How to Write a Song for Singer/Songwriters
Join Mr. Chris as he shares his workflow for creating original music.
How to Write a Song for Singer/Songwriters
- contributed by Chris H.
Chris (00:31): (singing)
Chris (00:32): Hey, I'm Chris. And this is a Lagniappe session here at Louisiana Academy of the Performing Arts. I'm going to talk about songwriting today. There are a lot of different ways to write songs, of course. There are classical oriented songwriting skills. You could just write from notation, you could write just on piano. You could be writing for an opera. You could write pop music too. We're going to talk a little bit more about that style today. There are even a lot of different ways to write pop music. There's writing the lyrics first. There's riff based pop music. Something like that. I'm going to focus on using chords, and then making the melody. I think that's more of like a singer songwriter style of songwriting. So if you feel comfortable with guitar or piano or ukulele, something like that, then this is going to be good for you, for sure.
Chris (01:40): So some main things to think about out when writing a song, particularly a pop song, are some of the main components. And those are chords, rhythm, melody, lyrics, and form. And when all those things come together, all those components of the song come together to make prosody, that's sort of the North Star of songwriting. A song with great prosody is going to really blend well together. The lyrics are going to complement the chords, the rhythm is going to fit well with the melody and the lyrics as well. And all that's going to come together to make something really special. It doesn't always happen, and that's okay. You could write just a silly song that's only a minute long, and not a big deal. It's fine. It's good to write as much as you can, for sure, to practice it.
Chris (02:25): But some examples of songs with good prosody, ones that use the title and the lyrics and all the music to come together to meet something, are Crazy Train, the way that the drums and the guitar make a train rhythm beat in the background. Also, Shake It Off by Taylor Swift is a good one, because it sounds like somebody wanting to dance. You Raise Me Up by Josh Groban, another good one, because it uses very uplifting chord progressions and the lyrics go with that. So that's good prosody in a song, something we're always striving towards, really.
Chris (02:59): So to start, I always like to start with chords. That's kind of my favorite way to do it, because chord progressions make sense to me. But you do want to just pick what you're best at whenever you're writing a song. If you're best at melodies, at just humming little tunes, then start with that. If you're best at writing lyrics, then just write a bunch of lyrics down and start there too. That's a good thing to do as well.
Chris (03:20): But I'm going to start with chords today. And on guitar, I'm going to use one of the main chord progressions, that one, five, six, four chord progression. This is a progression that you're probably very familiar with, that you hear in a lot of different songs. So in the key of C, that one is C, five is G, six is A minor, and four is F. So together, that's... Some songs you might recognize are...
Chris (03:55):
(Singing)
Chris (03:55):
Or...
Chris (03:55):
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Chris (04:12):
Or, you know...
Chris (04:22):
(Singing)
Chris (04:22): Right? Tons of songs using that progression. And there's no shame in using that. It's a great place to start. So once you learn those four chords, then you're really off to the races. You could use a Capo to change that, keep those same shapes on the guitar, but use the Capo to better fit your voice. If you have a higher voice, you might want to put that Capo on and higher. If you know you sing lower, then keep the Capo off. Or you could use your brain and transpose them as well, so doing the 1, 5, 6, 4 core progression in the key of G would be G, D, E minor, and C. And that kind of gives a whole new feel to the song when you do it in a different key. It can change those things, the feeling of the song when you change the key like that.
Chris (05:17): And little side, note in case you didn't know, we give a lot of cord for aggressions numbers. So in the key of C, C is home based, so that gets the one number right there. And then we just keep going from there up in alphabetical order. So the one chord is C, the five chord is G, the six chord is A minor, and the four chord is F. So that's good to know, because then when you transpose into the key of G, if G is your new home base, then your one chord is G, your five chord is D, your six chord is E minor. It transposes like that. A good thing for you to know.
Chris (05:52): So once you get a good core progression going, you've got something that you like that sounds good, maybe you want to change it up just a little bit. Some easy things to add to this core progression are the minor two, which in the key of C would be D minor, or the minor three, which in the key of C is E minor. So if I did C, and then D minor, E minor, then F, and then G, the five chord, and then resolve it to home base at one. That's something nice. I like always adding the two chord and the three chord. It adds a little bit of tension and then release. It's another thing we're always striving for, that's going to help you make good prosody in a song is creating tension with the chords and then resolving them. You can also do that with the melody and the lyrics as well, too. That's a lot of music that uses tension and release, for sure.
Chris (06:53): But yeah. So you got your core progression going, and you want to figure out the rhythm next. So how are you going to strum? Are you going to strum fast? Are you going to strum slow? Are you going to pluck? If you're on piano, you could do block chords. You could do rolling chords. You could separate the chords in your left hand and in your right hand. So the same things that we're doing on guitar are very applicable to piano as well, or ukulele, depending on what you're writing on.
Chris (07:37): So, yeah. So you got that, and then you want to figure out how fast, how slow, what the tempo's going to be. This is bringing us all into the rhythm section of the songwriting now. And maybe how long you're going to hold the chords out too. That's called the harmonic movement. So in this basic chord progression, I'm doing each chord for one measure, C, two, three, four. G, two, three, four. A, two, three, four. F, two, three, four. You can do that twice as long. G. You can do it twice as fast, if you want it to be more upbeat. That's changing on half notes. One, two, one, two, one, two. All right. So that's always going to help, changing the speed of when you change the cords.
Chris (08:39): And for different strumming patterns, if you feel like you've been locked into the same drumming pattern for a while now, I always suggest go learn songs that you like, songs that you listen to all the time, some of your favorite artists. That's a great way to learn new drumming patterns, new plucking techniques, and even new chord progressions, too. You can always learn from the greats.
Chris (09:00): So we got the rhythm down now. We're feeling the tempo of the song, that's going to be fast or slow. We're feeling how long we're going to play the chords. We know what chords we're going to do. Just play that around for a while until you get it in your ear. And then if you want to work on melody, just start humming along with it, whatever you feel, whatever comes natural.
Chris (09:36): (singing).
Chris (09:36): And if you like something, then stop, get out your phone, record it, your iPad, whatever. If you don't record things, then get something to write it down so that you don't forget, whatever notation you need to remember. Because it's no fun whenever you have a great idea and then it floats away. So definitely stop and write these things out. And repeat them, too. Repetition is key as well. So if you're not good at making melodies, say that's not your strong suit, what's really nice on guitar is you can use the top string to hear where your pitch might be. So I'm going to start on that note here on my C chord.
Chris (10:15): (singing)
Chris (10:15): So that melody, if I use those notes is...
Chris (10:33): (singing) Chris (10:37): Yeah. I like that. Don't be afraid to just kind of sing along to some things and see what feels good. And if you have some lyrics already written down, then you can see if they apply. Will they fit in that melody? Do I need to adjust a little bit. Definitely, whatever you've been starting with is good.
Chris (10:56): And you want to come up with something catchy. That brings us to one of the main points is the form of the song. The chorus is a part of the form, and the chorus is always the catchiest part. In most pop songs, you're going to be able to sing that chorus along with it whenever it's on the radio. You're going to be able to sing it to a friend, they're going to recognize it. That's called the hook, the part that really hooks us in. So think about that too. Maybe you started the song with a hook, and you're going to write around that. For instance, I had this one song recently that I wrote the lyrics to first, "Now I know why the Willow weeps. Now I know why the willows sad. Now I know why the Willow weeps. Not for the love he couldn't have, but for the love, he couldn't keep." And I needed to write some kind of a melody that went with that. So I just started humming and came up with something with this core progression.
Chris (11:45): (singing)
Chris (11:50): And my hope is that, that's pretty catchy and that people are going to be able to hear that and cling onto it and sing along with it. So I'm going to use that as the chorus. And then what I'm going to do from there, I got my chords, I got a nice hook, I got a melody to it, I got the tempo set. I'm going to start thinking about the lyrics more, and I'm going to start thinking about the form of the song. So some basic parts of form, some important words to know are verse, chorus, bridge. And then you got intros and outros. A couple other little things here and there, but that's some of the main parts.
Chris (12:39): So when you're doing a chorus, we already said, that's the catchy part, the part everybody can sing along to. Usually, not a whole lot of lyrics involved in the chorus. When you're doing the verses, you're going to have a verse one, a verse two, that's going to explain the song a little bit more. That's where the meat of the lyrics are going to be. And then the bridge, you can often use as a development section. Sometimes you could even switch the narrative of the lyrics there. It's usually where there's a lot of tension built up and then release whenever we get back to the chorus. So understanding form of songs is good too.
Chris (13:12): I suggest always go back, listen to a song, your favorite song, and see if you can find, "Okay, this is the verse. Okay. Now, we're switching to the chorus. All right. Now, we're back to the verse." Some really cookie-cutter forms are verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. Another good one is intro, and then verse, chorus, verse, chorus, and then outro. Or if you want to do like the Beatles, they loved starting right in with the chorus, and then doing verse, verse, chorus, chorus, something like that. Keep it short and sweet. So there really is no set way to do that. You can do a form however you want. It's kind of however it fits the lyrics. That's going to be the best thing to do. But if you can't figure it out, you get stuck, then just stick with the easy one, verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Easy enough, right? It's really up to you.
Chris (14:05): So then you put all these things together. You have good chords, you have a good tempo set. You got a good rhythm. You got a nice melody that you're thinking of. You're going to write some lyrics down, and then you're going to try and structure it out. And if you get stuck somewhere, or you just don't have all of it worked out, that's totally fine too. I suggest writing most of it down, write what you can, come back to it later. You can always readjust things. Don't be scared if the lyrics seem silly, because you can come back and fix those two. And if you need inspiration, look for inspiration. Go watch a movie, or ride your bike, or go for a walk, and look for inspiration somewhere. Listen... Read a book, read a poem. You can even use that poem a little bit into your song. I love using bits and pieces of other things that I see and hear around me in my music. And remember, you can't copyright chord progressions, so you can steal chord progressions from your favorite songs all day.
Chris (15:10): And that's about all we have time for. So thanks again for watching. And this is a little song that I'll finish out with called Willow that I wrote, that uses this 1, 5, 6, 4 chord progression.
Chris (15:23): (silence)
Chris (15:23): (singing)