Introduction to Songwriting - Part 2

As a musician, has the thought of writing your own songs crossed your mind before? Some of you might want to write songs for pleasure or casual jamming, while some of you may want to learn how to write songs for performances to captivate your audiences etc....

Whatever the reason is, writing songs is a one of the creative outlets for musicians to express themselves and yet, many of them face difficulties in this aspect of making music.

Many musicians had often asked me this question. Is songwriting a skill that can be taught or learnt? As with other skills like playing the guitar, driving a car or swimming, songwriting is a skill that can be taught.

However, nobody can guarantee that if you sat through the best song writing course, you will be able to write the greatest song in the world. It is just like saying everyone who had been through a driving course will be able to race in Formula 1 like Lewis Hamilton.

On that note, you can STILL learn to write good songs that people will love. Writing your very own original song is not as difficult as it seems to be.

Getting Started

The most difficult part in doing something new is getting started. To get you going, you should probably have in mind who you are writing the music for. Ask yourself what is the ultimate goal of writing this song. What do you want to express and convey to your audience? At this point in time you want to have a rough idea or feeling that you wish to express through your song.

Before you proceed any further with a rough idea of the song in mind, I would like to explain the main elements in a song. A song is made up of 4 elements: Melody, Harmony (chords), Rhythm and Lyrics. So what actually comes first? There are no hard and fast rules of writing a song. These are some simple methods to get you started writing your songs.

1) Start with a set of written lyrics followed by music

Use the rhythm of the lyrics and sing out a melody. Once you are happy with the melody, then add in the music.

2) Start with a melody of notes followed by music 

Come up with a catchy melody that is singable before you add in the rest of the elements. This method of writing songs will usually result in better tunes and catchy phrases.

3) Start with a harmony (chord progression)

This is by far one of the easiest ways to write a song and is a very common approach undertaken by guitarists and pianists. Play a chord progression that sets the mood of the song you want to portray. ( I V IV V – Major sounding for happy songs, iv iii IV V – minor sounding for sad songs etc……) Listen to the chord progression and use it to inspire your melody or lyrics.

4) Start with a music rhythm

This technique is particularly useful to musicians who are writing rap or hip-hop songs. Repeat a music loop; write song lyrics and melody to fit the beats. This will create strong rhythmic sense to the lyrics and melody.

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