To help me get started with my song I looked at some blog posts to help me get ideas on how to write a song as I have never done it before.
You’ll realise just how similar most songs are. Certain
patterns, themes, motifs and chord structures are repeated across artists and
genres. As a songwriter, analysing songs should become a habit, a reaction as
natural as pulling your finger away from a hot stove.
Song Structure
Most pop songs follow a simple structure:
Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Bridge-Chorus or similar variations.
Chord Progressions
Most pop and rock songs follow simple chord progressions. As
mentioned above, I, IV, and V chords in any scale are called its primary
chords. Combining these chords in various permutations is the basis of
thousands of songs.
Let’s see some examples:
I-IV: Used in verse of “Imagine” by John Lennon,
I-IV-V-I: Used in “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt.
I-V-IV-I: “All the Small Things” by Blink-182
Throw in a minor chord – Vi – and you get the most popular
chord progression in music (I-IV-V-Vi). This is often called the pop-punk
progression and has been used in thousands of songs. In fact, it is so popular
that there’s even a Wikipedia
entry with a huge list of songs based on it. You’ll recognise
some of these – “Not Afraid” by Eminem, “Someone Like You” by Adele, “Take Me
Home, Country Roads” by John Denver, etc.
You can use this tool to
generate chord progressions automatically.
Writing Lyrics
For many people, writing lyrics is the easiest part of
songwriting. For others, it is the hardest. Whichever side of the divide you
may fall on, you can benefit from these lyric-writing tips:
Notice how Adele stretches the ‘ee’ part in ‘deep’ when
singing “Rolling in the Deep”. That’s because words ending in vowels can be
stretched while singing. Keep this in mind while writing your lyrics.
Write like you would sing. Hum each line while writing,
preferably accompanied by a guitar or piano.
Being poetic doesn’t mean being profound. Sometimes the
silliest of things can sound great when sung.
Borrow motifs and themes commonly used in your genre, but
don’t over-rely on them. To write truly great songs, you must break the mould
and go beyond what’s comfortable.
(Mikoluk, 2013)
Songwriters will: find warm-up exercises that revolutionise songwriting imagery; use a rhyming dictionary and a thesaurus to generate ideas and find snappy rhyme; create meaningful metaphors and similes while avoiding cliches; develop verses by using or breaking conventional rules; experiment with point of view in every lyric to make a song stand out (Pattison, 1995)
I also looked at a video on how to write a song and I came across this video of Emeli Sandé talking about how she comes about writing song which i found really interesting.
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