Songwriter Advisor Blog

If you ever need songwriting help or if you doubt any aspect of your songwriting for whatever reason, there are plenty of free songwriting resources to turn to on the worlwide web. 

As much as I’d like to think of this SongwriterAdvisor.com blog and its parent website, SongwriterAdvisor.com as your “one stop shop” for songwriting resources, that would be egotistical and foolish! There is so much free songwriting help on various websites, and you just have to weed through information you believe will help your particular issue or stage of learning how to write songs. 

It pays to spread your knowledge out and learn as much as you can from all songwriting resources available.  I myself, have been a long-time fan of Muses Muse which I still consider to be one of the best complete songwriting resources, and quite a few other websites listed at the bottom of this blog.

Most songwriting webmasters launch their websites simply out of love for the craft of songwriting, and to share their usually vast experience and knowledge with fellow songwriters.  If they make a little advertising income from the process so that it at least pays for hosting, then that’s fine also.  But I can tell you this;  the time put in to maintain the average songwriting website yields less than .050 cents an hour!  This is because “songwriting” is simply not a sought after or highly clicked “niche” market, and it takes a lot of effort to map out successful techniques for songwriters.

But looking through the internet, it’s easy to see how much time and effort songwriters have put forth in making their blogs and websites beneficial to other songwriters.  I’ve always tried to keep an open mind and learn from as many resources as possible, so today, without blowing smoke, I want to sincerely thank the songwriting webmaster community for pursuing their love for songwriting, and for providing their songwriting resources so that we can all better ourselves in the process.  With that said, I would also like to remind all songwriters there is a wealth of knowledge waiting to be devoured by placing keywords such as “songwriting help” and “free songwriting tips” into your Google search box!

One of the secrets in knowing how to write great songs lies in varying basic songwriting techniques and principles, and in this workshop I’ll show you how to add power to your verses with a little technique to add interest and spark to your verses.

In a previous workshop, Really Focus On Your First Verse, we talked about the importance of creating an idea or story before writing a song in order to focus on the song’s idea to make the song clear for your listeners.

Let’s take the lyrics we used as an example for that article, and use it for the concept I’m about to explain:

My eyes have been locked into yours all night
Now tell me it isn’t so
Your smile has found me more than once or twice
Enough to tell me all I need to know

The particular verse lyrics example above sounds like the start of a country tune to me, so I’ll keep using that country flavor as I go.  Keep in mind you can use the following tips for any genre in music effectively!

Let’s introduce the technique; we want to place a shorter line after a longer one to call attention to the lyrics and melody of the short line.  Using the above lyrics, I’ll continue writing the verse using this example (the song is called, “Don’t Get Carried Away“):

(1st Verse)
Your eyes have been locked into mine all night
Now tell me it isn’t so
Your smile has found me more than once or twice
Enough to tell me all I need to know

But I’m holding back I don’t trust myself
I usually go after what I can get
It’s gettin’ pretty hot in this happenin’ place
And your “hello” hasn’t found me yet

(Prechorus)
In my head
A little voice says
Don’t get carried away
Don’t get carried away

followed by the (Chorus)……………………………………l.

What I’ve done is:

(1). I shortened the phrases in the prechorus by a few syllables to place emphasis on those lines, and

(2). I’ve included the song title in the prechorus, which leaves me the option of using the song title again in the chorus to drive my message home! 

A recent pop/r&b song that used this technique effectively was Ne-Yo’s “Closer,” where right before the Chorus, there’s a short prechorus containing the title:

Come closer
Come closer

In “Closer” the song title is never used in the actual chorus and the song was still powerful because it used the technique explained in this article effectively!  As you can see and hear, knowing how to write great songs involves experimenting, even if it means not including the song title in the chorus in certain songs.