A Beginner’s Guide To Songwriting

[DJ]

A Beginner’s Guide To Songwriting – Part 1

This tutorial is the first in a series focused on showing complete beginners how to write a simple song. This series will focus predominantly on the process of writing a song, rather than the specific software and hardware techniques, skills and applications you might need in the recording, mixing, and mastering of that song.

Introduction



In this series of tutorials I am going to do my best to assume nothing about you, your musical background, your talent, or your level of familiarity with making music. Instead, I ask only that you have a desire and willingness to try out these techniques, work through the process, and be willing to give and receive constructive feedback!

Without further ado – on with the show!

What is Music?

So what, exactly, is music? This is not a trick question! In fact, the answer is much more simple than you might imagine. Acclaimed composer Edgar Varèse claimed, and many agree, that music – at its most fundamental level – is simply organized sound. That’s it. If you have the ability to organize any number of sounds (including zero sounds if you’re a fan of John Cage!) into some kind of structure – any kind – then you have the ability to make music.

That said, it takes something more than organizing random sounds to make something to which you might actually want to listen. Psychology and physiology and philosophy of why we listen to music, etc. is beyond the scope of this tutorial (but if you’re interested in that, check out this book), but suffice it to say that our analysis will center on what makes a typical, popular song work in the context of simple music theory.
Listening: The Heart of Music

“But if a song is sung and there’s no one there to hear, does it even make a sound?” ~ Storyhill



Even the most experienced and accomplished musician will tell you that there is one skill that cannot be practiced enough: the skill of listening. For beginning musicians and songwriters, listening to music with a critical and analytical ear is of the utmost importance. When we begin to listen to music from the perspective of the creator, rather than the consumer, we can begin to identify the elements of a song that work for us as a listener. We identify more clearly why certain songs evoke particular emotions, annoy us, energize us, or put us in a thoughtful mood. On the more mundane level, we can look at the fundamentals of a song and begin to recognize the patterns in its construction, and how it might be similiar or different than other songs.

“But wait,” you might say. “If I listen ‘critically’ to music, I wont be able to enjoy it for what it is! I’ll always be thinking about it!” Trust me when I say that many new musicians have this fear – and if you ask any musician young or old, they will tell you that it simply isn’t true. The more you understand music, the more you can appreciate it on multiple levels. You wont necessarily always be listening critically. But once you develop the skill you will always have the option to listen in a way that allows you to better understand what is going on in any given moment.

Musicians Gem Of Wisdom #1: What I’m about to tell you will no doubt evoke some strong opinions, but I’m going to say it anyway. The more you know and understand about the craft of composing and writing music, the better you will be. I believe that raw talent will take you far. And I believe in breaking the rules to create something new and different. But in music, you can’t truly break the rules without fully understanding them first, and raw talent without dedication and practice will only get you so far. Now, if you don’t want to write music that people want to hear – at least family and friends – then by all means: go make some noise. But if you are truly interested in learning the reasons why people like to listen to certain kinds of music so that you can make music that peple like to listen to, you must understand the rules and structures and language of music.

You understand that listening is an important skill for a new musician. But what are we listening for?

What Makes a Song?



Blogger and songwriter Graham English says, “We can say a song is good when it achieves its purpose as defined by the artist.” I think the majority of experienced musicians and songwriters would agree with that statement, but what if you’ve never written a song before? What if you’ve never taken a music lesson or played an instrument before? How can you be clear of purpose before you’ve even learned the most basic of forms? Just as in writing you must learn alphabet, words, subject, object, adjective, sentence and paragraph structure, so, too, with music must we learn some of the most basic language before we can clearly state our purpose for a given song.

So for the purposes of this series, let’s lay out a couple of foundational aspects of what elements make up a good pop song.

    * Melody is the part of a song that most of us latch on to when we’re listening. It is the aspect of music usually carried by the vocal line in popular music, though occasionally it may be carried temporarily by another, non-vocal, instrument.

    * Harmony is the part of a song that supports the melody over time. Harmony helps to give motion and accentuates the emotion by adding tension and release. Harmony is most often carried by the backing instruments such as guitar, piano, and bass, though occasionally other vocalists will harmonize with the lead vocal to make an even stronger musical statement.

    * Rhythm is the part of a song that literally is in motion. Every aspect of a song, from the drums to the lead vocal, has a rhythm that works in conjunction with all the other rhythms to form a complete whole.

    * Lyrics are often the aspect of a pop song that imparts the most emotion. These are the words that make up the song, and often tell a story or lead the listener on some kind of journey.

    * Form is the structure of a song, which can range from very simple to very complex. Song form often includes an introduction, at least one verse, at least one chorus, possibly a bridge, and an outro.

Now to be fair, there are some other aspects of music that can help in making a great song – arrangement (the layout of instruments and lyrics over the course of a song) or the production (how the song is recorded, performed, engineered, etc.) But the truth is, good arrangement and solid production can’t make good a song that lacks a solid foundation of melody, harmony, lyrics, rhythm and form.

Review



This brings us to the close of Part 1 of our tutorial on songwriting. Let’s briefly review what we’ve learned:

    * Music is organized sound.
    * In order to understand what makes a ‘good pop song’ in the context of this tutorial, we must understand the language of music.
    * To begin to understand the language of music, we must learn to listen critically. And remember, critical listening doesn’t mean taking the fun out of music!
    * As we listen to music, we can begin to identify the constituent parts of a song: melody, harmony, rhythm, lyrics, and form.

To Be Continued…

[DJ]

Beginner’s Guide To Songwriting – Part 2

by West Latta

This BASIX tutorial is the second in a series focused on showing complete beginners how to write a simple song. This series will focus predominantly on the process of writing a song, rather than the specific software and hardware techniques, skills and applications you might need in the recording, mixing, and mastering of that song.

Review

Before diving deeper into Part 2 of this series, let’s review what we learned in Part 1:

    * Music is organized sound.
    * In order to understand what makes a ‘good pop song’ in the context of this tutorial, we must understand the language of music.
    * To begin to understand the language of music, we must learn to listen critically. And remember, critical listening doesn’t mean taking the fun out of music!
    * As we listen to music, we can begin to identify the constituent parts of a song: melody, harmony, rhythm, lyrics, and form.



Deconstruction: The Art of Critical Listening

We now understand that critical listening is a fundamental practice in understanding and creating music. But what exactly is critical listening, and how do we do it? Surely hundreds of texts have been written on this subject, but for the purposes of this tutorial, I’d like you to consider critical listening a form of ‘musical deconstruction’. By taking a close look (listen) to each individual component of a given song, you can begin to understand how each piece comes together to form a cohesive whole.

Let’s start with a very simple example.



Twinkle, Twinkle, Little (Deconstructed) Star

Here’s a tune you might recognize:

 **AUDIO LINK IS MISSING, BUT IT IS THE SONG TWINKLE TWINKLE LITTLE STAR**

(Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star)

This is the melody to “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” (also the “Alphabet Song”). Based on our simple song formula, we can deconstruct this simple musical line in a number of ways:

    * Melody: This single line carries the melody for the entire song. Remember the melody is most often the part of a song that we ‘latch’ on to, musically speaking. It makes the most obvious musical statement, and is often used in conjunction with lyrics (more on that later).
    * Rhythm: This melodic line also has a rhythm. It is fairly predictable, falling on every beat except at the end of each phrase, where it takes up two beats.
    * Form: This line also carries a very simple form that is commonly used in music: A-B-B-A. No – I’m not making reference to the Swedish band here! Note that the first part of the melody starts out (“twinkle, twinkle, little star”). We’ll call that section A. Then we transition to the middle segment (“up above the world so high”) we’ll call this section B, and note that it repeats. Finally we returns to the initial melody (“twinkle, twinkle, little star”), which is nearly identical to section A. This creates a simple A-B-B-A form.

We haven’t yet touched on the harmonies involved in this tune yet, so let’s listen to a more complex version. As you listen, note how the additional notes support the movement of the melody over time.

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(Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star with Harmony)

In fairness, the example above demonstrates more than simple harmony. It demonstrates a full chord progression that supports the melody from start to finish. Ryan Leach gave us an excellent overview of the basics of harmony, but let’s briefly review chords in the context of this song.

The first chord used here is the 1 chord – also written as I and called the tonic or root of the chord progression. This is the harmonic center of the song – in this case, C Major. Next we hear the 4 chord, also called the IV or subdominant. This chord feels as though we’re taking a short trip away from home, but doesn’t yet create much tension. In this piece the 4 chord is an F Major. The last chord we use is the 5 chord, also called the dominant or V. This chord creates the most tension in the piece, and thus when we hear it we definitely feel the urge to return back to our home chord. This chord is a G Major in this piece.

These three chords – 1, 4 and 5 (or I, IV, and V) are the most commonly used chords in pop music, and perhaps in all of Western Music. In the specific case above, all three chords are Major chords – which means that they tend to imply a more happy tone, and consist of a root note (C, F or G) in conjunction with a Major 3rd and a Fifth interval. Take a look at Ryan’s tutorial for more information, or do a little bit of music theory homework to learn a bit more about chords and intervals.

This type of chordal harmony is what you’ll most commonly find in pop music. While there can be a second harmonic line that exactly mirrors the melody, it is much more common for the supporting instruments to take part in creating harmonic support for the melody. Before we move on to a new example, let’s take a brief look at how our newly gained knowledge of this song might help us to reconstruct it into something more ‘poppy’.

Pop Goes The Twinkle Star

Our example from above doesn’t sound like much, but now that we’ve deconstructed it, we have a better sense of its rhythm, its harmonic qualities, the melody, and the form. What if we took each of those elements, and transferred them to a more common pop arrangement?

If we give the melody to a lead guitar, the harmony to a bass guitar and a rhythm guitar, and the supporting rhythm to the drums, we get something a little bit more contemporary.

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(Twinkle Rock)

Notice how the melody is consistent, but the simple chords from our earlier example have been broken up, shared between the rhythm and the bass guitars. The rhythm has become more complex, now that we have 3 instruments and a drum kit playing along. However, the form of the song hasn’t changed – we’re still using ABBA as our structure, and it presents itself nicely as a complete piece when we reach the end.

Now – this arrangement isn’t about to make any Top 100 lists, and, in fact, this isn’t even the style of music for which I typically compose (I’m sure you could tell!). However, it does demonstrate that with a little analysis of the components of any tune, you can begin to reshape and reconstruct that tune to your liking. This is actually the technique I use for writing and arranging many of my songs: start off with a lyric, melody or chord progression, then build up around it.
Review

We’ve now reached the end of Part 2 of this series, so let’s review briefly what we’ve learned.

    * Listening critically to music enables us to understand the component parts of a song.
    * Deconstructing a song is a great way to begin to understand the mechanics of songwriting.
    * Starting with simple songs, we can deconstruct and reconstruct songs to practice the art of song arrangement.

[DJ]

Beginner’s Guide To Songwriting – Part 3

This is the third tutorial in a series focused on showing complete beginners how to write a simple song. This series will focus predominantly on the process of writing a song, rather than the specific software and hardware techniques, skills and applications you might need in the recording, mixing, and mastering of that song.

Deconstruction Continued

In our last tutorial, we took a good look at what it means to deconstruct a song, using the familiar “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. Hopefully you’ve taken some time to listen to and deconstruct some of your favorite tunes, identifying the various components that comprise its overall formula.

Let’s look at a few pop tunes now to see how we might begin to deconstruct them.

Owl City – Fireflies

The tune “Fireflies” by Owl City has been near the top of the Billboard charts for the past 4 months. The tune has a lot of crisp production values, interesting vocals and a strong melody. Let’s listen to it and take some notes as we deconstruct it.

The tune opens with a typical intro, that mirrors the chord progression used for the opening verse. Then we move into the first verse, which is immediately followed by a muted chorus. Then we go to another verse, followed by a full chorus. Next we have a slightly modified verse (with some additional backing vocals), another regular verse, followed by two full choruses and an outro that is similiar to the first muted chorus.

In formulaic terms, we can assign letter values to each of the various sections – A for verse, B for chorus.

    * A (verse modified as an intro, with no vocals)
    * A (verse)
    * B’ (modified chorus – we use the apostrophe here to denote that this is a modified version of the principle chorus)
    * A (verse)
    * B (full chorus – note that we have the full, regular chorus here, so no modifier)
    * A’ (modified verse – now with a slightly altered melody and backing vocals)
    * A (verse – back to our primary verse)
    * B (chorus)
    * B (chorus)
    * B’ (chorus modified as an outro)

Listen, again, to the song to see if you agree or disagree with the formula I’ve come up with above.

One of the great things about discovering form and formula of pop music is that it usually helps to inform you as to the lyrical, harmonic and melodic patterns of the song. Note that while the verses may have different lyrics, their vocal melody is generally the same – except when we modify it with the apostrophe. In these cases, we have a different lyric and a different melody. Why, you might ask, do we not use a ‘C’ to denote an entirely new section here? Because the lyric and melody are still playing over the exact same chord progression that is used in the verse – thus, we really just have a modified verse, rather than a new section such as a bridge.

Likewise, with the chorus, we almost always have the same melody and a similiar lyric line – except when modified with an apostrophe. In that case, the lyrics, melody, or arrangement is significantly different from the full chorus, so we denote it with a modifier.

Taylor Swift – You Belong With Me

Taylor Swift has had a metoric rise on the Pop and Country charts this year, and her tune “You Belong With Me” has has been on the Billboard Top 100 for 33 weeks. Let’s deconstruct this tune as we did before.

Taylor Swift – You Belong With Me

Let’s take a look at the formula of this tune, noting the differences between this tune and the last.

    * A (verse modified as an intro, with no vocals)
    * A (verse)
    * A (verse)
    * B (bridge – here we have a unique section that isn’t the same as verse or chorus, but rather acts as a bridge between the two)
    * C (chorus – note here that while the chord progression is identical to the verse, we are distinctly in the chorus section, so it gets its own letter, rather than a modifier)
    * A (verse)
    * A (verse)
    * B (bridge)
    * C (chorus)
    * C (chorus)
    * C’ (chorus modified – instrumental with no lyrics
    * B (bridge)
    * C’ (chorus modified – muted lyrics)
    * C (chorus)
    * C (chorus>

At the risk of sounding painfully obvious, one of the most potent and effective tools for writing a pop song is to write a GREAT sounding chorus and to repeat it over and over again. Note that this tune has Taylor singing the chorus six (6) times! Even so, the song doesn’t end up feeling terribly repetitive because the bridge and verse break up the musical monotony. In addition, the lyrics take us on a sort of journey, telling a story over the course of the song. Formulaic songwriting? Certainly. Highly effective (read: nearly ‘pop-perfect’) songwriting? Absolutely.

A Brief Look At Chord Progressions

Before jumping to the topic of chord progressions, I’d like to point you to another fantastic tutorial by Ryan Leach – An Introduction To Cadences. Cadences are part of harmonic progression, and understanding how and why they work, and when to use them, can be an excellent starting point for writing your own music.

Writing a chord progression isn’t as hard as it may sound. You can use a progression as simple as “Louis, Louis” – which is a 1-4-5-4 progression, or something more complex. When I first started out writing songs, I sat down at the keyboard, figured out the chords used in one of my favorite songs, and sung new lyrics and melodies over the top. This is a GREAT way to begin exporing songwriting.

There are plenty of resources on the web regarding pop chord progressions, but I wanted to point you to two amazing YouTube compilations that illustrate the simplicity of writing pop chords.

What is the lesson to be learned in these videos? Simply this: even the greatest pop songwriters of our time use similar ideas from time to time. These chord progressions, while incredibly common, simply provide a jumping off point for writing a unique song through melodic, rhythmic and lyrical ingenuity.

I encourage you to experiment with these and other chord progressions from your favorite songs. Write your own lyrics, but feel free to use the form and the chords as you like – remember this is practice!

A Note About Artistic Merit

I realize that I’ve probably alienated more than a few readers here with my musical selections. Surely there are some of you out there who question the artistic merit of these two artists, and perhaps even pop music in general. Please keep in mind that this series isn’t about opinions – it isn’t about whether or not you like a certain artist or style of music. It is about seeing the process and formula behind pop songwriting. To that end, these two artists have made it to the top of the ladder in the US, and thus they deserve to be studied. You don’t have to like it, but the better you understand how they got there, the easier it will be for you to do the same.

Final Notes And Suggestions

We’ve taken a fairly good look at pop songwriting – from listening to deconstruction to anlysis, as well as offered a few tips on experimentation. The most important thing to remember about songwriting is that there are no ’set rules’. Yes – it is possible, however unlikely, to become a hit musical sensation without a lick of music theory or knowledge. However – the more you know and understand about music theory, about rhythm, form, lyrics, chord progressions – the easier it will be for you to achieve your musical goals. If that is writing pop music – you’re in luck, because pop music formulas work! This should be painfully obvious after listening to the above examples. Even if you’re trying to break out of the genre, knowing the tried-and-true methods makes it easier to avoid them intentionally.

So sit down at your keyboard or guitar, deconstruct a few tunes, then reconstruct them using your own rhythms, lyrics, melodies, or even chord progressions. I’d love to hear your results – so if you come up with a new tune based on analysis and deconstruction of an existing tune – let us know!

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this series of tutorials. If you feel I’ve left something out – please let us know in the comments. I’d be happy to further refine this series – to focus on individual sections more. Whatever you want is what we at AudioTuts want to provide. Thanks for reading and keep listening!