked, but if it needs a complete re-write of the line, you could always try using that line in another song!

Nothing ends up in the trash. Ideas that aren't used just end up back in your ideas bank, ready to be used somewhere else.

Getting Critique

It is a good idea to go around an edit cycle at least once before seeking critique, if only to help improve your critique skills when it comes to your own music, but it is also useful to develop your ability to be less invested in your lyrics being a set way. The less invested you are, the less tied you are to a particular line or a particular phrasing, the more you will be prepared to do during edits to improve your song.

To get critique, post your songs to the Songstuff Community boards, or perhaps you know people who could offer critique? Go around the edit cycle a couple of times using critique in each cycle.

Giving Critique

The beauty about giving critique to other songwriters about their songs is that you truly develop your ability to critique your own work, by allowing you to improve your critique and editing skills WITHOUT being attached to the work you are critiquing! It lets improve your level of observation, the depth and detail of analysis, jusge how appropriate your solutions are and helps you get better at saying to yourself "make the edit and try out the change".

It also helps you to develop your ability to shift perspective, precisely because you are not attached to the work you are looking at.

To be good at giving critique (especially on your own work) you have to look at your work from different perspectives while going through an Observation, Analysis and Solution Finding cycle for each perspective, or at the very least to consider your solutions from different perspectives.

It is these points that make giving critique as valuable to songwriters as gold dust is to a pan handler.

It takes time to develop good skills in giving critique. Critique is NOT a verdict. It is a discussion, and in that discussion you are as likely to encounter new thoughts and ideas, new rationales and skills from genres you are not a master of, drawing on the experience of all those involved in the discussion, as you are to finding out why suggested solutions might not work before you go spend time trying them.

The point is to help the other songwriter on one level, but far more to the point, it helps you, the songwriter, improve your own works.

Do I have to give critique on the work of other songwriters?
The short answer is no. If anything, this article should at least reduce some of the fear or disdain that some songwriters feel towards using a song writing process, and hopefully it allows you to make a more imformed choice. If you choose not to use a song writing process, it is your loss. A big loss at that.

Is Your Song Fit For Release?

Ultimately you are the one who decides what goes out the door. Each song potentially represents you on a world stage. That means it is up to YOU just how seriously people take your music. If they don't take your work seriously, be they listeners, or other songwriters, musicians and bands, or publishers, labels and production houses... it is down to YOU.

Conclusions

Using a song writing process is not simply to help you to make decisions. It is to help you make informed decisions. Understanding helps you to operate at a higher level. Learn to work quickly AND effectively.

Using the draft process, outlined above, you can begin to work with the core elements of the process, and have some ideas as to how you can evolve the basic process to completely fit with you the songwriter.

In using a song writing process there is nothing to lose, and everything to be gained.

[JamesP]

I don't know how many here are songwriters, but for those who have composed/written lyrics or melodies, where do you get your inspiration?



I was reading through the thread on Music Players Forum - Guitar Players, on the Hank Williams song. This made me start to think about where I got my inspiration for songs. Many of the songs I write come from life experiences and most begin with some lyric line that triggers the thought process. I may write the lyric down in a notebook and not react to it for several months or even years. But one day I read through some of the notes and that day generates the creative juices enough to write the first set of lyrics.



Yes, I seem to always write the lyrics first, then decide how best to tie those lyrics to melodies...is it country, folk (Americana), rock and roll, or blues... From there I will try to develop a chord progression and rhythm that fits the mood of the song.



That may just sit around on a tape (or soundclip) for some time before I get the creativity to actually refine and record the song. Usually, after several rewrites and changes to tempo, chords and/or intro, break, outro leads.



Very rarely do I write a song and record it the first time out.





What's your methodology?

[sarge]

I always start with a melody then write words to fit the melody. Inspiration comes from everywhere, sometimes just a thought that comes to mind.

[jmuscara]

I usually come up with words that seem to have a rough melody. Those words start with a phrase usually connected to an idea, but sometimes they are just a phrase that I heard or thought about.

[JamesP]

likePost Options
Since I can't play guitar anymore, I'm struggling to play keyboard as I try to write songs. Trying to develop melodies from chord progressions. You know, program the keyboard for one finger chords and noodle around with the progression that best matches the mood of the lyrics.

Found this site

flypaper.soundfly.com/tips/5-chord-progressions-to-kickstart-your-songwriting

I'll try to use this tonight and use to create the chord progression for a new song I'm writing. I'll try to video it and post here


Read more: guitarblues.proboards.com/thread/1055/songwriting#ixzz4YmVPfczr

[jmuscara]

What if you don't have a guitar player?

[JamesP]

Regurgitating this old thread..


Here's a lyrics I wrote some time ago. I sat down at the keyboard set on organ and worked out the chords. Or at least I think I did. Maybe someone can help a boy out.

The Warrior Returns

Something like Hotel California rhythm

Am. B
I’d just got back from Vietnam
E
I had no place to go.
G D
The war we’d fought was over now and I was all alone.
F C
I'd mustered out in South LA, thumbed my way back east,
Dm
Ended up tired and homeless
E
in Memphis Tennessee

Am E
Marine Corps didn’t need me, didn't fit with folks back home.
G D
Even on the crowded city streets, I felt so all alone
F C
I walked around those dirty streets, just tryin to find some work
Dm E
We ain't hiring; just go away, was all I ever heard


F C
No welcome here back home you bloody soldier
E7
You’re a disgrace (you’re a disgrace)
Am
To the human race
F C
Don’t want your kind back here you bloody soldier
Dm
Just go away (just go away)
E7
No place to stay



The drugs and booze, they failed me, aching in my bones


I’d lay awake at night and feel, that I was all alone.

Some guys hurt so bad inside, never find what was wrong,

And in their pain and misery, ask God to take them home.




But music saved me from it all, finally found where I belong.

With just my old guitar and me,I never feel alone.

I've seen the hell of war and I've smelled the stink of death,

But through my music I'll find peace

Yes I’ll find peace, (I’ll find peace)

Until my dying breath


No welcome here back home you bloody soldier

You’re a disgrace (you’re a disgrace)

To the human race

Don’t want your kind back here you bloody soldier

Just go away (just go away)

No place to stay