For every great song you’ve heard and love right now, somebody wrote them. Someone blended them into rhythms and melodies with the work of good production, mixing and mastering. In as much as production, mixing and mastering are very important in music production process, the origin is songwriting. How do you write good songs?
If you have the best producer who can also mix and master professionally but have a poorly written song, it won’t fly. This means that good production must always meet good well written song.
Let me repeat again, “Good Production Must Always Meet Good Written Song”.
In other words, songwriting is the origin of a well produced song. As the Bible says “If the foundation is destroyed what can the righteous do?” That is, if there’s a problem with writing of a song, then automatically the song will have a problem when produced.
WHAT IS SONGWRITING?
Now what is Songwriting? Most people defines songwriting as the lyrics writing. In as much it looks good, it is incomplete.
Songwriting is not just about writing lyrics, no, it’s an art and act of using music properties such as rhythms , melodies, etc, to compose(create) music. So when you say I am a songwriter, you are indirectly saying I am a music creator. Creating music is a very hard work because a lot of tools are involved and by tools I mean skills included. A songwriter must be very skillful in music, must understand melody and harmony in music, must understand the relationship between different instruments and sounds because these are what will be needed to make you effective in writing songs and these will lead me to tips on writing good songs
TIPS ON WRITING GOOD SONGS
For today, I have only two tips of writing good songs here and they are based on what I have learnt over time and experienced.
1. MUSICALITY
Like I have mentioned earlier, a songwriter must be a person who is musically sound. Most times when I compose songs, it starts from the chord progression. Once I have a steady progression, I start by creating the rhythms and melodies (solfa notes) in my head which are in line with the progression. Then I’ll put words (lyrics) on the rhythm and melody I’ve created. After that, I’ll start writing out the voice parts, bass line, drum line, etc. Finally, I’ll probably call my musicians together and rehearse the song with them to hear the outcome of my composition.
I could do all these because I am musically sound. If I don’t know a jack about music I won’t be able to. For me, I am not even stopping at increasing my musical knowledge. I am making all efforts to increase my musical knowledge. So to create good music, you have to be musically inclined. The more you increase in knowledge, the easier it becomes to write good songs.
2. KNOWLEDGE
In additional to been musically sound as a songwriter, you must be loaded with knowledge. One of the major challenges with musicians is that they are void of knowledge. Some are even void of the knowledge of their profession, that’s sad, and that’s why when they write songs, they are lyrically empty. The words of the songs have no single weight. So if you are a songwriter, you need to be exposed. To write good songs, get books and read, listen to great speakers. The more you do that, the more it will reflect in your songs because, “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”
This is where I will be stopping today. I will continue on my next write-up, don’t forget to follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @Bidemi113
Adewale Ogunleye, also known as Bidemi is a musician, music instructor, songwriter and a music artist. He is a member of the Music Estate Team of talented musicians. You can always follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @Bidemi113.
I am a Musician , Songwriter, Music Instructor, Event Organizer and a Mentor to many in the music industry and in other sector
