How To Write Songs

Category: Creative Practice

  • The MAP Method – Finish Your Songs

    The MAP Method – Finish Your Songs Recently, I emailed the over 12,000 people on my email list, and asked them the question “What is your number one biggest challenge as a songwriter?”. After receiving hundreds of replies, we found that the most common problem songwriters have is finishing songs. In this article, we’ll discuss…

  • Lyric Exercise #2 – Upgrading Verbs

    Lyric Exercise #2 – Upgrading Verbs While every aspect of lyric writing is essential, the choice of verbs can make or break a song’s impact. In this blog post, we’ll delve into why verbs are important, and how you can upgrade your verbs to elevate your songwriting. This article is a summarised transcript of the…

  • Lyric Exercise #1 – Extending Metaphors

    Lyric Exercise #1 – Extending Metaphors A large part of songwriting is creating imagery for our listeners. By painting a vivid enough picture through our lyrics, we can draw our listener further into our story. In this article, we’ll discuss how extending metaphors can help put detail into our lyrics, and what we can do…

  • Songwriter Habit #1 – Write Everyday

    Songwriter Habit #1 – Write Everyday It’s a hard thing for songwriters to hear, but highly effective songwriters practice writing everyday. This is hard to hear because it implies that getting good at songwriting requires dedication and discipline. In this blog post, we’ll talk about how writing everyday us a habit necessary to become a…

  • 5 Easy Songwriting Exercises to Improve Your Lyrics

    5 Easy Songwriting Exercises to Improve Your Lyrics Are you tired of writing lyrics you don’t love? Maybe you constantly listen to your favourite songs, wondering how they wrote such amazing lines. In this article, we’ll discuss 5 incredibly powerful exercises for turning your ideas into lyrical gold. This article is a summarised transcript of…

  • Songwriter Habit #2 – Revise Your Songs

    Songwriter Habit #2 – Revise Your Songs 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…

  • Songwriter Habit #3 – Collecting Everything

    Songwriter Habit #3 – Collecting Everything 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…

  • Songwriter Habit #4 – Getting Feedback

    Songwriter Habit #4 – Getting Feedback 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…

  • Songwriter Habit #5 – Stepping Away

    Songwriter Habit #5 – Stepping Away 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. This article is a summarised transcript…

  • Songwriter Habit #6 – Thinking Like An Anthropologist

    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…

  • Songwriter Habit #7 – Listening to Lots of Music

    Songwriter Habit #7 – Listening to Lots of Music 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…

  • Study Your Heroes

    Study Your Heroes 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. This blog post aims to summarise the…

  • Balancing Truth and Fact

    Balancing Truth and Fact 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. This blog post aims to summarise the second part of our video ‘New to…

  • Essential Songwriting Tips for Beginners

    Essential Songwriting Tips for Beginners 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…

  • 20 Songwriting Prompts

    Wanna know how to write a song? Start with one of these 20 songwriting prompts that will kickstart your creativity and fuel your songwriting on any given day. And a huge THANK YOU to the 20,000 subscribers of our YouTube channel who have supported us, inspired us, and contributed so generously to our growing community…

  • 14-Day Songwriting Challenge: DAY 3

    #3. A list. This poem is unbelievable. Listen to it, the whole way through (listen to the recording here as well as reading it. The experience is beautiful.) Now: write a list of things you like.  Get a free copy of the 14-Day Songwriting Challenge eBook

  • Top 5 Exercises for Coming Up With Great Song Lyric Ideas—#1: Sense Writing.

    In this series, I’ll go through my all-time Top 5 Exercises for generating lyric ideas, whether I’ve got a song idea going already or not.  These exercises don’t require inspiration. They mostly require 10 minutes and a pen. Just like anything in life, you can get better at writing great lyrics with practice. I hope…

  • How to put your inner critic in its place

    And do your creative work this year As writers, creators, artists, and musicians, we all have the same ugly little inner voices that try to sabotage us from doing our work. They come in different flavors: You’re not good enough. You have nothing important to say. This is boring. Ssssleep is sooooo much better than…

  • Mastering the Elements of Lyric Writing

    Studying and understanding the tools that go into making a song can help anyone learn how to write a song more effectively. I hope these conversations give you ideas for your own songs and songwriting. We were lucky enough to have a long conversation with Berklee Professor Pat Pattison. But was my teacher and mentor…

  • Starting with loops is one of the most enjoyable and effective ways to spark new ideas and breathe life into your songwriting process. In this video, we write a whole song from scratch using loops as inspiration – featuring the sample-based instrument ‘Chromatic’ from LANDR. Save 30% now with this coupon: GETLANDRWRITESONGS30OFF LANDR Studio includes…

Weekend Songwriting Intensive - January 4-5

Ignite 2025 with an immersive weekend of songwriting, led by Keppie and Benny.