What are the actual steps needed to take a song from a thought in your head to a fully produced song?

Hey everyone! So today, I’m going to share with you all how to take a thought in your head and make it into a song. 

Let’s get into it.

The thought

So it’s all abstract thoughts that you’re working with. 

But as a Christian, we can make these thoughts very nice because we know what we’re talking about. 

In General as a Christian songwriter, we are writing about the goodness of God, the Love of God, the wisdom of God, how Jesus died for our sins, etc. etc. 

And what happens is that there are a few ways that you can actually start a song. 

1. Melody first
2. Chords first
3. Lyrics first

Of course, you can also start with a rhythm section in first, which is how a lot of producers start their songs. 

But I usually start out with either the melody, chords, or lyrics first. 

Usually because I’m a guitarist and singer songwriter. 

So it comes naturally to me to actually just pick up a guitar and start singing immediately. 

But I’m pretty sure you’re wondering to yourself, How do you start the lyrics? 

The lyrics, takes a lot of practice just writing abstract thoughts. 

To me, freewriting is the best way to tackle this problem. 

Basically just pick a topic, so say you talk about the love of God, and just start writing about the love of God. 

Don’t stop, don’t limit yourself to sentences or phrases, whatever it is that you want to talk about the love of God, then write it down. 

As you go down, you’ll find that you actually wrote down some interesting topics. 

That’s how you write lyrics and get started writing lyrics. 

But how do you start writing a melody?

There really isn’t a set specific way to write a melody, but just keep in mind a few things

1. Repetition is key
2. Start low in the verses and end high in the choruses
3. Sometimes doing fast verses and slow choruses is very effective.
4. Sometimes doing inversely is good so doing slow verses and fast choruses can be effective as well. 

The number one way to get really good at songwriting is by imitating a whole bunch of different songs at first and then eventually making your own unique sound with what you have imitated. 

And then if you want to start with the chords first There are a couple of rules that you should follow

1. Keep the chords within 2 to 4 chords
2. Repetition is key
3. Sometimes using chords that sound the same is very powerful
4. Sometimes using chords that sound very different from one another is also very powerful
5. Number three and four is your option on what to do, you decide how you want the song to sound
6. Start at the root and end at the root
7. Use a balance of major and minor chords

These are just some rules in chord progressions that you could use. 

So that’s how you write out the song, now let’s talk about the production process. 

The production process 

For me, by this time, I usually have a good skeleton for a song with an acoustic track and a voice. 

Now, there is a saying that says that if your song sounds good with just the guitar and voice, then it will sound good with everything else in it. 

So now, it’s basically the time to add drums, synthesizers, pianos, bass, and effects. 

It’s basically just layering the guitar parts with the instruments that you want. 

The drums are a little different because with the drums you are adding a rhythmic element that can really transform a song. 

And layering is basically just taking the chords that you were playing with the guitar and putting it on the synthesizers and pianos so that it can occupy more space within the frequency spectrum. 

You can also layer the vocals. 

Basically what you do is you sing the third or fifth of the notes that you were singing with the vocals and just sing on top of it to make it sound more full. 

Broadcast

I sure hope that I have been an inspiration and a hope to you all. Please remember to pray, read your bible, go to church, and love God above all else. Like, comment, share, subscribe, and I will see you all next time.

If you want to go to heaven, then believe in Jesus and you will go to heaven. (John 3:16)

Thank you all for listening in on this blog post. 

German Gonzalez, signing out!