The media often portrays great songwriters as simply having inspiration strike them, then magically writing inspiring songs on their first try. In reality, a lot of revision is done between the song’s first draft and the version that the listener hears. Here, we’ll discuss how revising your songs is a necessary habit for great songwriters.
A famous quote often repeated by many artists which was originally said by RC Bannon, is “Great songs aren’t written, they’re rewritten.”
Amazing songwriters understand that the majority of songwriting doesn’t happen from flashes of inspiration. They don’t assume that the way the song came out first is the best way. In fact, they realise that the best version of the song can only be reached through various changes and iterations.
Revising your songs gives you the chance to take them through a process of development and refinement to get them to the finish point.
If you’d like to discover more ways you could improve your songwriting, download this free PDF eBook entitled “14-Day Songwriting Challenge”:
Examples of Artists Who Revise Their Songs
Neil Finn:
This genius behind Crowded House champions this concept and talks about revising his own work. He says “I’ll try as many times as they can possibly be improved on. Occasionally, that does mean that things get over-polished or overworked, but I actually think that most of the time when I’ve gone the extra mile to refashion something or re-edit or change words, it’s almost always ended up better.”
Paul McCartney:
A great example of how revisions can make or break a song is Yesterday by Paul McCartney. Contrary to popular belief, the song did not come to him in a dream. The song actually came out with a jumble of lyrics such as “Scrambled eggs, oh my darling, how I love your legs”.
Only after spending a year on revising the song did he manage to create the version that we know and love today.
Conclusion: Songwriter Habit #2 – Revise Your Songs
In conclusion, great songs don’t just appear on the page magically. We don’t wake up one day, have inspiration strike us and write the next great hit of the century. Instead, disciplined songwriters take the time to revise their songs. This way, they manage to turn them into the best songs they can possibly be.
We’ve all been there before: You get a sudden idea for a song, and you tell yourself that it’s alright, you’ll remember it later. But let’s be honest, most of the time, we won’t be able to accurately recall what it is later. In this article, we’ll teach you how you can collect everything and ensure that you’ll never lose an idea again.
Collecting everything doesn’t so much mean that we have to record everything we see or hear. It means ensuring that we have a system in place that easily allows us to record any songwriting ideas that come to mind. Whether that’s through carrying a notepad around, recording voice notes or typing in your phone, you need to ensure that you can keep track of your inspiration somehow.
If you’d like to discover more ways you could improve your songwriting, download this free PDF eBook entitled “14-Day Songwriting Challenge”:
Examples of Artists Collecting Everything
Bela Fleck:
Grammy award-winning banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck has spoken about how he used to have to tour around the world at a time where handphones didn’t exist. When he got an idea for a song, he would call his house and leave a voicemail, singing whatever idea he had in his head. Then, when he got back from tour, he’d listen to all the voicemails and jot down the ones that he liked.
This story sums up really well the sense of desperation to capture an idea that a great songwriter should have.
Taylor Swift:
When you watch documentaries of Taylor Swift, you’ll notice that she always has her phone with her. In Thiago Forte’s book “Second Brain”, he talks about how she makes a habit of capturing every single idea that she has as it’s happening.
Then, she uses that as an archive that she can return to during the songwriting process. This is reminiscent of the cliché where songwriters are seen to have stacks of journals, lists of voice recordings and voice memos in their phones. The point here is that you should collect your ideas however you can, using a variety of different formats.
Max Martin:
Sometimes, ideas strike you at the most inconvenient moments. However, that doesn’t mean that you should just give up on recording them. Max Martin talks about this in the making of the popular Britney Spears song, “Hit Me Baby One More Time”.
The idea for the song came to him at 1 AM, when he was already fast asleep. Instead of telling himself that he’ll do it when he wakes up, he forced himself to roll over and mumble the melodic idea into his phone. After that, he had another idea and couldn’t quite go back to sleep. So, he rolled over and recorded another voice note into his phone.
This whole situation sounds inconvenient to us, but it shows just how determined songwriters have to be when collecting ideas.
Relating this Back to Stepping Away
All of this relates back to when we talked about stepping away as being part of the songwriting process. If you haven’t read that article, you can check it out here.
It’s important to understand that stepping away is part of the songwriting process. You’re not taking a break from songwriting, you’re just moving into a different mode of the creative process. So, even when you’re out taking a walk, having a long drive or jogging, be sure that you bring with you some method to collect ideas.
We shouldremember that inspiration could strike us at any time. In order to capture that inspiration, it’s imperative that we prepare methods to record ideas no matter where we are. In this way, we can be sure that we won’t lose any of our songwriting ideas and will always have a creative archive to draw from.
Songwriters are often solitary creatures. Most of us like to work away at our projects, treating them as our babies and ensuring that they never reach another person’s ears till they’re complete. However, one of the most crucial habits that distinguishes highly effective songwriters from the rest is their willingness to seek and embrace feedback. In this blog post, we discuss what getting feedback means, why it matters and more.
It’s necessary to understand that getting feedback doesn’t mean sharing your song the week before it releases on Spotify. While that is important, that’s asking for support and not getting feedback.
Getting feedback means asking for a third party’s opinion during the process of creating your song. This gives you the chance to take their opinions onboard, and consider how you might better improve your song.
If you’d like to discover more ways you could improve your songwriting, download this free PDF eBook entitled “14-Day Songwriting Challenge”:
Examples of Artists Who Find Getting Feedback Important
John Legend:
During a Hollywood Reporter Roundtable discussion, John Legend talked about how he shared a collection of songs that included his hit single “All of Me”, with a group of trusted friends and collaborators. What’s important to note here, is that at the point in time of sharing his songs, he didn’t know that he would release “All of Me” as his single.
However, when he got feedback from the people he shared them with, all of them unanimously agreed that “All of Me” was the song. In this instance, John used feedback to help him narrow down which of his songs he should focus on and develop further. He understood that a third party would be able to make a more impartial decision, since he as the songwriter was too close to the matter.
Dua Lipa:
Sometimes, feedback can be given in the form of collaboration or co-writing. On a Song Explorer episode, Dua Lipa discusses the writing of her song “Levitating”. She talks about how the song was constructed working with some of her long-time collaborators in the studio bouncing ideas off each other.
This situation can be described as her receiving real-time feedback. She’s essentially taking their suggestions onboard, making changes and throwing it back to them again. Through this, we can see that collaboration, co-writing and feedback sometimes all blur the lines between each other.
Sting:
In interviews, he talks about how he often starts a song by himself. Then, he takes the song draft to his band, and if they can’t make it work within 30 minutes, he scraps the idea.
You can see from this that Sting uses feedback not only as a way to develop a song, but also as a process of elimination. In this manner, he’s able to ensure that he doesn’t waste time on developing songs which might not work out. He uses feedback as a tool to help him decide.
When to Ask for Feedback
There are multiple stages throughout a song’s life where you can ask for feedback. The initial draft phase of a song is one of the best times that you can get feedback. Since the song is in its early stages, everything is still very easily changed and there are so many different directions that it could go in. By asking for feedback, you’ll be able to easily influence your song in the early stages of its life.
However, for some people, it’s too difficult for them to share a song in its first stage. This is understandable as the first stage is when things are still very raw, which would make many songwriters embarrassed of sharing. If this is the case, you could polish your song a bit more first, before using the second or third version to seek feedback from other musicians, producers or songwriters who don’t necessarily write in the same genre or style as you.
Who to Ask for Feedback
A lot of musicians aren’t sure who to ask for feedback. This is mostly due to the fact that songwriters are often solitary, and have trouble forming the right relationships to help with this process. One way to go about it, is to seek out a community of songwriters or join some songwriting groups.
An amazing example of this is our Patreon channel which we specifically set up to invite other songwriters in and give them a safe space to be able to share their songs at different phases of the writing process. We also host songwriting groups that run 4 times a year that anyone in the world can join. – click here to check that out.
Another thing that’s really important, is to identify and follow the kinds of songwriters whose music and songwriting you love. Find out who the producers on that record are, then take a chance and reach out to them, asking if it’s alright for you to get some feedback.
You should also be sure to actually go watch live music shows. These environments are great to physically meet people in, foster relationships with people and ask for the kind of feedback that you’d require as a songwriter. This might result in you having to pay people for their help. However at some point, it’s really important to hire people who have the skills and knowledge to help you take your own craft to the next level.
As songwriters, we need to be open-minded enough to understand that feedback is meant to be a tool to help us grow. To that end, we should actively seek out feedback to further develop our craft and ensure that we can make our songs the best versions of themselves that they can be.
Songwriting isn’t just about writing songs. It’s about how we find inspiration and ensure that we can write not only consistently, but also regardless of whether inspiration jumps out at us or not. Here, we’ll discuss a part of that process: Stepping away.
It’s important to note that the creative process is not just all about being hunched over your desk or laptop and pounding away at a line that you can’t solve. While this is important, it‘s only half of the process of songwriting.
When we step away, we allow ourselves to enter a different headspace. By taking a break, we can achieve breakthroughs and gain new perspectives that we may have never thought of before
If you’d like to discover more ways to enhance your creative process, download this free PDF eBook entitled “14-Day Songwriting Challenge”:
Examples of Artists Who Find Stepping Away Important
Sting:
In an interview on the Sodajerker podcast, he says “There’s something about the binary rhythm of walking around – left, right, left, right – that opens up the creative channel. If I get stuck with a problem, I’ll go out and walk it off.”
Paul Simon:
Songwriter Paul Simon is also a fan of stepping away when he’s stuck. He has said “I think it’s very calming, it’s like a Zen exercise really. The act of throwing a ball and catching a ball is so natural and calming that your mind kind of wanders. And that’s really what you want to happen. You want your mind to wander, to pick up words and phrases and fool around with them and drop them.”
Tom Waits:
This prolific songwriter has also talked about how he will deliberately go for long drives as part of the creative process. He feels that by putting his brain in a completely different state of mind, it helps to create new connections between ideas that he wouldn’t have come up with sitting at a desk.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:
Even classical musician Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been quoting saying “When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say, traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal or during during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly.”
Conclusion: Songwriter Habit #5 – Stepping Away
Stepping away is a habitthat is just as important for songwriters to practice, as it is for them to practice writing songs. By stepping away, you allow yourself to create connections you never would have thought existed. Thus, helping you to write songs more consistently and efficiently.
Songwriter Habit #6 – Thinking Like An Anthropologist
It’s easy for us as musicians to say that we listen to lots of music. However, what differentiates the way we listen to music from the way popular songwriters listen to music? In this blog post, we’ll discuss what we mean by thinking like an anthropologist when listening to music, and why it matters.
In 2008, when I was given the chance to learn from John Mayer, he talked about something that stuck with me till this day. He said that on every day of the week, he listens to the Top 10 Hits. However, he doesn’t listen critically – instead he listens with curiosity and with the intent to learn from the song/ artist.
This is essentially what it means when we say to think like an anthropologist, in regards to listening to music. It means to listen to without judgement, and only with the intent to take things apart and learn. You don’t have to enjoy what you’re listening to. Instead, listen with an open mind and understand that it’s possible to learn something from anything.
If you’d like to discover more ways to enhance your creative process, download this free PDF eBook entitled “14-Day Songwriting Challenge”:
Question 1: Why Do Millions Love These Songs?
The first question that John Mayer asks himself when he listens to songs, is “Why do millions love these songs?”.
Music doesn’t just end up in the Top 10 because it’s had millions of dollars pumped into it. Rather, it’s because millions of people actually enjoy it that songs can become famous. While it’s easy to dismiss popularity as a product of mere marketing or trends, that would be a mistake.
Taking the perspective of an anthropologist allows you to think more about why these songs are loved by millions. Then, we can take what we learn and try to apply it in our own songs.
Question 2: How Can I Use These Elements in My Own Songwriting?
The second question he asks himself is “How can I use what I’ve learnt in my own songwriting?”
Learning from a song and using it in our own songwriting doesn’t necessarily mean that we should be imitating what we hear. Instead, we should be trying to understand the mechanics behind what makes these songs great.
For example, if you enjoyed a bass riff in a song, understand why you enjoyed that bass riff. And then, maybe use a bass riff in your own songs as well, but put it through the filters of your own style and aesthetic to truly make it yours.
Remember, the key is not imitation, but emulation.
Question 3: How Would I Improve This Song?
Finally, the last question John asks himself is “If I was the producer/songwriter of this track, what would I have done differently?”
As songwriters, it’s not sufficient for us to be able to say that we just enjoy the vibe or mood of a song. We have to be able to articulate exactly why we like the song. For example, ask yourself, is it the melody, chords or lyrics that you enjoy? Then, try to articulate the mechanics behind what makes that part enjoyable to you. If you can identify and articulate what it is that you enjoy, this will enable you to then emulate it.
The next part of this is understanding that we all have something to contribute to a song, based on our own experiences and knowledge. You should try and develop the mental flexibility to listen to a song and ask how you could make it closer to what you’d imagine it to be. Not be judgmental and simply brushing it off as being a style that you’re not a fan of.
Conclusion: Songwriter Habit #6 – Thinking Like An Anthropologist
In conclusion, it’s important for us to develop a non-judgmental attitude when we listen to music. This way, we’ll be able to learn from songs and provide ourselves with a larger toolkit to draw from when songwriting. If we listen judgmentally, then we deny ourselves that chance to learn and grow as songwriters.
As musicians, we often fall into the trap of listening to things that we’re used to. After all, the familiar is safe and comfortable. However, this is actually something that might be detrimental to your growth as a songwriter. Here, we’ll discuss why listening to lots of music is one of the traits of a highly effective songwriter.
Listening to lots of music doesn’t just mean listening to things in a large quantity – it also means listening to multiple different kinds of music. As artists, everything we consume will eventually be turned into creative fuel that we use to write songs. So, listening to a large variety of music means that we’ll have many more sources of inspiration to draw from.
A great analogy we can use is how consuming music is similar to consuming food. If you only ate a diet of fish and chips every day, that would be extremely unbalanced. Eating a variety of food leads to better cooking and tastier food.
If you’d like to discover more ways to enhance your creative process, download this free PDF eBook entitled “14-Day Songwriting Challenge”:
Examples of Artists Who Listen to Lots of Music
Bruce Springsteen:
This legendary songwriter has talked a lot about how he’s in output mode when he’s making a record, and doesn’t really consume much material. However, outside of that and in between records, he tries his best to consume as much music, books and movies as he can.
Dave Grohl:
The Foo Fighter’s frontman and Nirvana drummer has mentioned how one of his top 10 albums of all time is “Yo! Bum Rush the Show” by hip-hop group Public Enemy.
David Bowie:
He’s a huge fan of minimalist composer Steve Reich’s work, particularly the composer’s album entitled “Music for 18 Musicians”. In addition, he has talked about how Kendrick Lamar and other similar contemporary artists have influenced the ≥making of his 26th and final studio album, “Black Star”.
Bob Dylan:
Prolific songwriter Bob Dylan said “Anyone who wants to be a songwriter should listen to as much folk music as they can, study the form and structure of stuff that has been around for 100 years.”
Some other amazing examples are Lady Gaga who loves Iron Maiden, Lana Del Ray who is a huge Eminem fan, and Miley Cyrus having an obsession with Radiohead.
Conclusion: Songwriter Habit #7 – Listening to Lots of Music
As artists, it’s our job to ensure that we widen our pool of experiences to draw from, so that we can create amazing songs. To that end, we should be sure to listen to lots of music, thus, broadening our creative palette greatly.
The importance of studying your heroes is often overlooked by most when learning the art of songwriting. Through this blog post, you will learn why studying your heroes is important, as well as how to use what you’ve learnt from them in your own writing.
Merely learning how to play your favourite songs is a great start to your songwriting journey, but that doesn’t mean you should stop there. You also need to actively pick them apart and observe why the songwriters make the choices that they do. Examples of aspects which are useful to analyse in particular, are chord progressions and melodies.
To illustrate this, let’s have a look at the song “Someone Like You” by Adele.
By observing the chord progression of the song, we can see that she avoids the tonic chord in the pre-chorus of the song. This makes sense, as it’s the job of the pre-chorus to build tension. Through only bringing back the home chord in the chorus, Adele really makes it bloom and stand out.
In addition, if you learnt to sing the song or picked apart its melody, you’ll find that she never sings a note in her verses that’s higher than the first note of the chorus. She does hit a high note later on again in the chorus in order to build it up, but she never allows the melody notes of the verse to go higher than the chorus. This helps build anticipation and really put a spotlight on the chorus.
This active process of taking things apart and putting them back together allows us to grasp the components that make a song unique and memorable.
You can find out more about other exercises to improve your songwriting in the free PDF ebook, “The 5 Best Songwriting Exercises for Writing Great Lyrics.” Click on the image to download:
Turn Imitation into Emulation
After analysing songs from your heroes, it’s important to graduate from imitation into emulation. This entails not only mimicking the surface aspects of our heroes’ work but also seeking to understand their thinking and perspective. In short, we should not seek to merely look like our heroes, but instead seek to see like our heroes do.
As we embrace their artistic mindset, we begin to cross-pollinate ideas from various songs and generate our own unique artistic voice.
If you’re interested in looking for some specific examples on how we can emulate instead of just imitate, then check out our video entitled ‘6 Ways to Steal Great Chord Progressions’
Conclusion: Study Your Heroes
Becoming a great songwriter is a process that requires lots of determination, hard work and persistence. Studying your heroes is one of the great ways you can improve your songwriting, and ensure you get closer to your vision of your creative aesthetic.
A common struggle among beginner songwriters is the notion that they can only write about experiences that have personally happened to them. Here, we discuss how to walk the fine line between truth and fact when songwriting.
Although they sound similar, the reality is that you can actually convey truth without describing all of the facts. As songwriters, our job is not like that of journalists – we don’t have to write the autobiographical truth of things. Instead, our job is to capture the emotions of moments or situations, and this grants us creative license to bend truth if necessary.
For example, referencing the specific details of a pet’s death may diminish the impact of grief in a song. Instead, focusing on the emotional essence of loss can resonate more powerfully with others who have experienced similar emotions.
How to Balance Truth and Fact
There is no easy answer as to how we should go about balancing truth and fact. However, below are some methods that will help you in excluding the details in moments that might result in diminishing the truth behind them.
Sense Writing
In sense writing, you use all of your senses to try and describe a moment you have in your mind. For example, if you wrote about your pet dying, you could write about things like:
How did it make your heart/ muscles/ lungs/ skin/ fingers feel?
How did your perception of the world change?
How did the light alter?
Through using the details of that day, you’ll be able to create a song that is relatable to anyone who has experienced that kind of loss, while also conveying the truth of what happened.
You can find out more about sense writing and other exercises in the free PDF ebook, “The 5 Best Songwriting Exercises for Writing Great Lyrics.” Click the image below to download:
Using a Persona
Writing using a character or a persona might sometimes help us in bringing out core truths that we might not be able to express in our autobiographical selves. Examples of famous songwriters who have used this technique are Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits and Jason Isbell.
A more modern example is the song Bury a Friend by Billie Eilish, as she has previously talked about how the song was written from the perspective of a monster under a bed.
Conclusion: Balancing Truth and Fact
Remember that you shouldn’t be limited to autobiographical facts when writing a song. After all, the old adage “Write what you know” doesn’t just mean “Write the facts you know”. It also means “Write the emotions you know”.
Turn your inspiration into beautiful songs with step-by-step guidance through two professional songwriting methods. By the end of this course, not only will your tool belt be stocked; you’ll have a plan and a method for finishing your songs – all of them.
Amidst all the doubts and fears, it can be difficult to know where to begin when songwriting. All too many times, songwriters get stuck staring at an empty page in frustration. In this blog post, we’ll explore three essential songwriting tips for beginners that will help ensure that this is a situation of the past.
Many beginner songwriters fall into the trap of attempting to tackle grand themes right from the start. While it’s admirable to want to write about homelessness, climate change, or heartbreak, approaching songwriting in this way can put excessive pressure on the song. Often, the result is either cramming too much into the song, causing it to lose focus, or creating something generic and lacking in relatability.
Instead, focus on small moments from your own life. Hone in on the details, emotions, and perspectives within those moments. By doing so, you’ll discover universal themes that resonate with others.
In an interview with John Mayer that I love, he compares the process to attempting to fit the universe into a glass of water. He says that instead of trying to approach songwriting from a glacial perspective, where you fit the universe into a glass of water, to try and write about the glass of water itself. In doing so, you’ll find that focusing on small moments from our lives instead, allows us to find universal themes that not only we relate to, but that our audience will relate to as well.
Here are some practical exercises to help you hone in on these small details and moments in life:
Homework for Life: This involves spending a few minutes each day noting something that made that day different from others. This exercise allows themes and emotional truths to emerge from seemingly ordinary experiences.
Sense Writing: This exercise involves using your senses to describe moments and experiences in detail, thereby capturing the essence of emotions and creating relatable content.
You can find out more about sense writing and other exercises in the free PDF ebook, “The 5 Best Songwriting Exercises for Writing Great Lyrics.”Click the image below to download.
Tip 2: Balancing Truth and Fact
As songwriters, we deal in truth, not necessarily facts.
Many beginners feel constrained, thinking they can only write about experiences that have happened to them. However, it’s crucial to distinguish the difference between truth and fact.
Songwriters have the artistic license to bend facts to convey core emotional truths effectively. For example, you can write about the grief and loss of a pet without explicitly mentioning the specific details of your cat’s passing. By excluding certain autobiographical facts, you can communicate the emotional truth in a way that resonates deeply with others who have experienced similar emotions.
Remember, writing what you know doesn’t mean writing the facts you know, but rather capturing the emotions you know.
Tip 3: Study Your Heroes
Studying and learning from your musical heroes is an essential part of the songwriting journey. Learning how to play your favorite songs by heart is an excellent starting point, but our journey as songwriters doesn’t end there.
As songwriters, we need to critically and analytically listen to songs. This means that we need to actively dissect the songs, paying attention to things like chord progressions, relationships between chords and key centers, and song structures.
Examples of questions that you could ask yourself are:
What chords are used in specific sections? How are they used? Are there chords deliberately avoided?
What is the relationship between the melody and the chords used?
Are high notes used in specific places for any reason in particular?
By analyzing and understanding the components that make your favorite songs resonate, you’ll begin to grasp the artistry behind them.
Moving beyond imitating your heroes, strive to emulate them instead. Emulation involves not only striving to look like your heroes, but also to see like them. It’s about understanding their thought processes, and through this understanding, your own artistic voice will start to emerge.
Emulating your musical heroes and combining their influences with your unique perspective will allow your songwriting capabilities to truly be used to their fullest.
Conclusion: Essential Songwriting Tips for Beginners
In short, the three tips can be summarized to the following:
Focus on the small moments
Find the balance between truth and fact
Actively study your musical heroes
By using these three essential songwriting tips, you can help yourself overcome the initial struggles that many beginner songwriters face, and ensure that you have the tools for a smoother songwriting journey.
If you would like more details, explanations and examples, then be sure to check out the video now.
Turn your inspiration into beautiful songs with step-by-step guidance through two professional songwriting methods. By the end of this course, not only will your tool belt be stocked; you’ll have a plan and a method for finishing your songs – all of them.
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