#Songwriting Tips & Trivia from SongRegistration, with tribute to Billie Eilish

Welcome back to SongRegistration’s Tips & Trivia installments, back by popular demand, with this segment’s tribute to Billie Eilish.

First, some songwriting tips:
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➜ Start with a mood, not a melody. Ask yourself what the room feels like: heavy, electric, fragile, chaotic? Let the vibe lead the chords.
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➜ Use space like it’s an instrument. Silence, minimal beats, and stripped-down production can make a whisper hit harder than a scream.
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➜ Flip a sweet melody against unsettling lyrics, or dark chords under soft vocals. Contrast creates intrigue.
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➜ Keep a “strange lines” notebook. Odd phrases often become your most unforgettable hooks.
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➜ And always protect your work. Register and document your songs so your creativity stays yours.
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NOW… some interesting #BillieEilish facts…
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➜ Billie Eilish was born Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell in Los Angeles in 2001 and was homeschooled alongside her brother Finneas, who became her main collaborator and producer.
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➜ Her breakout song “Ocean Eyes” was originally written by Finneas for his own band. Billie recorded it at age 13, and it quietly exploded online, launching her career.
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➜ In 2020, at just 18 years old, she became the youngest artist ever to win all four major Grammy categories in one night: Album, Record, and Song of the Year, plus Best New Artist.
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➜ She and Finneas write and produce much of her music in a home studio, proving you don’t need a castle of gear to build a sonic universe.
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➜ She recorded the theme song for the James Bond film “No Time to Die,” becoming the youngest artist in history to write and record a Bond theme.
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30 Minutes of Writing & Playing

Try writing and playing for at least a half-hour straight, deliberately avoiding cliche themes and melodies. Instead, do your best to go with new and original ideas. By doing this, you’ll learn to channel a mindset where ideas flow more easily.

Setting up a daily time to write songs is among the best habits to develop as a songwriter. By creating a regular schedule, it will actually hone your skills and help to spur creativity.

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Learn how to copyright a song: http://https://songregistration.com/

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Add Variety to Your Songwriting Techniques

When it comes to your song writing approach, the more variety you add, the better it will be. As your starting point for each song, try to write with a different PoV than the last time you wrote. For example, if you start by writing the melody one time, then start with lyrics the next. (And don’t forget to preserve your song copyright.)

Image via Flickr by InSapphoWeTrust

Good Songs, Great Songs & Hit Songs

If the song you’ve written expresses your feelings in a genuine way, then it’s a good song (no matter what anyone says). But if it expresses your feelings genuinely and resonates with people in a profound way, then it has the potential to become a great song. Furthermore, assuming this song can motivate people to dance and move as well, then you might just have a hit on your hands.

Image via Flickr by styeb

 

Planning Performance through Songwriting

Songwriting and performance are two separate things, but one intrinsically affects the other. Write your songs with performance in mind, and keep your songs’ rhythms and cadences in mind when you plan your performances.

Image via Flickr by thezenderagenda

Try a New Chord Paradigm

If you tend to write chord-heavy songs, try limiting yourself to three or four to force your songwriting into a new paradigm. On the other hand, if you write with very few chords, try to expand your horizons by writing with more. You may just elicit howls of appreciation from your listeners.

Image via Flickr by Palentour

Look to Your Life

Look to your own life for experiences that will translate well to songs. Consider writing the song in a way that makes the experience more universal, so it will resonate more deeply with your audience.

This concept of taking something that specifically happened to you and making it relevant to an audience is something you’ll probably revisit again and again as a songwriter. Take some time to refine it as part of your songwriting process.

Image via Flickr by rs-photo

4 Key Considerations for Setting Up Your Own Home Recording Studio

These days, there’s almost no reason that you should go without having your own personal studio for rehearsing and refining your tunes. After all, the technology is readily available, and it’s reached a pretty solid price point for most musicians.

Before you build a home recording studio, though, you’ll want to spend some time thinking about these four key considerations. They’ll help you get the sound you want at an affordable price.

Image via Flickr by TimWilson

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Use Passions & Emotions to Fuel Your Process

Tap into your passions and tune in to your emotions if you want to write a really impactful song. Without passion or emotion, day to day life is colorless and dull — the same will probably hold true for any song that lacks these traits.

You don’t want to send your audience to sleep. Choose a scenario or an issue that really resonates with your own life, and use it to fuel your lyrics.

Image via Flickr by Mauro “Kilamdil” Monti

The 5 Best iOS Apps for Songwriters

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.

Image via Flickr by Rob Boudon

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The Value of Songcraft

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.

Image via Flickr by Jeroen Moes

Live a Life Worth Singing About

Your best bet to succeed as a musician is to live a life that’s worth writing and singing about. Very few (if any) musicians ever gained a cult following by sitting on the couch all day mindlessly watching television.

The trick to succeeding in the music industry on your own terms involves living life on your own terms. Use this heuristic to guide you, and you’ll never go wrong.

Image via Flicker by psyberartist

 

Popular Song Forms

Knowing the most popular song structures (AABA, Verse Chorus, AAA, etc) will allow you to know how to play with the form and which rules to break.

In a modern sense, AABA is by far the most popular song structure. It has two two musically similar verses and a bridge, and then it returns to another verse. Along with the different variations of this form (AABABA, ABAB, etc.), this form constitutes almost all of the music you hear these days.

Image via Flickr by Finding Josephine