How to write a song 1

There are several ways of going about the writing of a song. A song is made up of a melody sometimes called the music, and a lyric, sometimes called the words. Some persons start the process by writing the melody first and then the lyric and then combining then to get what is called prosody, a match between the two, and some persons begin writing the lyric first and then the melody and then combining them to get prosody, while some persons write the melody and the lyric at the same time. For convenience, I will assume here that we are writing the lyric first and then the melody.

The writing of a song begins with an idea or something to write about. So if you have something to write about, you are on your way. There are various ways of coming up with ideas if none are coming to mind readily. You may look around you and observe your surroundings for a few minutes until you see something happening that you think you want to say something about. You may strike up a conversation with someone about something that you think may be interest to both of you and then write a song about the conversation later. You may get song ideas from the newspapers, the movies, television or the radio, and the list goes on and on. And by the way, that is another songwriting idea. You could call “and the list goes on and on” a hook and write a song around the hook, which is that catchy line usually in the chorus of the song which usually forms the title of the song and which is repeated several times with the objective of “hooking” the listener.

The next step in the process is to spend some time jotting down every single idea you have that relates to your idea for the song. After this is done, all these ideas will need to be organized into some kind of structure. The guiding principle in this step is the structure or form that one has decided that the song will take. The actual ideas will also have some bearing on what form is actually chosen. One of the most popular song structures is the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure. This is also my favorite. For this structure, from all the ideas jotted down earlier, one would need to identify two main ideas that one would like to convey in the song to make up verse 1 and verse 2. One will also need to identify the main theme or morale of the story which would make up the chorus. If there is an important idea that was not covered in the verses that still need to be said then that could constitute the bridge. The bridge could also be used to give a new twist to the story. Please note that I have used the word story twice so far.

To be continued