How To Write Out Music Part 1

Hey. This blog post is for all of you songwriters and copyists who use a notation program in order to get your song ideas down. This would be an excellent tutorial for all of you ambitious copyists. It shows you how to open up and write down score and parts to make having records of your music easy. Below is a video that gives you most of the instruction on how to get started actually writing  music.

I hope that this video was informative and helpful for you. I am planning on doing a video series for those of you who may be interested. I also have ideas for how to create a lead sheet for your songs in a following blog post.
Until then, happy music making!

Dear Followers,

I am not sure whether I told you this, but I've been running a free promotion of my recent Kindle Book called "How To Write a Song in 30 Minutes or Less" Today is the last day of the free promotion on Kindle Direct Publishing. Feel free to go to http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ICZTUR4 to obtain your free copy!

Formation of A Songwriting Idea --Setting Points of Intrigue In Various Ways

• Setting Points of Intrigue

The first thing that is important is to set the tone. You have to set points of intrigue to get your juices flowing. Some songwriters are skilled craftsman enough to just create songs with no impetus. But most songwriters have to have some story, some hitch that will get your juices flowing in some direction.

The first thing that is important is to set the tone. You have to set points of intrigue to get your juices flowing. Some songwriters are skilled craftsman enough to just create songs with no impetus to create. That's okay. If you are able to do that and have a constant of creative juices to get you through, then okay. But most songwriters have to have some story, some hitch that will get your juices flowing in some direction. It could be a particular word, a particular phrase, a particular story or chapter. You could be inspired by an ad or TV show, a movie, or an infomercial. You just need something to draw your music and lyrics from. You have to have a seed or a topic to base your song or songs on.  Many songs have the American idiom in them relating to the wars on terror or the idiom of love lost or gained. Many songs are written from songwriters' own experiences of love lost or gained. Whatever experience drives the impetus for your creativity, use it.

Writing without an impetus to create is going to produce material that weighs less to you. You will end up laughing at yourself as you write stuff that is meaningless. This is what others say. This is what the critics would judge on. But your impetus to create could be as so small like a pinprick or a thought about something attractive or multiple things that come to mind. Feel free to mix and match those things in order to create the environment in which you will write. These images or other things that attract you could create the strong back bone that you need to lift the song from its humble beginnings to being a hit among hits in the business.

One question that may arise is: Is there away to create the impetus for songwriting creativity? The answer to that is there is a way. Turn on the TV. Turn on the radio. Listen to talk shows. Listen to religious programs. Get something in your spirit and your vibe that takes you away, that helps you create the back bones to award-winning songs. Make fun of what your critics say. Let's say someone accused you of something in your past, write a song around it. Trust me, it will get a lot off your chest. The trick is to use creative word choice to dissuade from the fact that it's about the people around you.

-Find Stories to Use for Intrigue

I'll give you some examples in this section of how I am able to use stories as points of intrigue to spark your songwriting. Many artists use stories from the war, stories from their friends, stories of hardship and longing, stories of happiness and blessed times, even stories that are quite nonsensical to put into songs to make them sell.

For example, right now, I am using the horror story about a musician struggling to find his way and work at the local coffee houses. When he is unsuccessful, he's at this other coffee shop and he suffers a massive seizure that prompts immediate medical attention. Throughout the story, I put in sample lyrics that the wounded musician would be singing as the emergency personnel are carrying him out of the lobby of the coffee shop and into a waiting medical response vehicle. One of these songs is called "Driving The Gig." The chorus to the song is a sort of tagline that goes like this: "You can get your drive on all the time/But Lord, you just can't hide/Riding away, I'd ride, Driving the gig."

Now, you may be asking what this part of the song means. It basically means, you can try hard much of the time, but no matter how much you ride, you'd be hoping for the gig to come. Of course, different songwriters would have different meanings and interpretations based on what I've put here. But that's okay. The lyrics don't have to mean anything to people until later on until after the song has been out a while.

Paul Simon uses stories as a way to evoke deep memories of the times and events surrounding the sixties, including the Vietnam War Protests, Civil Rights and other movements. One story he tells has to do with a boxer who has searched high and low fighting for a cause that he thinks is pointless but continuing to search for salvation. It has become one of the biggest and best selling songs on his album Bridge Over Troubled Water.

To break the song down, Simon starts by talking about how the supposed boxer is a poor boy who is promised a pocket full of mumbles such as promises. What are these mumbles that Simon talks about? This is just my opinion, but the mumbles were the riches that were promises of better things to come. The main character is forced to roll with life's punches and suffice with what little he is given. He goes on living his life traveling from train to train, getting what little he can get for his more than modest efforts to look for work. Hence "Asking only workman's wages, I come looking for a job, but I get no offers, Just a come on from the whores on Seventh avenue.

I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome, I took some comfort there."

Bridge Over Troubled Water by fortune of a different design was used as a message of calming embrace as if to say, "I will lay down my life, my insecurities for your comfort. Hence, the line in the chorus, "I will lay me down." The opening lines "When you're weary, feeling small. When tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all" are a set up to this magnetic chorus that explodes from the speakers of any venue playing the song as a message addressing the weary and dragging crowd.

In the song's line, "If you need a friend, I'm sailing right behind," there is the promise of a friend whenever you need a comforting soul to make it through a hard or lonely day or night. "Bridge" makes the use of saving production for the last verses. This is known as the kitchen sink production. Every surging depth of instrumentation is on hold until the very last verse. This signifies the climax of the song. Everything in the verse up to the final reprise of "Like a bridge over troubled water, I will ease your mind!" is expertly written and executed in the recording as an anthem to heal a nation suffering through a decade filled with tragedy.

Other songs are laced with humorous longing as in "Why Don't You Write Me?" and "So Long Frank Lloyd Wright "and a slim chance tale of going across the county line driving who knows what in "Keep The Customer Satisfied." Much of the songs composed on this album have a two verse or three verse system with or without a bridge and instrumental break. The three verse song is mostly a traditional staple used by most artists before and since the making of Bridge.

A lot of songs written by Simon in the sixties had short times just over two minutes, some just over one. But it was also with Bookends and this album that Simon began to experiment with longer timed songs that had more involved stories in the lyrics. Many artists since this album in the history of pop and rock have done the "extended version" or "extended outro" device that became popular on many of the rock albums beginning in the mid-1970's where the guitarists and other featured instruments would do outrageous solos and orchestrations in order to sell the album and the record if it wound up on the radio.

"Hotel California" is a particular song that had this trademark. The solo that would be the one of the hour here would be the two guitars' riff played by Don Felder and Joe Walsh. They trade off in intervals of thirds doing arpeggios (in it happens to be B minor) up and down the scale. Chicago featured the extended outro in the brass arrangements that ended many of their hits.

While we're on the subject of using stories as a point of intrigue, there is also a possibility of songwriting based on poems that have already been written that may or may not have been intended to be songs. In 2003, Art Garfunkel made a comeback album called Everything Waits to be Noticed where his collaborators Buddy Maddock and Mia Sharp helped transform poems from Garfunkel's 1989 book Still Water to pass for grand hits like "The Kid," "Bounce," and "Perfect Moment." When you take a poem to put it to a song, it can be achieved in two ways: You can either leave the original poem in its entirety and put memorable melodies to it, as Garfunkel originally tried to do or you can do what his two collaborators did and transform it into a song by summarizing various lines of the poem and then adding other filler lines that are more musical.

Take this video for example: 

It also important to take from any other experiences that you experience or use words that you either write or find to help you write the song of your dreams. The next blog post will go into the emotions that start songs and other music.

Elements of Songwriting--Part of How to Write A Song in 30 Minutes or Less

One of the first things that you have to have at your disposal are the elements of a song. Those elements are what a huge part of this blog post's content is about. These are broken up into five different elements.

Melody

The first one is called melody. This is probably the most important element in the songwriting process. In today's music most melodies are written in the aural tradition. Some people may pay a copyist to write the melody as it is played by the original writer.

Many melodies that are written and played today are simple, two to five note melodies that are easily hummable by the general public. 

Many melodies bounce back and forth between two or three notes, thus repeating them many times. A key word for melodies these days is repetition. You want something that stays in people's ears. You want something that gets their attention. These days melodic repetition is the way to do it.

Chords

Chords are perhaps the foundations of all music. They give the song structure and voicing so that melody can arise. Harmony is another term for this. You build chords or harmony by stacking one note on top of another, ensuring that each note is a third apart. A third is a musical interval that measures the distance between two notes that are two notes apart from each other on the keyboard. Think of the tone of the third as a very sweet sounding combination when paired together. These are your building blocks for melody. When you strum a guitar or play a piano or play any other instrument, among the first things you play are chords. These are the building blocks of the songwriting process.

Rhythm

Rhythm is another central part of the songwriting process in that it is the element that moves the song through verse, chorus and bridges. It is the part of a song that isn't static. In other words, it causes the rest of the song to move in a fashion that is hooked to the listener's ear from beginning to end. It causes people to dance. It is the glue that holds the song together.

Words

Words or lyrics provide the message or messages o the song that make it stand out to people. Whether the song is about a lost relationship, a difficult time in life, or whether it is happy and about partying or about the Lord, the message of the song is just as the music is in getting into people's heads.

Timbre or Quality

What is the quality of the song? What are the timbres of the instruments? Is the combination loud and rowdy or is it soft like a ballad or classical-sounding piece? This is one of the final elements of songwriting that you decide when you first put chords and melody together. Think of it as the expression of the song that also helps the lyrics take on a new tone. Do you want the song to be aggressive, light, happy or otherwise? As the songwriter, you choose how to convey the music and its message.

With these simple definitions, you can start writing songs with power and feeling in no time! For a more in-depth tutorial on songwriting consult my book How to Write A Song In 30 Minutes or Less.

Want To Learn A Bit About Lyrics? Read this post!

When writing songs, melody and the music bed usually come first. Most songs, however have a message to convey--something to say. That is where lyrics come in. These are words that you put in the song to make it stand out above the other songs on the market. These words help you write hooks and catch phrases to keep the listeners listening. The goal of this article is to teach you how to come up with those phrases that are oh so infectious to listeners. So, here we go.

The first step to writing good lyrics is to think of a subject that highly interests you. Pick a subject that you can derive a lot of hooks from. What are hooks? They are simply repetitions of catchy phrases. Take for example the samples below:

Dreaming of you,

Sipping that ocean view,

In my cup.

Thinking of you,

Seeing you

In the sun.

There ain't no good lesson

You can't teach,

It's like a true confession,

I need to breech,

Whoa! ho! Ho!

What's that you're doing,

You know what you're doing,

Girl, you drive me wild.

You love like a red rose gun [HOOK]

Shooting my heart with your puns,

Praying at church,

For you love like a red rose gun.

This is just a tiny example of how you can take a subject (in this case, "red rose gun") and turn it into a hook. The hook can, as it is in this case, act as the subject of an entire chorus:

You love like a red rose gun [HOOK]

Shooting my heart with your puns,

There is another type of hook that is used more commonly in pop music today. It is just a simple, provocative bunch of words that get people's attention. The artist uses that knowledge to bang the listener over the head by repeating that one phrase over and over. Another example is below:

Shooting blanks,

Shooting blanks,

No giving thanks,

Shooting blanks.

Notice how often the phrase "shooting blanks" is mentioned within the chorus. It is meant to be there to keep the listeners listening--to keep them dancing. As you keep practicing writing lyrics, over time, you will be able to create better hooks that would make instant hits on the radio.

Next, let's go over how to distinguish between genuine lyrics and pure poetry. Yes, they are two different things. I used to think that any poetic writing could be twisted and turned into lyrics but the book The Art of Writing Lyrics proved me wrong. It is best to avoid having language that is very flowery or have a distorted cadence. It is best to have short, sweet, sloganeering phrases.  You want to have phrases with shorter words and a simple cadence that will give itself to rhymes almost automatically. For example, take the following lyrics into consideration:

I need a lover,

Not no money grubber,

I need a lover,

To sooth my mind,

She's gotta have her own car,

To drive me wild,

Let your hair down,

Kiss my smile.

Poetry would read something different. Take something like this for example:

The Elegy of the Broken Rose

By: Cody Weinmannn 

This, yes, you may call it a song

The mere spirit of thee

Though thou isith no more

Than a sad elegy

The strength for music

Envelops the strength for prose

For this is the story

Of the broken rose

It once had shown so beautiful 

And thou prayeth thee to keep me alive

And it did keeping honest truth

And abolishing lies

That could clutter,

Clutter the limitless, blue skies

The rose, the hypnotic goddess of love

Hath thou lavished thee

With a dear prayer from up above

To block away enshrined secrecy

One day, a gray sky

Showers down upon my precious rose and I

Rain as it were swept the rose away

And soon did my days decay

Under the black- and- white- trimmed skies of gray

Not even could Heaven seem aplay

And so the story goes on

Down by the bay,

That the heart of big hopes

Began to crack and spray,

All in a sea of red

Of deepest masquerade 

Did he drown and fade,

His memories no longer were

All that was left was the shattered splotches of rose

Yes, it had come back, though shattered,

Amidst the sea of red masquerade

And next to it lay the bones, weary,

The heart cracked and eerie.

So eerie and exploded in the ruckus of emotion ,

And ruptured bits of its premises,

Are ever constituent to all of the love he had,

For sheer, true, obsessive memories.

© 2006, Cody Weinmann

Disqualification: Poetry vs. Lyrics

As you look at this piece of work, there are elements that immediately disqualify the work as a lyric or set of lyrics. One of those elements is the cadence or rhythm. If you read the poem, the cadence isn't that singable. It's not a uniform cadence all around. The cadence of a lyric is formed by things called syllables. In this piece, one line may have 5 syllables while another one will have 11. It is very oblong. Song lyrics have equal numbers of syllables per line or a typical pattern that is present throughout.

Another disqualifying thing about this piece is there is not an apparent title on this poem. There is a mention of the title of the poem one time throughout the whole poem.  Songs and song lyrics mention the title multiple times, preferably at the end of choruses and in between the bridges of the songs. This piece doesn't emulate that.

Another disqualifying element is the fact there is no established verse-chorus format. It reads like a rambling, free-verse poem. There are no breaks for choruses or verses. There is no uniformity the length of each chunk of poetry going on. Some of them have 5 lines; others have ten or more. It is free verse in its classic form.

The text is also not conversational and quick. Song lyrics require a conversational flow in order for the average listener to stay in tune with the performer. An example of a conversational lyric is this:

Your love is like a rose,

That fills with sweet perfume,

As it grows,

I thought you'd really like to know.

The multiple rhymes alone would give away that this is a lyric, but just read it. Hear how it bounces from line to line. Take a few glances at the cadence. For example, the first line is six syllables. The second line is seven syllables. The third line is only 3 syllables. The final line is eight syllables. Essentially, you have a 6-10-8 or 6-8-10 syllable configuration that makes for a bouncy cadence and gives you a great range of rhythmic possibilities. This is an essential figure of music lyrics. You have to make sure the lyric lines you write influence a rhythm almost right off the bat. Another good format is a 3-6-9 verse pattern. There are many differences between poems and lyrics. If you'd like to read up more on this, read the book "The Art of Writing Lyrics" by Pamela Phillips Oland. It provides writers a distinct formula for writing lyrics so that you could make hits over time.

Process of Writing Lyrics

The process of writing lyrics starts with a music bed. Once you have the basic music bed written, pick a topic that you think is relevant for people today. Love songs usually work for this. Suggestions for topics include:

Love,

Being lost with no opportunity,

money,

God,

Personal stories… The list goes on.

If you are in need of song subjects, you can reference the book 1000 Songwriting Ideas by Lisa Aschmann. There are tons of ideas in this book along with how to execute those ideas.

Once you come up with your idea or subject, form parts of a melody that could give way to sounds. An easy way to do this is go to an instrument (i.e. piano) and play a few notes that are also in the chords in your recorded music bed. Start humming those pitches after playing them a few times. Then experiment with vowels (A,E,I, O U). Sing each syllable on each note to tell which vowels would be a strain for you at certain pitches and which ones are perfect for you. Establish a set of vowels to repeat over and over. Soon, those vowels will turn into words. Take the first words that come to mind and form them into a line. Sing the line over and over until you feel that the lyrics you've written fit your music. After this first line, do subsequent lines that are somewhat related to your song subject and the details of the first line. For example:

Days are bright 

The sky tonight,

Feels so right,

uh huh, it feels so right,

Can't get enough,

Just get enough of you babe.

© 2013. Cody Weinmann.

This is obviously a song about the last days of life and dying, but the rhyme scheme is right. It doesn't have the 3-6-9 or 6-8-10 verse form but the rhyme scheme can make up for that. After the first initial lines, the rest pretty much speaks for itself. Writing a chorus is a similar process but the differences can be making a hook that repeats often throughout the chorus, the mentioning of the title toward the end of the chorus. The reason that there isn't a set format for this is because each song has a different construction depending on the ideas the composer comes up with.

In another article, I can show you how to construct a chorus and what the different types of choruses are. This article is just the beginning portion of how to write a song. It is meant to get you started writing lyrics in no time.

"How To Write A Song In 30 Minutes or Less" is a fast lane intro into the land of songwriting, teaching everything from how to keep an idea flowing from brain to paper, to writing melody and lyrics. A chapter is devoted to each step to give you precise details on what to do and how to do it. There are even two extra chapters devoted to what you should do after writing your masterpiece! If you are a songwriter just starting out, this book has scores of good pointers and advice to get you started. It can be your companion during the process of writing songs quickly and effectively.

The book is to come out within the next 48 hours on Amazon Kindle! If you are interested in learning how to write that first hit song, this book will teach you how! I will be posting content on song and lyric writing and melody writing, so keep posted to this blog for more. I will also get the links for you to buy the book if you wish in the next 3 days.

Until next time, take it easy and happy songwriting!