Beginner guide – songwriting tips for singers – PART 1
I created this initial guide to provide you with some useful songwriting tips for singers. Keep in mind that this is a beginner’s guide, so these songwriting tips for singers are for you if you are a singer that feels you have something to say but don’t know where to start crafting a song.
Songwriting is a whole discipline in itself and by no means will you get all you need from a blog post; but hopefully, these songwriting tips for singers will give you a starting point.
There are tons of different ways to approach a song, this one is just one of many. I encourage you to try these songwriting tips for singers and to explore other formulas to write a song until you find one that really works for you 🙂
Table of Contents
songwriting tips for singers: Coming up with lyrics
This part is where a lot of people get really stuck in. It is not that easy to transfer our feelings and emotions into words. After all, we have a limited repertoire of words in a given language! And sometimes our feelings go beyond those words. Being able to say a lot with a few words is an art in itself.
The song lyrics writing exercise I want to show you today is designed to help you get those words flowing so you no longer get stuck in the overwhelmed phase.
This exercise is better done in the morning when you first wake up when your analytical mind is not yet super awake. All you have to do is to grab a notebook and a pen set a timer for 5 to 10 minutes and just free write whatever comes to your mind. It is not as easy as it sounds! You must write with no filter. The idea of this exercise is to allow your subconscious mind to participate in the creative process. You will find quite a few things you wouldn’t believe came from you. It is crucial that you don’t show this exercise to anyone, ever. Because if you know someone will see it, you will be applying a filter without realizing it.
Just free write until the alarm goes off, without stopping in the middle, and without editing anything at this stage. Any words that come up are valid.
Once you have free written for five to ten minutes, highlight any phrases or words that you find interesting from what you have written.
Work with them to create your verses and your choruses.
Giving your lyrics structure
Now that you have a fair amount of lyric material, you need to give your song a structure. A common structure you could use for your song is:
Verse
Chorus
Verse
Chorus
Bridge
Chorus
For this exercise, use your verses to tell the story in more detail. The different verses of a song generally differ in lyrics but share a similar chord and melody structure.
The chorus is generally simpler than the verse, as it is meant to be easy to memorize and sing along with. Generally, a chorus summarises the main message of the song. You will usually use the same lyrics every time you sing the chorus.
The bridge will provide contrast to the song. You can use it to add additional lyrical information that can clarify the message of your song for your listener.
Crafting your lyrics
So now you have a lot of raw material from your free writing, and a song structure was chosen! Now take a look at the highlighted bits of your free writing pages. If you can find four highlighted parts that you really like and you think you can make them cohesive, then you have the starting point for your Verse 1, Chorus, Verse 2, and Bridge!
Allocate each phrase to a different section of your song. Now let’s say that you have allocated a phrase to your Verse 1. Take another blank page of your notebook or a blank sheet of paper, and write down your chosen phrase. Now you can set the timer again for another five minutes to free write, but this time based on the phrase that you wrote. After you have done that, you will have a lot of raw material for your verse. And it is time to call on your logical brain again and edit that free writing. Craft it until you have a verse that you are happy with. If you have never written a song before, I suggest you start with a symmetrical verse. Four lines of text, and generally being symmetrical with the number of syllables as well. It doesn’t have to be mathematically perfect, but it has to have some coherence.
For example:
You – are – my – fi – re
The – one – de – si -re
Be – lieve – when – I – say
I – want – it – that – way
(I want it that way, BSB)
That part of the verse is super symmetrical, and the rhymes are quite neat too.
This is the time to spend some time with your beloved left brain, and start adding structure to your verse.
Do the same process for each section of your song 🙂
Of course, you don’t have to do all of this in one day! You might feel quite overwhelmed just with the first verse. Work on the first verse today, and tomorrow you can work on the chorus, etc.
Songwriting tips for singers: You have the lyrics, now what?
So now you got some awesome lyrics for your song, that you can keep on editing until you are happy with the result. But what about the music?
Well, I think you have enough to do for now! So I will leave you with that for today but in next week’s article, I will tell you how to add music to your song, from the chords to the melody!
So stay tuned! Don’t wanna miss it? JOIN MY EMAIL LIST NOW and you will get notified when it is ready 😉
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