Tips to Help With Your Songwriting

Steve Burks

People write songs a lot of different ways, but these are some of the principles that work for me. First are tips on writing lyrics; then melody. Tips on approaching lyrics:

Pick a main idea, thesis, message, or central notion that you want to get across. Not just a subject, but a specific point of view about that subject. For example, don’t write a song about divorce. Write a song about divorce being good, bad, pointless, etc.

•  Use simple, common words. Stay away from the dictionary and thesaurus, so that you don’t distract people’s attention from the song’s meaning to its language.
• Don’t try to be poetic right off the bat. First, crystallize what you’re thinking by getting it all down on paper, prose-style and journal-like. Then go back, pick and choose, fix, edit, discard, elaborate, etc. You have to find out what you want to say first, before you can figure out how to say it well.
• Use active voice and strong verbs.
• Keep lines relatively short.

Tips on approaching melody:

• Align accented syllables with strong beats, also known as “downbeats”: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. For example, in the word “whatever,” the second syllable, “ev,” goes on a strong beat.
• Have the melody go up and down according to the way you would speak the line, inflection-wise. If your voice rises on a certain word, then reflect that in the melody. The same goes for downward inflections, and stasis (not moving at all). The more conversational your melody (and lyrics), the easier your audience will remember them, and the more invited they are to sing along. Participatory songs are most popular.
• To draw attention to a certain word, have the melody go up on that word, and place the words that come before it, on a repeated, lower note. Contrast draws attention.

Steve Burks is a graduate of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Currently, he’s a vocalist and keyboardist in the International House of Blues Foundation’s “Blues School House,” a live musical presentation for 5th through 12th graders that traces the history of blues music and its influence on other forms of contemporary music.