Song writing crash course

Where to start?

Depending on the type of musician, there are a multitude of different ways you can approach writing
a song from start to finish – lyrics, melody, harmony, rhythm, hook, texture, timbre, or arrangement.
Given that there are many places one can start, it is always best to start with what feels most
intuitive to you as a musician – whilst a drummer may feel comfortable starting off their writing
process with a specific rhythm, a pianist may feel more comfortable fleshing out harmony, whereas
a vocalist will likely gravitate towards lyrics, melody or hook first. Before you start your process, have
a look at each of these terms below and decide on what feels most intuitive for you.

Glossary of Terms

Lyrics – words of any language that are applied in a specified structure well-suited to be sung or
performed alongside music. Whilst this may be very poetic and contain rhyming structures or
sequences, this is not always necessary.

Melody – a rhythmical succession of tones/pitches occurring one at a time, producing a distinct

musical phrase or idea.

Harmony – the overlaying of multiple tones/pitches over one another to create chords and chord
progressions which help give a piece of music a sense of momentum and forward movement.

Rhythm – an established pattern of regular or irregular percussive pulses which contribute towards
the backbeat in most forms of music. Since rhythm is a concept tied to time and not pitch, this can
be combined and considered in relation to melody, and harmony individually and collectively.

Hook – a specific musical phrase (melodic, harmonic or sometimes rhythmic) which occurs
frequently within a piece of music, and can be considered the most memorable part of the piece.

Texture – is how the tempo, melodic, and harmonic materials are combined in a musical
composition, determining the overall quality of the sound in a piece. This is tied heavily to the
instruments or arrangement used in a piece. Texture can vary from thick (many instruments) to thin
(few instruments), or somewhere in-between the two.

Timbre – distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices or musical instruments.
This a more advanced concept to consider as it relates to psychoacoustic (the study of how certain
frequencies, or sound combinations incur certain psychological human responses). The easiest way
to understand this is what combination of instruments will contribute to the overall mood conveyed
in a piece, and how will changes instruments effect this.

Arrangement – this describes the type of instrumentation used in a piece of music (i.e. what
instruments will or won’t be used in the piece). Different combinations are useful to consider for
certain stylistic or genre considerations.

Prosody – the natural rhythmic, stress and tonal inflections inherent in spoken words.
Prosody Explained

In every language in existence, there is a natural inflection of rhythm, stress and pitch with every
word or phrase. When writing a piece of music, this becomes particularly useful to bear in mind
when writing lyrics, melody or a hook. As an efficient songwriter, you want to be able to identify the
natural prosody within a given phrase, and work out how to use these inflections to your advantage
to make writing a song easier.

To make this easier to analyse and implement, here are a few aspects to consider when analysing
the prosody of a lyric:

1. Syllables – these are the ‘bare bones’ aspect of speech and written words, which can be
essentialised to a unit of pronunciation having one vowel sound, with or without
surrounding consonants, forming the whole or a part of a word. It’s useful to breakdown
how many syllables you have in each line of lyrics, and afterwards go on to identify where
your plosive syllables lie (p, t, k, b, d, g) such that you know where your stressed syllables lie.
2. Stresses – this can be described as which phrases or words are strong (plosive) and which
are soft (non-plosive). Breaking down the stressed syllables in each line of lyrics helps
establish which words work best on a strong/accented beat in a bar, and which lyrics can fall
on weaker beats.
3. Rhythm – take note of each line of lyrics and work on identifying long and short
syllables/words. By having an indication of syllables and stresses, half of your rhythm has
been worked out. Once you establish long and short sounds, play around with the phrasing
of each sound (e.g. try a long sound for 1, 2 and then 3 beats – which sounds better/more
natural?)
4. Pitch – all the other concepts have to do with the ways in which we perceive rhythm or time
in reference to words, now start talking through each line of lyrics. Notice that each word
has its own individual pitch setting even when spoken, and in addition to this when certain
words are combined with others, the natural pitch will change with each word. Create a type
of frequency graph for yourself for each line, taking note of the movement from syllable to
syllable or word to word, how pitch varies. Once you have this, you have the natural
indication of how these words inflect pitch when spoken – using this when singing is
extremely useful, as if a melody resembles the contour of the words when spoken, it is more
likely to be memorable in the ear of the listener. Now you can go ahead and construct the
melody, with an idea of pitch, rhythm, and stresses that naturally occur within each lyrical
line.