Raw talent is an asset, but don’t rely on it to carry you all the way on its own. It will take you part of the way to greatness, but only determination and hard work will take you the entire distance.
Don’t be one of those musicians who use their innate talents as a crutch. Use it as a springboard to reach your full potential.
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Aside from following a few fundamental principles of music, there really are no wrong answers when it comes to writing songs. Although some lyrics and melodies are catchier than others, your writing can be revised until it achieves this.
Therefore, write a lot and write often. Don’t let writer’s block get in your way.
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When putting your song into its final stages, one possibility is to ask another musician to perform your song. This can help you to hear the lyrics objectively.
This will also allow you another opportunity to evaluate your song’s continuity and see if it all clicks together to make sense. Hearing another person perform it will give you the distance you need to really see these things.
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There are always reasons not to have time to write. Make time in your own life to write your songs, or you’ll always find an excuse not to do so.
It takes effort and focus to really sit down and write something meaningful, however. Clear away the distractions, find your center, and let the songwriting process unfold.
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If you aren’t in tune with your own emotions, how can you expect your music to resonate with an audience on that level? Find something to be passionate about in your own life, and you’ll be giving yourself the tools you need to make your music connect.
Without passion, life becomes boring and repetitive. If you let this happen, then your music will likely reflect that paradigm. Don’t allow that happen.
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Avoid forcing too many syllables or words into a single melodic line. Often less is more when it comes to lyric writing, and if you try to get too cute with your wordplay, you could risk sacrificing the song’s overall fluidity.
Trying to be concise isn’t the same thing as making your lyrics dumbed down. Learn how to slice and dice your writing so that you can create a finely tuned product.
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By emphasizing certain words in your lyrics, you can make your meanings more clear and add extra layers to your songs. You also have the potential to add a certain sense of rhythm to your songs.
You also can achieve this by increasing the volume of certain lines and changing the length of others. In doing so, you’ll also likely add a sense of dynamic interest and movement to your songs.
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Have a sense of purpose when you sit down to write a song, but let the ideas flow naturally. If you have to force your creative process, then the product of that process is almost guaranteed to feel forced to your audience as well.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t do certain things to trigger your creativity. Take measures to nurture your creative spark while maintaining a certain level of discipline in how you approach your writing process.
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Never allow yourself to get too far away from a recording device. Even if you write down your ideas, you could lose some of the original sound or cadence you initially envisioned.
Keeping a recording device onhand isn’t too difficult these days, in fact, thanks to the multitude of digital recorders and smartphone recording apps. Find one you like, familiarize yourself with it, and integrate it into your ideation process when writing songs.
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These days, it’s hard to find anyone (let alone a musician) who’s willing to go for very long without their mobile devices. As you probably already well know, musicians and technology are practically inseparable.
And if you haven’t realized it already, your smartphone or tablet offers much more than the ability to constantly check your email or play a multitude of games. Particularly if you’re using iOS, you have myriad music-making applications at your disposal. Here are five of the best ones available.
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Learning music theory isn’t necessary to write a great song, but doing so can certainly enhance your understanding of how music works. This understanding will be useful when you decide to attempt to take your music in more complex directions.
While actually mastering theory can take you years (if not an entire lifetime), you can pick up the basics fairly quickly. Learning the 12 notes, scales, chords, and chord progressions can all help take your music to a deeper level.
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Pretty much every musician, at one time or another, has written a love song. But don’t write one just because it seems like a winning formula. If all your songs are written on the same subject, they’re more likely to sound the same.
Many of the best songs have clever lyrics with many different meanings, so it’s often hard to tell what the songs are really about. By allowing people to find their own interpretation, they’ll inject it with their own meaning and make it more personal to them.
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Some songwriters find it helpful to mentally envision white noise when trying to brainstorm. This effectively creates a mental “blank canvas” where your mind can freely explore the sonic possibilities.
This allows you to remove the rational structure of the world around you, allowing you to make mental associations that you might not otherwise created. Follow this and other key songwriting hacks to improve your songwriting process.
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Today’s Songwriting Tip: If people say your ideas are wrong, then you’re probably one step ahead. If they laugh at you, then you’re probably two steps ahead. Great artists aren’t always understood in their own time, but if you write songs on your own terms, you’ll never have regrets.
Of course, if you’re trying to be commercially successful, it’s probably best if people aren’t laughing at your songs (unless that’s your intention). The point, however, is that if you’re writing songs that are on the cutting edge, you can’t worry too much about how the wider world criticizes them.
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Songcraft is the art of endowing your songs with some kind of emotional impact and memorability for your listeners. Take your listeners on a journey, that either touches them at their core or makes them want to dance.
In doing so, you not only have the ingredients for creating a hit song, but you also could potentially be making something much more. It all starts with focusing on the fundamentals of writing a good song.
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