Songwriter Advisor Blog

Two questions I hear frequently are, “How long does it take to learn songwriting?” and “Should I practice and/or study songwriting everyday, and if so, for how long?”

If you’re a beginner songwriter, you can learn songwriting basics rather quickly – maybe in 7 to 10 days or so  if you use the right information to get you on the right track.  The most important thing, however, is to move at a comfortable pace so you can try to assimilate each topic thoroughly.  It’s better to thoroughly learn the basics in 30 to 40 days instead of using a quick, ineffective method where you forget most of what you learned the day before!  If you take 15 minutes during each study/practice session to learn a chord a day, you will have learned 30 to 40 chords during the same period.  Now that’s progress! 

As in many topics of interest in any field, understand sometimes certain subjects won’t be instantly clear but don’t let that discourage you from pressing on.  For example, you might not be able to figure out at first, how songs can be more interesting with certain song dynamics, until you continue piecing different articles or chapters and by actually practicing what you studied.  The pieces of the puzzle will eventually come together, you’ll have “aha” moments where you’ll feel like you’ve struck a songwriting goldmine and certain things will become abundantly clear as long as you’re consistent with your effort to learn songwriting.  In due time, in due time! 

Intermediate songwriters can benefit immensely from slowly and deliberately dissecting topics such as “rhyming,” “verse development,”  “chorus development,”  “song forms,” and “using metaphors” just to name a few.  The key to taking these into the depths of your soul is to work on them wholeheartedly, one at a time, until each topic is second-nature to you.  You won’t believe how much easier and more effective songwriting can be if you can instinctively tell the difference between a pedal point and a descending bass line!

Advanced songwriters have a great advantage over other songwriters when it comes to learning new techniques because they usually have a superior understanding of beginning and intermediate songwriting basics, and they can take advantage of great, innovative songwriting articles like:  Be Bold – by I. Woloshen on Irene Jackson Songwriting Tips,  The Creatice Process Of Songwriting - by Garrison Leykam, and Special Singer-Songwriter Songwriting Ingredients by me!  Yet many advanced songwriters rarely take the time to continue their learning process for various reasons including their absolutely crazy, super-busy, committed lifestyle to the wonderful world of music in the big leagues!

Take note, even you Grammy and American Music Award winners - you should never stop learning new techniques.  Don’t wait until your well runs dry like many have in the past. There is far too much excellent information in songwriting circles, clubs, and organizations, and in various training formats such as articles, CD’s, etc.

If you can take 30 minutes a day to follow a Tae Bo workout you can easily read at least one interesting article a week to keep your juices flowing strong.

Good luck to all! 

We’ve already talked about how much easier it is to write a song when you’ve already picked out a song title.  Now let’s take songwriting one big step further by taking advantage of already having a song title, and figuring out ways to come up with lyric ideas and phrases for the song.

Next time you write a song try this: 

1.  Take your song worksheet and underneath all of your noun, verb, and other words entries, and leave some space on the bottom for lyric phrases.

2.  Take your title, and start asking, “Who, what, where, when, why, and how?” and use the bottom of your worksheet to enter the following method: For example: If my song title is, “I’ve Known All Along,” first I need to clarify in my mind what I’m trying to say with the song title – this is the song idea or theme. The song could be about (a) someone catching the other cheating, (b) someone saying they never doubted themselves, (c) someone saying they were sure the other would fall in love with them, etc.

For this example, I’ll pick (c) as my song idea to illustrate this method.

Now I’ll start asking questions, and I’ll write ideas, not necessarily lines for the song in finished form, just basic thoughts that come to my head:

Remember the song idea for “I’ve Known All Along” was (c) someone saying they were sure the other would fall in love with them.

With this as your starting point you should have enough ideas to begin putting your lyrics together by starting out with powerful opening lines in your first verse and chorus.
——————–
For example, in this song, my first line in the first verse could be:

I can believe it’s come to this………<< taken from “I’m not surprised” entry in, “What?”

——————–
The first few lines in the chorus might look like this:

I’ve known all along…………………………………………………<<song title
I’ve known all along…………………………………………………<<song title
Your eyes have always told me………………<from “the way your eyes……” in Why? 
With you I could never go wrong……………< unrelated to this exercise

The last line “With you I could never go wrong” was a line naturally sparked by the other lines as a result of this method.  Now, this is by no means a masterpiece of a line but it’s certainly a great starting point.  And that’s exactly what this method is about, sparking ideas and creating a starting point!