These past few songs that I have written, I’ll be honest, but they are hits. The songs that I have written sound like it should have come from a top performing artist or something. I actually performed a few of my songs to a few of my friends and they absolutely loved them.
I have been writing songs on and off for a few years and I’ve recently started to take it more seriously. I’ve actually been practicing my lyric writing and melody and hook writing and I can be honest, it sounds good.
When I was just first starting out songwriting, I wrote a few songs and sent them out to people and I got 5 stars on Paul Loggins Promotion company. I finished music theory with a 100 in the class and was the top notch music student in my high school by the time I graduated.
All this to say that I know how to write music.
Some food for your thought, this list is meant as a practical guide to actually songwriting. I have advice here on the technical aspects of songwriting, from Chord selection to lyrics, this wasn’t meant as a comprehensive guide but a good start to get you started.
With that being said, here let’s take a look at my Top 3 pieces of advice for beginning songwriters.
Know how to build a hook
A hook is a part of the music that you sing over and over again. It’s very catchy and gets you singing and dancing. Let’s go over how to build all the different types of hooks that you want.
The notes that you select are very important to making a strong hook.
If you start with a Tonic to Supertonic, that’s actually a really good start to a song if you build it properly. It makes good for a soft entrance
If you start with a Tonic to Mediant, that’s another good start but with less impact because it’s not dissonance, it just sounds really strong together.
Tonic to subdominant just sounds really good if you use the right chords, it can sound a little weaker than both Supertonic and Mediant.
Tonic to Dominant sounds really strong. It actually has a really big impact in the music and if you ever want to make a big impact in the melody, then go from Tonic to Fifth and it’s going to sound good.
Tonic to submediant sounds big too. It has dissonance but it sounds bitter sweet if you go back down to fifth right after the six.
Tonic to leading tone is the weakest of them all especially if you pair it with the major chord of the key.
Tonic to Tonic is the biggest of them all. If you want the most impact in your music, you will do this.
Now that we know the quality of each interval, let’s talk about how exactly we can build hooks and some common rules for these melodies, remember with these rules that it’s just theory, so you can break this theory at any time and do your own thing.
Rule 1. Move in a stepwise motion.
A hook that moves like this sounds really appealing to the ears.
Rule 2 use big interval jumps to make your music sound like it has impact.
If you do stepwise motion in the verse and a big jump for the chorus and do stepwise in the chorus too, that sounds really appealing
Rule 3 Keep every phrase between 1,2, and 3 notes long. Of course I’m not saying that you’re supposed to have only three different rhythmic phrases, but keep the note selection between three notes. What happens is when we start adding things like a fourth note, is when it just sounds busy and not hooky. I’m not saying that you can’t make a hook with more than three notes because plenty have, and I’ve done it in my songs, but it’s more difficult to do. Three notes is actually the magic number
4. Start off slow.
It’s actually easier to write a slow and sad song than it is to write a happy and fast song.
5. Write as if though every phrase is a hook.
Repetition is key Repeat phrases until the chorus and at the chorus repeat the chorus in one way or another.
6. After a big jump go back down in the scale
I’m not saying that these are hard and fast rules but they are good rules to follow by and many hit songs were written by following these rules.
Lyrics
Know how to write lyrics. I actually bought a few books on how to write lyrics and I’ve seen videos on how to write lyrics and I’ll be amazed at how similar the concepts are. They even have similar Techniques.
Use a lot of imagery and at the chorus use explaining language to explain to the audience what the metaphors are all about.
Use similes and metaphors to your advantage. Rhyme a lot and don’t forget to make it all make sense.
Music theory
Music theory is a monster in and of itself. I can’t explain everything that there is to know about music theory even though I just used it in one of the explanations above. But I’ll give you some things that you can use.
Three chord, chord progressions sound good. Along with 4 chord progressions. Here are a few examples
I-IV-vi-V
I-vi-IV-V
I-V-IV-V
I-V-IV
I-V-vi-IV
I-iii-IV-V
All of these are great chord progressions that you can use in your songs. Each one sounds a little different so use it to your advantage.
There’s a little more to music theory than that, but if you’re a beginning songwriter, that’s where you will start.
Broadcast
I hope that I have inspired some songwriters to take action in their music career. I hope that you use these talents for God too. I hope that God may guide you into becoming whatever it is that he wants you to become. If you want to know more about God’s will, pray to him and God will tell you where to go. If God wants you to do something, God will make it known very very clear what he wants you to do.
Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. I hope that I have been an inspiration and a hope to you all. Please pray, read your bible, go to church, and love God above all else. Like, comment, share, and subscribe and I will see you all next time. German Gonzalez, signing out!
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