Songwriting: Learning by Listening to The Masters

If you take a songwriting class, the first thing you will learn is to read the top 40 charts in your chosen genre, and then listen to the chart-topping songs over and over for analyzation and to get songwriting ideas. You will be encouraged to listen to similarities in all of the songs and watch for format.

If you are just starting out, there is nothing wrong with taking a shell of a song and then replacing the words with your own words. That is a great tool for learning how to write melodies rhythmically and formulating words together to fit a specific meter, but a bad idea if you are planning to publish the song—because you can get sued.

As a child, I learned by becoming a junior Weird Al Yankovic. I would take famous songs on the radio and change the words to something silly. And then I would perform them for my older sister and her friends and they thought I was hilarious. I dreamed of performing them for the world to see (too bad Youtube was not invented yet!)

If you are a musician, you start by learning theory, learning what chords go together, and then putting together a chord pattern to be a foundation for a lyrical melody. If you don’t play an instrument, you can guide your musical partner by verbally sharing your melody idea. A good place to start is by listening to songs in your genre and start dissecting the melody from the bare lyrics. What works? What doesn’t? As I mentioned in a previous article, sometimes it is easiest to start with a chorus, because that is what your song is about.

Like any bit of writing, you learn the most by watching others, dissecting their work to see why it works or why it doesn’t, and then implementing what you learn. Most recorded albums start from a pool of about thirty songs, and then are narrowed down to fourteen or less to sell to the public. And usually, the pool of thirty songs come from a songbook of about 100 songs scribbled in the writer’s songbook journal.

If you want to be a songwriter, write every single day. Keep a songwriter journal where you jot down your ideas, possible lyrics, melodies, themes, poems, etc. Your songs may suck at first. But writing every day is how you get better. Just like exercising your physical muscles, your growth comes from exercising your writing muscle. I usually write a notebook full of songs per year—most aren’t even complete. And sometimes I pull a Frankenstein where I take two or three songs I wrote and combine them.

When U2 wrote their hit song, Beautiful Day, they actually wrote another song using the exact same music, but with completely different lyrics and melody. Then they chose which melody and chorus they liked for the album best after listening to both versions over and over and over. The band Jars of Clay did the same thing on their If I Left the Zoo album. They made a bunch of demos with different melody lines and choruses. The final project was a culmination of taking the best part of the songs and re-writing the weakest part to improve the song or by creating Frankenstein, chopping up the best parts of two or three songs and adding them together to formulate one incredible song.

If you listen to Jars of Clay’s studio album, If I Left the Zoo, and then again listen to their limited demo album (if you can find it) called White Elephant Sessions, you will hear the same songs, but with different verses, choruses, or melodies. They are letting you in on their songwriting process. After the time slaved to write the physical songwriting portion and then playing the song at many rehearsals comes the recorded demo. Bands will listen to their demo a thousand times, get feedback, and then put the song in the hands of a polished producer to rewrite the song and record the final, polished version. Sometimes that version is an entirely different song from conception.

Whether you are writing songs, novels, or screenplays, the biggest key to survival is being fluid and giving yourself (and producers, editors, publishers, directors, agents, etc.) permission to let go and change what you have written to make it better.

Write it. Step away. Visit it again. Rewrite it. Step away. Rewrite it again.

Don’t marry your first version or first draft. That’s like marrying the first person you ever had a crush on, which may work, but more than not, it can be naïve and suicidal. I know both screenwriters and songwriters who lost a job because they wouldn’t give producers or directors flexibility to change their work.

Do you have a songwriting topic you would like me to discuss? Let me know at matthewhawkeldridge@yahoo.com! Get that songwriting journal and start writing!

Matthew Hawk Eldridge is a coffee loving, calico-cat hugging, Renaissance man. When he’s not passionately penning screenplays or stories rich in musical history, he’s writing songs on his guitar or working on a film as an actor, double, musician, or stand-in. He is a Creative Writing graduate student at Full Sail University.