Posts Tagged ‘write a song’

How to Structure a Song

When thinking about how to structure your song, know that there are no absolutes. There are no wrong ways and right ways. In the popular music culture, there is definitely a predominant structure that is commonly used. But what determines which song structure to use? One important thing to consider when thinking about song structure is the purpose of your song. This will shoot you towards getting a clear idea of how you want to structure your song.

Purpose of your song

What is the purpose of your song? Is it to make money? Is it to get played on the radio? Or maybe you don’t care about the money and the radio play, but you want to make a song that evokes emotion out of its listeners. Maybe your song’s purpose is to stand the test of time and have listeners 40 years from now.

Here’s how the purpose of your song affects your song structure.

If you want to make money with your song by getting it plugged in with pop artists and into the popular radio stations, you want to follow the general song structure that is used. This isn’t true for all cases (example:Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen), but true for most. And what is this general song structure formula? It is along the lines of A-B-A-B-C-B or in other words, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus.

The point of this structure is to have a musical theme set and have it repeat to bring about a sense of familiarity to listeners, then introduce a new section (section C) which gives the listener a sense of freshness. After the new section is introduced, a theme that was introduced before is brought in again which makes the section feel both fresh and familiar. This gives the listener more of a chance to feel hooked in without feeling like the song is boring and repetitive.

This idea of creating a sense of familiarity and variety isn’t constricted to the structure A-B-A-B-C-B. The structure can be expanded to A-B-C-A-B-C-D-B aka verse-prechorus-chorus-verse-prechorus-chorus-bridge-chorus. Another example of an extension is A-B-A-B-A-B-C-B, but be weary of getting the song to sound overly repetitious. You can do this by thinking about varying the instrumentation in each section or even use variations where you might do something a little different in the third verse. Personally, repeating a verse and chorus 3 times before the bridge is too much. I give myself a ‘no more than two’ rule for sections other than the chorus. The chorus is given the ‘no more than three’ rule. You can be creative and add subtle changes to expand A-B-A-B-C-B. Another example is A-B-A-B-C-A-B where you have another verse after the bridge.

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Posted by admin on December 5th, 2009 2 Comments

Tips For Songwriting – How to Write a Song

No one becomes a celebrated songwriter overnight. Even musical geniuses put in a lot of hard work before they have come up with their own masterpieces. Here are some tips for songwriting that you can use to enhance your songwriting skills.

Tip 1: Know how you feel. A song is a reflection of the soul and emotion. If you will write without feeling anything at all, you will not be able to come up with a song worthy of people’s attention.

You have to draw inspiration from what you feel and from what you are. Simply put, you should also know what genre you should write about. Is it a rock song? Do you like happy novelty songs or sentimental love songs? Once you have identified your personality, you will also be able to identify what songs to write. Always remember that one cannot be a jack of all trades.

Tip 2: Focus on the lyrics. Other than the melody, words mean a lot in a song. You can have the greatest song arrangement but if your lyrics do not really voice out what it is supposed to, your audience will not love your song.

Do not use words that are very deep because people who will listen to your song want simple yet profound lyrics. Make it easy to understand.

Tip 3: Arrange the vocal melody. The sound and melody of the song is what your listeners will remember. This includes opening notes and closing notes in a song. Remember that the rise and fall of your melody should also match the words. If the words are of a person who got hurt and is angry, you may want to consider a rising tone.

There are other tips for songwriting but the best tip of all is to practice, practice, practice and write, write, and write more songs until you fell really comfortable with it.

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Posted by admin on November 25th, 2009 No Comments

How to Write Your Own Songs

Becoming a successful song writer is by no means an easy task. It will take a lot to hard work and dedication in order to achieve this goal. It is possible to learn this unique art through reading books and a ton of trial and error. One of the key points is you have to keep practicing over and over. The more you sit down and just attempt to write lyrics more proficient you will become.

When you’re first beginning to write lyrics you need to first figure out your target audience. For instance, are you going to target women, men, kids, etc? You might think this is common sense but there must be a specific guideline that you should follow each time you write a song. Only after you figure out who your songs are going to appeal to you can move onto the next step.

When you are first starting out in songwriting you shouldn’t attempt to write a masterpiece right away. It is recommended that you start with something that already works. By this I mean you should research current songs online and see which ones are selling. When you find some popular songs you should really study the lyrics to them in order to understand what your target audience is buying. This way may be playing it safe but you do not want to get frustrated right when you’re starting.

Now it is time to create your story through the music that you write. If you look at a majority of the professional musicians when they sing their songs, you’ll notice that they are actually telling the story and connecting with the words. This is one of the most important pieces of any song, and that is for the singer to be able to connect to the song and sing it from the heart. The easiest way to accomplish this goal is to use your past experiences. Just think back to every time you have been extremely happy or sad.

Once you get your concept for your song down using one of your strong memories it is best just to write down everything that you remember before you start putting it into lyrics. By doing this, it will allow you to actually see the story written on paper while you are trying to write the lyrics to the song.

If you are serious about becoming a songwriter that I must warn you it will take patience. It is highly recommended that you purchase some books and learn through other peoples successes and failures. That is the only real way to reduce your learning curve and quickly become a professional songwriter.

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Posted by admin on November 15th, 2009 No Comments

Have You Ever Wondered How People Are Able to Come Up With Amazingly Great Songs, Time After Time?

Well, luckily for some, you don’t have to be an extremely experienced music composer to be a good song writer, just look at some of the world’s best song writers of today.

Some of the basic questions that you may have to begin with are do I start with an instrument or with the chords or lyrics? Do I have to ponder the idea for days or just pump out a melody? To tell you the truth there is no one correct way to write a song. It really all depends on you, the song writer, your strengths and uniqueness when it comes to writing music. Over the next few minutes, I am just going to try and convey to you some tips on how to write a song, some starting points and other various ideas.

For your basic song, it doesn’t really matter what particular genre you are in, most songs have the same basic structure. An example of your basic song is as follows:

Intro, Verse One, Chorus, Verse Two, Chorus and Repeat Chorus.

Listen to some of your most loved songs and you’ll almost instantly start to hear that this is the basic structure you hear every time. Remember, the best way to learn, especially in music is by listening to the work of others and then using portions of what you hear as examples.

To begin with, you have your intro. An intro is just as it sounds, the introduction. Your song can be introduced by any instrument or vocalization. As a matter of fact, some songs don’t even have “real” intros so you can skip this part or make it a short rhythm or chord sequence, the choice is yours. You basically are just looking for a start to your song, an opening and a bridge to take you from nothing to something.

Next you have your verse. When you are just learning how to write a song, you want to keep in mind that this is the core sum of what your song is about. These are the lyrics, accompanied by music that help the listener to be able to relate to what you are feeling or thinking.

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Posted by admin on November 13th, 2009 No Comments