Finish More Songs with Process
We songwriters rarely get to choose how our songs come to us. Concept, chords, or melody first, these elements tend to descend on our bedroom nightstands in the late hours of the night or early morning before we’re fully conscious. We know that familiar shiver when the air around us sparkles with inspiration. Too often we also know the familiar feeling of that inspiration dwindling before we capture the full song in its finished form.
Many of us write with a consistent process, if we even are aware of one. Our process consists of a single element that tends to grab us before other elements do. Melody and chords, chords alone, lyric lines, or a concept drift by promising our truest song yet. These pieces form a framework over which we lay the other elements. But what do we do when the other elements aren’t falling into place? How do we finish a song when starting with only one piece of the framework?
The answers depend on where we start. I’ve gathered together some tools my co-writers and I like to use to pull a song together, no matter what element we start with. Try them out for a week or two, and see which ones help you to push that song idea just fast enough that it gains momentum on its own.
Starting with a Lyric Concept
We may not have lyric lines, but we can feel the concept in our bones. It’s a truth we’ve learned about life, love, or loss, and we know it would make a good tune. The only problem is, we don’t know how to organize all the angles on the idea into song form. To help with this, try free-writing about the concept for 5-10 minutes. Getting all your thoughts out onto the page without concern for rhyme or rhythm means we’re free to say whatever feels true. Once you’ve dumped your ideas, you can rest easy knowing that your title and even lyric lines are contained within your free-writing. All you need to do is read over them and consider words, phrases, and even full sentences as pieces of lyric.
Starting with a Title or Chorus
Some writers wake up singing little hooks, melodies and grooves or lyric bits that just feel like hooks. These ideas scream chorus material, and we can’t wait to record them, knowing their commercial value and instant accessibility. The only problem is, that chorus high ultimately fades without strong verses to hold it up. In this case, what we need is a change of perspective. Choruses deliver the big picture, the main idea, while verses give supporting evidence why that main idea is true. To write verses, we need to get specific, and that means we need to get bold. Setting the scene, choosing a situation to write about, and establishing the characters are all actions of the first verse. Free-writing about a small moment or situation with the senses of taste, touch, sight, sound, smell and movement in mind is a great way to come up with verse material. Another great exercise is outlining the song content. In just a sentence, describe in your own words the basic content of verse 1, then the chorus, then verse 2 and the next chorus. If there’s a bridge and pre-choruses, describe their basic content, too. Don’t write lyric, but give yourself the opportunity to describe in conversational language the point of each section. Make sure it’s clear enough that you could go back to the outline a month from now and still know what you meant to say.
Starting with a Groove and Chord Progression
The groove and chords of a song are king, and laid down first, they already establish a range of emotion our character(s) are feeling. A lyric concept can turn on its head with a new groove and chords, it’s so powerful in its coloring of our words. Taking a sad lyric and pairing it with a lighter groove can be a wonderful way to experiment with your assumptions about a musical and lyrical idea. Free-writing while listening to a recorded and looped groove can help us generate lyric ideas that seem consistent with the character of the music. From there, we can lift title possibilities and lyric lines. Those lyric lines can serve as the basic rhythmic pattern of the melody.
Starting with Melody
Not my favorite entrance in on its own, melody definitely holds the power to elevate the believability of a lyric, hook the listener with a singable moment, and work in tandem with the chords and groove. In my experience, writers who start with melody often hear chords underneath, though they may not recognize what they are. Vocalists or lyricists starting with melody often express a desire to hear a particular chord, and know when what they’re hearing the instrumentalist play misses the mark. In this instance, I recommend sitting down early with an instrumentalist, so that you can be inspired by the groove and chord progression they’re playing. Establishing a tempo while you sing your melody alone helps the instrumentalist find the meter, and translate that into a groove. Don’t be afraid to change your melodic pitches to accommodate new chords you like, and always be attuned to how those chords ‘flavor’ the lyric that might sit there. Ultimately, melody infers chords that carries the motion forward underneath. Begin to recognize the motions that you hear, and you’ll be able to translate that to your cowriters with more confidence, even as you’re not play those chords yourself on an instrument.
Given enough time, we songwriters will talk ourselves out of almost every great song idea we have. Remember that it’s not the initial idea that determines the value of the song, but whether the song gets finished and brings you and possibly those around you some satisfaction. All the great writers you know and love write mediocre songs. In fact, without those beige, forgettable pieces of art, we’d never hear the magical ones.
Stay creative,
Andrea Stolpe
