My songwriting process
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We songwriters tend to all have different processes when creating songs and lyrics such as Steve Lacy sometimes completely writing off the top of his head in one sitting or AURORA creating a melody first and then lyrics afterward & vice versa. You see just like bigger artists I also tend to change up my songwriting process, and I could sit here and tell you how to perfectly write a song and what way is the best way but that would be a complete LIE! When it comes to music everyone has their own interpretation and method of retaining musical information so when trying to learn how to write songs I recommend you to read your favorite artist’s interviews regarding songwriting and maybe take tips that you feel like you would love to include into your process and then try them out yourself! So in this blog, I want to share with you what my songwriting process and inspiration is like most of the time and hopefully, you can try some of these out and see if they work for you!
I find inspiration
Finding inspiration for myself is probably the most important part of my songs, I myself am very visual and love to think of my songs as if they were to be in a movie scene of some sort, so my first move when sitting down and writing a song is always opening my Pinterest and finding a photograph that sort of feels like my songwriting mood that day. This first step has worked immensely for my creativity and inspiration so I truly recommend you create a Pinterest board only filled with images that inspire you, this can always be a great starting point, and if you don’t want to bother creating a Pinterest board for your songwriting inspiration DON’T WORRY I have already created one! Just click the button below!
Another way I sometimes find inspiration is by using prompts! I tend to not use prompts personally but we songwriters always have those days where we pick up our instrument and find the perfect melody but have no idea what to write about, so this is the exact moment when we can use prompts to inspire a chorus or our entire song. I’ll leave you a FREEBIE songwriting prompt list for you to use when you feel stuck.
2. I create a chord progression
Usually, the next step I take is by creating a chord progression for my first verse & the thing is that there is no right or wrong way to write a song so this can mean that you use the same chord progression for the entirety of the song or creating a different pattern and chord progression for the first and second chorus. So during this time, I sit down and just play around with different chord progressions on my acoustic guitar and slowly start humming a melody to the chords & once I like a progression I’ll immediately WRITE IT DOWN, whether this be on my notes app (which is my go-to) or writing it on paper. With life going on and daily chores to catch up with sometimes there isn’t enough time to write your first lyrics down so I quickly hit the video recording or a voice memo recording to sing what my idea so far to later come back to it and add more ideas.
3. I write lyrics
The last step in writing a song is of course writing the song! And as intimidating as this step might be believe me that once you start writing your first two sentences it gets so much easier and your creative juices just start flowing. I usually begin to write with the first lyric that pops into my head after I get inspired by my Pinterest visual board and attempt to continue writing my first verse as if it was a poem, you see songwriting in some ways is poetry, and writing with different rhyme methods helps a lot! So be sure to study poetry and how to write poems first before starting to write lyrics as this can be very helpful as it’s been to me. Talking about rhyming I know how hard it can be to have a lyric such as “In the forest I lay down..” and being like “What rhymes with down?” so a hack I usually use is simply searching on Google “what words rhyme with down” and using the word I like the most so now my lyrics would be “In the forest, I lay down, I’d like to sink into the ground”. And when it comes to singing something believe me that not everything has to rhyme, the beauty of singing a verse or chorus is that you can make two words sound alike by the way you enunciate them while singing, even if those two words don’t sound the same while talking normally. An example of this can be with the words “sometimes” and “by”, saying these two words out loud in a normal sentence doesn’t really rhyme does it? but with a different tone and pronunciation, it can sound the same, now try to sing this “I like to sit & paint sometimes, helps me think a lot while time just passes by” see how that works? Now you try it!
If you feel like you still need help and or want to learn more about songwriting I’ll leave you with the best-reviewed songwriting books for you to use!
Click on the images!
I really hope y’all enjoyed reading this blog and Freebie, hopefully, you songwriters can include some of these tips and methods into your own songwriting process and I wish you all the best of luck!
