How To Write Songs

Tag: songwriting

  • Analysing Sting’s Songwriting Process

    Analysing Sting’s Songwriting Process Studying the songwriting process of established songwriters is a great way to get an insight into other ways of thinking artistically. This in turn broadens our pool of creative knowledge to draw from. In this article, we take a close look at 17-time Grammy Award Winner Sting and discover some of…

  • A How-To Guide for Writing Choruses

    A How-To Guide for Writing Choruses A chorus is not just the bit where the lyrics repeat. It’s something else entirely. In this article, we tell you what a chorus is, different types of choruses, as well as 3 practical tips – one lyrical, one melodic, and one chord-based – that will help you write…

  • System #3 to Help You Always Make Time for Songwriting – Seeking Accountability

    System #3 to Help You Always Make Time for Songwriting – Seeking Accountability In a world where time is a precious commodity, finding ways to make time for songwriting can be a constant struggle. Plenty of songwriters have told us how they lack the discipline to stick to a schedule. In this article, we’ll discuss…

  • 5 Creative Chord Progressions to Reignite Your Creativity

    5 Creative Chord Progressions to Reignite Your Creativity In this article, we’ll go through 5 captivating, out-of-the-box chord progressions, each using different chords outside their key, that any songwriter can use immediately to make your chord progressions more interesting, sophisticated, and creative. This article is a summarised transcript of our video “5 Out-of-the-Ordinary Chord Progressions…

  • 5 Books that Are Songwriter Must-Reads

    5 Books that Are Songwriter Must-Reads As professional songwriters, we have collectively read hundreds of books on the art of songwriting. What we want to do in this article is discuss 5 of the most influential and transformative books that we personally keep coming back to as songwriters. Some of these books aren’t specifically about…

  • System #2 to Help You Make Time for Songwriting – Collecting and Organising Ideas

    System #2 to Help You Make Time for Songwriting – Collecting and Organising Ideas Songwriting is a fun process. However, it becomes frustrating when you try to sit down to write and nothing comes to mind. This can cause you eventually stop making time for songwriting. In this article, we’ll discuss how you can ensure…

  • Lyric Exercise #5 – Power Positions

    Lyric Exercise #5 – Power Positions For songwriters, crafting lyrics that captivate and resonate with listeners is both an art and a science. Lyrics have the ability to convey emotions, tell stories, and create vivid imagery. In this article, we’ll discuss power positions and how we can use them to elevate our lyrics. This article…

  • How to Use Arpeggios to Spice Up Your Melody

    How to Use Arpeggios to Spice Up Your Melody We received a message from one of our Patreon members about how their melodies always feel boring, bland and seem to have something missing. This is a common problem amongst songwriters. So, in this article we’ll tackle one of the methods you can use to create…

  • System #1 to Help You Make Time for Songwriting – Practice Daily

    System #1 to Help You Make Time for Songwriting – Practice Daily We received loads of responses from a survey we sent out to our subscribers asking “What’s your biggest challenge with songwriting?”. One of the most common responses was that it’s difficult to make time to get any songwriting done. In this article, we’ll…

  • 3 Simple Systems to Help You Make Time for Songwriting

    3 Simple Systems to Help You Make Time for Songwriting After emailing the over 12,000 people on my mailing list and asking them the question “What is your biggest challenge with songwriting?”, one response from a subscriber by the name of Jesse particularly stood out to me. She commented on how she now has so…

  • Lyric Exercise #3 – Use Specific Imagery

    Lyric Exercise #3 – Use Specific Imagery People listen to songs so that they can be transported to a different place. To that aim, it’s important for our lyrics to help listeners paint vivid images in their mind. In this article, we’ll discuss how using specific imagery strengthens lyrics, as well as methods to 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…

  • 10 Essential Chord Progressions for Songwriters

    10 Essential Chord Progressions for Songwriters If you’re a songwriter looking for inspiration then look no further! In this article, we take a look at 10 essential chord progressions and some classic songs that use them. This article is a summarised transcript of our video “10 Chord Progressions Every Beginner Songwriter Should Know”. Click here…

  • Step #7 of Writing Great Melodies – Write More Melodies

    Step #7 of Writing Great Melodies – Write More Melodies The process of composing melodies for your songs doesn’t stop just because you’ve managed to develop one long melodic phrase. If we consider the first long melodic section we created as a verse, then we would still need to come up with melodies for the…

  • Write a Song Within an Hour

    Write a Song Within an Hour A lot of songwriters often talk about how they can’t finish songs. You hear it all the time – tales of abandoned notebooks, lone voice notes and old sticky notes on the wall. Well, this blog post will help you solve that problem by showing you a 5-step process…

  • Part 3 of The Songwriting Formula – The Song Map

    Part 3 of The Songwriting Formula – The Song Map It’s easy to think that once you have a concept and a title, that you’ll be able to plan out an entire song. In reality, a song requires structure of some kind. Similarly to how a building requires a good blueprint to model it after,…

  • 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…

  • Step #6 of Writing Great Melodies – Introduce Some Variation

    Step #6 of Writing Great Melodies – Introduce Some Variation Once we have the framework of our melody set up, a question that often next comes to mind is “Where do I go from here?”. In this blog post, we’ll talk about how introducing variation can help differentiate sections. We’ll also discuss methods you could…

  • 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…