Help! I’ve Never Written A Song Before…

 

…what do I do?? I see this question often on message boards and blogs all over the web. If you’re one of those out there asking this question, then let’s start at the very beginning (a very good place to start 😉).

First of all, you might want to begin with an instrument like a piano or guitar. The majority of songs are written on either of these two instruments, so if you know a few chords, you’re already ahead of the game! Sit down and play around with a few progressions (a series of chords) and see what you can come up with. Don’t worry about writing a WHOLE song, just see if you can find a nice chord progression that pleases your ear, and then try humming something on top of it. Again, don’t worry about where it’s going to go or what it means or if it’s any good! The most important thing is to start the process. The “finessing” comes later. I’ll get back to the music part in a minute.

Some songwriters like to begin by writing down some lyrics. If you decide to start this way and then find yourself sitting there for an hour in front of a blank page, then don’t push it. It’s more handy to keep a pad of paper and a pen with you wherever you go, and/or a digital voice recorder (even smart phones come equipped with audio recording capabilities these days!). That way, when a line or phrase comes to you, you can write it down or record it for use later. However, you might find yourself writing lyrics at your first sitting. It’s REALLY important not to judge what you’re writing too much at the start, so if there is something there, let it flow out of you without editing yourself. The editing comes later!

Another question that comes up all the time is “what should I write about?”. The truth is you have a whole lifetime of experiences to write from, so that’s a good place to get some ideas. I’ve written two articles that relate to songwriting topics, one called the Songwriting Topics Poll and another called Nothing To Write About?, which is a little exercise to help you come up with some ideas.

Ideas are everywhere if you’re looking for them. You might hear a bit of conversation from someone, or read a line in a book that just jumps out at you. You might have had a particularly interesting experience, or just want to express your own view of something. Once you start getting some ideas out, you might start thinking about different parts, like putting in a chorus or a bridge. I’ve got an article called Song Forms And Terms that is a quick study on what these are and what their purpose is. In more in depth articles, I tell you more about the chorus in Don’t Bore Us, Get To The Chorus and the verse in The Verse’s Purpose, and even about The Bridge. Understanding the different parts of a song will help you to shape it and make it work.

If you are trying to create a melody for your song and struggling somewhat, I have an article on The Magic of Melody and another article on Putting Music to Lyrics which might help you if you’ve written lyrics, but don’t know where to do from there. The fact is that there are many, many articles on this site, but just start with the ones I have given you, and later on you might find the need to read some others!

A lot of people find it easy to start a song but not so easy to finish it. This is going to happen from time to time, so don’t worry if you lose steam part way through. Put it away and look at it again later. That is not to say that you can’t “finish” a song in one sitting, that happens too. Maybe you’re just chomping at the bit to write something and it all comes spilling out in one session. It’s exhilarating when this happens, so bask in the glow of your new found creative self! Then walk away from it for awhile and come back to it again. That’s why I put quotations around the word “finish” because there is no such thing as a song coming out perfect the first time. Unless you are Beethoven or some other musical genius (I know, I know…SURE you are :-)), the real work is going to come when you sit down and revisit and revise it.

Why would you bother? Because this, my new songwriting friend, is the mark of a good songwriter! A great painter doesn’t just slop some paint on a canvas and consider it done. There are always little spots that need re-doing, little touch ups that have do be tended to. So once you have complete song, teach yourself early to look for and fix the “bits” that don’t work. And that is for another blog!

Good luck with your new songwriting venture 🙂 

IJ

The Magic of Melody

There is a lot of music out there that is not as melody-based, one extreme being rap, where elements such as rhythm, lyrics and production are relied upon to attract the listener. But in my case, I’ve always been attracted to a song with a powerful melody. Classical music was always playing in the house when I was growing up, and I believe that exposure to this kind of music gave me an ear and a preference for melodic songs.

So what makes a great melody? I think it’s a relative thing, but for me a great melody is either one that can exist beautifully without any accompaniment, or dances in a unique way over top of a great chord progression.
Although it’s difficult to actually teach how to write a great melody, there are some things you can keep in mind in order to improve them.

One very common problem I find with melodies is that they stay very close to the “root” note of the chord. Let’s take a little theory lesson…if you’ve already studied theory, you don’t need this next section…but read through it anyway!

Chords are made up of three or more notes…I won’t go into much depth here, but let’s take a look at the “C” chord as an example:

A major “C” chord has three notes…C (called the ‘root’), E (called the ‘3rd’ because it’s three notes up from ‘C’ in the C major scale), and G (called the ‘5th’ because it’s five notes up from ‘C’). So we have three notes…C (root), E (3rd), G (5th). Here’s a simple graphic:

Underneath are the notes of each string (the 6th or E string is not played, hence the “x”). You’ll notice that the only notes contained in the chord of C are as I described above…C, E, G.

Play each of those strings alone and hum each note as you pluck it..you’ll find that you are probably “attracted” to one of those notes more than the others…the root note of “C” may be the one that draws your ear. Chances are that you will almost unconsciously create your melody with that note in it more than any others. If your melodies feel hum-drum, this may be the reason. Now try strumming it and at the same time focus on singing notes that are not within that chord. Play with it a bit, until you get a sense of just how interesting your melody can get…every time you write your melodies, no matter if you write lyrics first or whether you already have the chord progressions, just being conscious of not repeating the same note too often can help your writing.

Another common problem I hear in melodies is that they move all over the place, almost the opposite to the problem above. This is where simplicity is the order of the day. Here is an exercise that might help you overcome the temptation to write complicated melodies…try coming up with a chord progression of three or four chords and then continue playing those three or four chords in repetition. As an example, try playing D, Bm, A, and G. Over top of that progression, sing one note that sounds like it fits pretty much all of those chords. Just one note. You can hum it continuously, or you can break it up by humming it in a rhythmic fashion, but only one note. Notice how the chord changes actually change the feeling of that note…it’s a subtle thing but very effective.

Very often, the rhythm of the melody is as important as the notes in it. As a guitar teacher, I’ve noticed that one of the hardest things for some of my students to do is to maintain a rhythm on the guitar while singing a melody that is syncopated. Syncopation is a rhythm that exists just before or just after the meter count. The dictionary defines syncopate as: “…change a regular rhythm by beginning a note on an unaccented beat and holding it into an accented one or beginning it midway through a beat and continuing it midway into the next one.” Phew! Does this feel like math? Rarely are melodies sung continuously on the beat…songs would sound awfully funny if every note was sung on the beat. As an example of syncopation, take for example, Paul Simon‘s song “Me & Julio”. I’ve placed the words underneath the meter of the music to show you how it would look:

|1…….2……..3……..4……
.Me and….Ju-…..lio……
…|1………2……..3……4…………….1……2……3……4……|
Down….by…the……..scho—-ol…yard

Notice how many of the words fall in between the beats. The word ‘Me’, ‘school’ and ‘yard’ are the only words that actually fall on the beat, on one of the numbers. Melodies are usually a combination of both. How do your melodies measure up? Get a metronome and just sing one of your melodies over top of it…notice where you place the notes. Do they sit too much on the beat, or do they always fall in between?

Melody and rhythm, are the simplest elements when it comes to writing a song, but a song is only as strong as it’s weakest part. Of course, listening to strong melody-based music, anything written by the Beatles, for example, will give you a new respect for the magic of melody.

IJ

Hit Songwriting Secrets (not!)

I spend a lot of time perusing the internet for other songwriting news, tips, ideas, etc., in part for my own curiosity, and also because of the articles I write for Muse’s Muse and those I post here.

Taylor Swift in 2010

One phrase that always makes me laugh is “songwriting secrets”…whether they are pitching a book or some kind of one-on-one session with you as a songwriter, or maybe they’re just trying to get you to sign up to their website so that they have your email address so they can spam with you with stuff later on;  the idea that there are secrets to songwriting that no one else knows is FALSE!

Why?  Because the songs that are successful are not secrets at all!  They are out there on the radio, on iTunes, on videos and CDs for you to listen to, analyze, reverse engineer and learn from.  If your ambition is to write a hit song, you have literally hundreds of thousands of hit songs out there at your disposal to teach you, they are not secret at all.

So how do you learn from them?  This is the the real “secret”.  What is it about a song that makes it successful?  Studying different hit songs, what they are comprised of and how every part works together, you will get a better sense of what makes it successful.

So let’s get to the songwriting first.  Some will tell you that there’s a secret “formula” to hit songwriting…for instance, always have a particular number of verses, always keep the intro short, always write in the first person, come up with a title first…etc., etc.  Don’t “always” do anything;  each song has its own personality and if you’ve already written a few of them, you know what I mean.  Do you use the same chords every time?  The same form or subject matter?  Of course not.  The only formula you need is to make it good, and “good” is a very subjective thing.  If you listen to the top ten pop hits right now on Billboard, (or country, or any other chart for that matter) you’ll discover a few things.

They don’t necessarily conform to any one key or song form (although as far as subject matter, when I checked Billboard for the most recent top 10 pop hits they were pretty much all about love/lust or breakups/relationships!), but they do use certain techniques to keep the listener hanging on.  Sometimes those elements are simply the recording and production itself, sometimes they are the way the verses and chorus (and/or pre-chorus) relate to each other, sometimes the lyrics and/or music are really catchy.  And often it’s simply the artist or band that has such a huge following, almost anything they do will become a hit.  If your ambition is to write a hit song, then your job is to study what’s out there and come up with something better!   Easier said than done, I know.

But lets back off the actually writing for a bit and consider what else makes a song a hit.  First of all, many songs that you hear are not necessarily “great”, but they make it to the charts because of the artist or band, as I mentioned earlier.  If these artists and bands don’t write their own material, who does?  A lot of them get their songs from their record label, who may have their own writers or have a publishing branch.  Quite often, the same circle of songwriters write a lot of the songs you hear…particularly in country and pop.   You can find out yourself by checking out the BMI or ASCAP records (or whichever performing rights organization exists in your country).  These P.R.O.’s have search able records online, so there’s no secret there either.

So, okay, a lot of it is who you know, in which case, part of your job as a potential hit songwriter, after you’ve come up with some great songs, is getting to know people.   Go to music centres like Nashville or Los Angeles or New York, research publishers who might be interested in your style of writing.  Join organizations that can help you like N.S.A.I. or songwriting associations that give workshops in all areas of the craft and business.  Be prepared to keep learning, learning, learning.  Hang on to your day job and save money for these ventures.  When you meet people who can help you, be polite, don’t shove your CD in their pocket, ASK first.

You also need to be patient.  I met a guy once who wrote his first ten songs and immediately went to Nashville to pitch them.  He was so sure that’s all he had to do…but when he got there he learned pretty quickly that he had spent nowhere near enough time on the writing part before he did the pitching part.  It was a huge reality check. That’s a true story. So remember to use your head and do everything in the right order!

The recent stories about Taylor Swift’s success are interesting because on her earlier releases she co-wrote a lot of material,  but on her most recent release “Speak Now” she wrote every single song herself.  She’s young and she’s smart, getting the experience she needed under her belt first by co-writing.  Co-writing is a “given” in the pro songwriting community…a lot of the songs you hear are written by more than one person, so you should consider doing that yourself too.  Chances are that if you get anywhere near working for a record label, you’ll be thrown into situations where you’ll have to write with someone you don’t know.  And if you’re a singer/songwriter and hoping to make it as an artist, you might take a cue from Taylor.  Don’t assume you know everything…you don’t!

There are no secrets to hit songwriting any more than there are secrets to any kind of success.  It comes down to the same things, whether you want to be a great chef, a successful financier or a best-selling author:  hard work, determination, patience, some talent and a little luck.  Shhhh…don’t tell anybody! 

IJ