[Justme]

Hello, I am new here and have never considered attempting to write a song before. I have no idea how this forum works, so will play it by ear.

So to get the ball rolling as such, I will just scribble out a few lines of what I think a song is in the form of a made up song start, just to engage the discussion .

The pain inside has I look into her eyes........
I walk out the door knowing she doesn't want me any more....
My heart beats.....completing one of life's defeats
Just hurt and pain nothing ever to gain


So how do you start a song?

[Boydie]

In its most basic form a song is "melody" (music) and "lyrics" (words) as these are the only things that can protected under copyright

If you can whistle or hum a tune and write lyrics you have enough to start songwriting

Depending on your music theory knowledge and whether you can play an instrument or not will dictate how far beyond this you can go - as well as access to recording gear (hardware and software) and knowledge of production etc. etc.

You have started with some lyrics so let's start there...

The pain inside has I look into her eyes........
I walk out the door knowing she doesn't want me any more....
My heart beats.....completing one of life's defeats
Just hurt and pain nothing ever to gain

Let's assume this is your chorus, which could form the central theme/message of you song

It would make sense if you chorus contained the title of the song - and it is common for the title to be an interesting and engaging little phrase that often appears in the first or last line of the chorus - or is repeated within it

In your case the titles that jump out to me are:

"The Pain Inside", "Hurt & Pain", "Nothing Ever To Gain"

A good lyric writing tip is to try to "clean up" your lyric to make it "tighter"

Do you really need the words "just" and "ever"? (Only you as the writer can decide for sure)

If you were to ditch "ever" - then "Nothing To Gain" sounds like a great title to me


Now that you have written your chorus you are ready to write your verses - so that they "set up" your chorus

Eg - why is there pain inside? Why doesn't she want you any more? What would you have gained?


It is also a good idea to try to make the lyrics about the listener to make it a bit more personal to help them "engage" with the song a bit more

Eg - "as I look in to YOUR eyes"

This is much more engaging and I feel more involved as the song is now about "me"

I don't care about your relationships with someone else

Some people say that you should have the word "you" within the first 20secs of your lyric

There are loads more "tips n tricks" but hopefully this will get you started


What music knowledge do you have - do you play an instrument?

[Justme]

In its most basic form a song is "melody" (music) and "lyrics" (words) as these are the only things that can protected under copyright

If you can whistle or hum a tune and write lyrics you have enough to start songwriting

Depending on your music theory knowledge and whether you can play an instrument or not will dictate how far beyond this you can go - as well as access to recording gear (hardware and software) and knowledge of production etc. etc.

You have started with some lyrics so let's start there...

The pain inside has I look into her eyes........
I walk out the door knowing she doesn't want me any more....
My heart beats.....completing one of life's defeats
Just hurt and pain nothing ever to gain

Let's assume this is your chorus, which could form the central theme/message of you song

It would make sense if you chorus contained the title of the song - and it is common for the title to be an interesting and engaging little phrase that often appears in the first or last line of the chorus - or is repeated within it

In your case the titles that jump out to me are:

"The Pain Inside", "Hurt & Pain", "Nothing Ever To Gain"

A good lyric writing tip is to try to "clean up" your lyric to make it "tighter"

Do you really need the words "just" and "ever"? (Only you as the writer can decide for sure)

If you were to ditch "ever" - then "Nothing To Gain" sounds like a great title to me


Now that you have written your chorus you are ready to write your verses - so that they "set up" your chorus

Eg - why is there pain inside? Why doesn't she want you any more? What would you have gained?


It is also a good idea to try to make the lyrics about the listener to make it a bit more personal to help them "engage" with the song a bit more

Eg - "as I look in to YOUR eyes"

This is much more engaging and I feel more involved as the song is now about "me"

I don't care about your relationships with someone else

Some people say that you should have the word "you" within the first 20secs of your lyric

There are loads more "tips n tricks" but hopefully this will get you started


What music knowledge do you have - do you play an instrument?

Thank you for your reply and very informative post.   I do not play an instrument, my knowledge of music is not good, but I am creative and never suffer from any sort of writers block.

So basically I would be able to write song lyrics, would lyrics have use without the melody in the song world?

An interesting use of ''your'' to make it personal, thank you. I had not considered those few lines to be chorus or main verses, they were just randomly put together to get a discussions started.

How long should a verse be , before a Chorus?


Thanks Steve

[Boydie]

I would suggest picking a few of your favourite songs and we what makes the "tick"

Things to look out for...



Is the title in the song - and if it is where is the title within the song?

Listen carefully to the first 2 lines - do they grab you and if so why?

How many lines does the verse have? - are they all the same?

Are there rhymes and where do they fall? - is there a strict rhyming scheme

What purpose does each verse serve?

Eg does the first verse set the song up and introduce the characters, does the second verse expand on this and introduce more information, what does the 3rd verse do - if there is one

What is the structure of the song - a typical structure is VERSE-CHORUS-VERSE-CHORUS-BRIDGE-CHORUS-CHORUS

Is there a "pre-chorus" before each chorus? What purpose does it serve - does it build from the verse, "set up" the chorus etc.

Getting your head around a few of these questions in your favourite songs wou,d be a really good start to understanding songwriting

[den]

cant really add anything, but I as a bit of a newbie myself, I cant but admire the help given in this post
to someone who by his own admission doesn't really know where to start. I think this thread alone shows the quality of the people on this forum.

[Lyrical]

Absolutely fantastic posts here guys. Very informative and super helpful.

Boydie I jumped over to your soundcloud and listened to some of your songs. They are really good? Are you a published songwriter? I could imagine hearing any number of your songs being performed by a host of today's pop bands.

I do feel like I need to say something though. I've seen a couple of posts where you've mentioned that only top line melody and lyrics are copyrightable. This is a dangerous area and it's not as black and white as that.

Think of a song like.... "baker street", or "wonderful tonight" - Those songs have iconic music hooks that couldn't be replicated elsewhere without legal action. Similarly in rock music and other such guitar led genres, there are riffs which are standalone compositions that sit beside the lyrics vocal melody.

You're not going to get someone playing the music to "smells like teen spirit" but adding their own lyrics and melody and calling it their own.

The music industry has become so cannibalising that recently there have been successful lawsuits on the base of the "feel" of a song. Don't get wrong, i think it's ridiculous, but unfortunately it is reality.

[Boydie]

Hi Lyrical

It is indeed a murky world nowadays

I would class the "Baker Street" and "wonderful tonight" examples as "melody" - and therefore I totally agree that they would form part of the copyright

I was trying to make the point that it can be really easy to write a song - I've just copy a favourite chord sequence and whistle an ORIGINAL melody and write some original lyrics and that is a good start to songwriting

The whole "copyright a feel" (like the recent blurred lines/Marvin Gaye) case is really disappointing a confuses things even more

Boydie I jumped over to your soundcloud and listened to some of your songs. They are really good? Are you a published songwriter?

Thank you!

Yes, I have had publishing deals, should have something released this year and am actively pitching

I have had a little break from writing my own stuff as I have been honing some production and mastering techniques but will be picking up the pace very soon...

[Lyrical]

Yes, I have had publishing deals, should have something released this year and am actively pitching

Great to hear! Congratulations.

I've been out of the game for a couple years but rolling up back into it now.

Fun fun.

[Helena4]

I started just writing in the very generic and effective Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Middle8-Chorus-Chorus structure. The rules are, the verse tells the story, the Chorus conveys emotion about it and sort of sums it up, should be a bit more repetative, and contains the "hook", like your best most interesting line that sums up what you're saying. The Middle-8 should provide something extra, often people say it provides a plot twist, doubt about the main message, or asks a question.

Then try to come up with some decent phrases, decide what the hell they're going on about and roll with it. You've got some pretty decent lines there for an absolute beginner. Roll with it. Write a few songs every day. They're gonna be bad but you just wanna get into the flow so that it takes you just a couple minutes to churn out a passable song. Then pick out the best ones, and try and see what the hell is wrong with them, and see if you can make them sorta good. And repeat for a good long time.

A good excercise is to be reading and analysing lyrics of songs you really like the lyrics of. Like analysing poetry in English class. That sort of depth. Look at words, structure, meaning, ryhme schemes, metaphor or lack thereof etc. Start off sticking to the sort of style you're aiming for and don't be afraid to imitate some aspects of their style but not plaguerise. Then once you're getting more confident doing that, look outside your genre, and incorporate some of what you like there to be more unique. Find the things that always seem to stick out in your songs and excentuate them into your style.

Once you've been writing for a while lyrics will just come to you at any time and you'll be able to craft them into songs.

Once you can actually write stuff that seems like a decent song, you need to think about the subject material. Dwell on life experiences, read books and poetry, get interested in the news and get angry about it, or just observe the insanity of society around you, philosophise etc. There will be certain things that really interest you and give you so much to think about, find them, find what you can be emotional about and set out to write about it. This is the second big hurdle after learning how to just write songs themselves. Suddenly everything you learned needs to be used in weird ways to actually get your point across effectively AND emotively AND catchily, this is difficult but rewarding. Great catharsis.

That's my general thoughts on becoming a good writer. Won't be going far into what you've written as that's already been covered. Just thought I'd give an overview.

[Oldbutyet]

Hello, I am new here and have never considered attempting to write a song before. I have no idea how this forum works, so will play it by ear.

So to get the ball rolling as such, I will just scribble out a few lines of what I think a song is in the form of a made up song start, just to engage the discussion .

The pain inside has I look into her eyes........
I walk out the door knowing she doesn't want me any more....
My heart beats.....completing one of life's defeats
Just hurt and pain nothing ever to gain


So how do you start a song?

(The pain inside has I look into her eyes........
I walk out the door knowing she doesn't want me any more....
My heart beats.....completing one of life's defeats
Just hurt and pain nothing ever to gain)

First thing you got to understand about writing a song is lyrics and if you understand that then what you have here is lyrics, post more to it.

[R.G.S]

I agree with the guys like Boydie here with the 'reverse engineering' of a song.

Take a song, listen to it a bunch of times, print out the lyrics and chords and study what makes it work.

For lyrics I think the best way of breaking them down is by writing a 1 or a 2 next to each line. All the lines with a 1 end with a rhyming sound and all the lines with a number 2 end with a different rhyming sound

For example
Well, that's all right, mama  1
That's all right for you 2
That's all right mama, 1
just anyway you do 2

This simple excercise makes it clear how the rhyming structure is formed. It may seem basic but when you are starting out, studying a song in detail can seem confusing as there is a lot going on and it is easy to feel overwhelmed.

Hope that this makes sense and is of some use.

When i started out I reverse engineered heaps of Bob Dylan songs, although this led to me writing some pretty far out lyrics initially, I learnt a lot of valuable lessons on form and structure.

[AdamHarkus]

I have some general tips on my blog here.....

https://adamharkusblog.wordpress.com/2016/05/23/how-to-write-a-song/

[MartynRich]

Can't add much to what's been said except practice practice and practice again. For every good song I think I right there are 10 bad ones. That's on a good day. So keep going and just try to improve a little each time.

If you have time to learn an instrument, even if it's just basic chords on a guitar or piano then do so. It'll help immensely. Good luck and welcome.

[hardtwistmusic]

What everyone else said is good advice.  Heck, there is no "bad answer" for your question.  

Let me talk about another side to this though.  

In 2006, I asked myself the same question.  I had a backlog of lyrics written between 1972 and 2006, and  had given up on having someone else get excited about MY lyrics and volunteer to write music for them.  

Now, ten years later, I'm ten years ahead of where you find yourself (on a timeline anyway).  

And the answer I've discovered in those ten years is that "THERE IS AN UNLIMITED NUMBER OF WAYS TO WRITE A SONG.  

I've written new lyrics to favorite tunes, then written a new vocal melody for the resulting lyric.  

I've written "lyrics first," then found a melody  I've written musical accompaniment first, and added a vocal treatment, vocal melody, and lyrics.  

I've added vocal treatment, vocal melody, and lyrics to other people's instrumentals (always with permission when that's appropriate.)

I've written music, vocal melody, and lyrics together.  I've written complete songs in an hour.  I've written songs in marathon sessions that meant sleepless nights and tired days.  I've written a few lines, then added to them (sometimes for years) trying to find what I'm looking for with just the right music and/or lines.  

In short, there is no way I can think of that I have NOT written a song.  If I could think of another way, I'd try it.  

So, should you try to emulate (and follow the advice of) me, or one of the others?  Well, that all depends upon what YOU can make work.

So, after all that long winded non-advice I just gave you - that might or might not apply to you, - the only real advice I have is this.  

1.  START.

2.  Don't quit. . . keep working the song.  

3.  Finish.  

4.  Get feedback on what you've done.  

5.  Learn something from the feedback.  

6.  START another.

7.  Repeat until you die.  If you can quit writing, it means your heart really never was in it in the first place.  If your heart isn't in it, quitting is the best thing to do. There is a LOT of rejection to writing songs.   If you simply CANNOT quit writing. . . then this forum is the right place for you. 

If you do all that, you'll soon discover what works for you.  In ten years, you'll look back on all the advice you took (and that advice you couldn't make work) and smile.  It's as simple as that.  ;o)  

Hope that helps.      

[m9@655]

Hello

When your sitting playing the guitar or piano and your stuck for a nice little hook or motif.
Try listening to what your not playing eg. The notes in between the chords that you are playing.