The following article comes from Writing Hit Songs by Jimmy Kachulis, one of more than 250 courses available from Berklee Online. Founded in 2002, Berklee Online is the premier innovator and largest provider of worldwide music education, offering more than 75,000 students from 144 countries the renowned curriculum of Berklee College of Music, at a fraction of the cost. Through Berklee Online’s award-winning online courses, certificates, bachelor’s, and master’s degree programs, students receive expert music instruction and emerge with the skills to exceed the demands of the music industry.
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There are no rules in songwriting. We’ll get into that more shortly, but if you take these guiding principles to heart and genuinely put them into practice, you’ll be able to make the most of your growth as a songwriter. I recommend you review these regularly. Daily at first, until they become part of your nature.
Be Willing to Work
Buying a gym membership, even going to the gym, really won’t do a lot if you don’t actually work out.
Many self-help books have the potential to be beneficial. However, buying the book, reading the book and even having “ah-ha” moments will do little on their own if you do not apply the principles. Applying them is work.
In the examples above, doing the work may seem obvious, but in creative fields, we sometimes forget this.
Just as a concert pianist must practice, a songwriter must write. Both skill and creativity expand the more time and attention we give to our writing.
You’re reading an article about songwriting right now. You can read through the material, watch videos, and listen to songs. That by itself will provide you with some knowledge.
However, knowing and doing are not the same thing. It’s one thing to know what to do. It’s another to actually do it.
We get better by doing.
Get out there and listen to what songs are on the chart now. It’s obviously a good idea to check the charts within the genre you plan to write for, but try doing this exercise with genres outside of your comfort zone. Break down what makes these songs unique, write out the structure of each one that grabs your ear. What is the rhythm part for the verses? What does the melody do when it gets to the chorus? What are the lyrical themes? After some deep listening and analysis, try to come up with your own song that follows that structure.
Keep an Attitude of Openness
An attitude of openness is having an open mind, being open to growing, and being open to exploring new ways.
When we try new things, it can be helpful to remember that they won’t always go perfectly. If we allow ourselves to be immediately discouraged by this and revert back to doing only what we already know, we will likely experience little growth.
Instead, if we embrace the challenges that come with trying something new, we can increase our abilities.
The purpose of exploring new songwriting techniques is not for you to change or stop the way you’re writing now. Rather, its intention is to allow you to add to and expand what you’re currently doing. When we open our creative souls, new possibilities emerge.
Tools, Not Rules!
Tools and rules are different. Being aware of their differences is important.
Rules are something we follow blindly, without thinking, without a need for understanding and often without fully realizing their implication. When we follow rules, the rules become our boss.
Tools, in contrast, work for us. They involve technique and skill. Tools are used with intention to create effects. We choose when and how to use them based on our creative instincts, decisions, and experience.
When you study the songs of other artists you’ll be presented with tools that are used in songwriting. You’ll also be presented with methods to develop your technique and skill using the tools. It is important to avoid mistaking these methods, exercises, or even the tools for “rules of songwriting.” There are no rules of songwriting!
There are, however, tools that songwriters use to create effects. When you dissect somebody else’s song and look at it or read interviews with songwriters you admire, you’ll be able to examine methods that will help you build the skills and develop the techniques so you can master the use of many songwriting tools.
Nurture Your Relationships with Fellow Songwriters
You may be a great singer. You may be a great musician. You may be a great songwriter. There are many great singers, musicians, and songwriters on the planet. In the industry, a professional level of skill/talent is expected. It’s a given. However, there are many people with great skills/talent that do not experience the success they desire. Those that experience flourishing careers typically have learned to develop abilities beyond just their musical and songwriting skills/talent. They have developed effective interpersonal skills.
Your ability to build and nurture lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with others in various areas of the industry is an important factor of your success.
Take the opportunity to meet other songwriters and further hone your relationship-building skills. It will pay off.
Interact to Create Community
After you’ve begun to nurture relationships, the next step is to create a sense of community. Introduce songwriting friends to other songwriting friends. This type of interaction is conducive to creativity and is essential for development. The more you interact with others, the more others will interact with you.
When you’re actively involved with other songwriters, creating a safe place to share, all benefit and are able to grow.
Further developing your communication, community-building, and relationship-building skills are essential for your success in the music industry.
Grasp an Understanding Rather Than Grasping for Answers
We’re in an era of wanting everything immediately. We demand whatever app we use to deliver potato chips to our door by drone in a matter of minutes. We expect people to reply to our text messages in milliseconds. We want answers fast.
Who wouldn’t? We’re all human. We’re all in a hurry. We’ve got stuff to do. (Texts to reply to. Potato chips to eat!)
The problem with quick answers is that sometimes they don’t allow us to know why or how that answer was reached. In such cases we often don’t know how to get to the answer again and/or apply its fundamental principles in a different setting. This means we really haven’t learned.
A proverb that has been widely attributed to writer Anne Isabella Ritchie goes like this: “Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Show a person how to fish and you feed them for a lifetime.” This is very fitting for your work as a songwriter.
Looking at the work of other songwriters and talking to other songwriters and taking songwriting classes will show you “how to fish.” But if you just give a cursory glance for answers, you’ll likely miss it.
Here’s one understanding that’s important to grasp: Whenever you create a song, you’re always using the songwriting tools in the four aspects of a song. Those four aspects are melody, harmony, lyrics, and form. You use the tools in these areas to create the following three effects:
- Emphasis: The songwriting tools are often used to emphasize the important points of the lyric story.
- Standard moves/surprising moves (variation tools): There are standard, or common, moves in melody, harmony, lyrics, and form. Once you learn the standard moves, you can start poking around to find the tools to use to vary the standard moves and surprise your audience.
- Intensity: The tools are often used to build up or break down a song’s emotional intensity. This can happen within or between sections.
Understand the Three Stages of Songwriting
The way I see it, there are three stages of songwriting:
- Ideas: To create ideas that have melody, harmony, and lyrics
- Building Sections: To develop your ideas into sections
- Contrasting Sections: To create sections that differ for maximum effectiveness
As you go through each of these stages of songwriting, keep in mind the following:
- Creative Process: The creative process is a circle: generate, then assess, then generate, then assess. When you generate ideas, you will assess them, and then you will be able to move on to building sections. After you’ve built sections, you’ll assess them, and move on to contrasting sections. Pretty soon you’ll be able to assess the song as a whole.
- Audience Dynamic: In all the aspects of a song—melody, harmony, lyrics, and form—keep in mind what you want your audience to respond to in this song. Do you want the audience to be listening to it, singing along with it, dancing to it? This will determine everything about the song from the melody, harmony, and rhythmic groove, to what you sing about, to what song form you choose. Make sure you keep this in mind for every song you write.
- Rewrite the Hits as a Process: We’ve already touched upon this, but I can’t emphasize it enough that hit songs are one of the best sources for creative ideas. This is the way the pros really write: they take a hit song and use some of the tools to create their own variation on it. It’s one of the secrets of songwriting—and something that makes it much easier and more enjoyable. Keep it in mind when you’re stuck for ideas.
Remember, songwriting is not a destination but a continuous, circular journey. It is a journey of creativity, assessment, and growth, and as you embark on it, let these principles serve as your guide. Keep honing your skills, stay open to possibilities, and let your unique voice resonate.
Image via Berklee Online.
