CHARLES' SONGWRITING NOTES

I've been writing songs since I was about sixteen - almost thirty years now. In this file, I've made some notes about some of the tricks and techniques I've learned along the way - hope they're helpful!

INSPIRATION

Obviously, the first step in writing a good song is just getting started writing any song at all. We all get hit with writer's block from time to time... here are some of the things I turn to when I'm in need of ideas:

A lot of my current writing is "praise and worship" songs, most frequently based on Psalms or other scripture. Open up the book, pick one, and write! But: don't just pull lines at random and call it a song. Spend a moment figuring out something that this particular Psalm says that you want to say - a "theme" for your song - and then develop that theme, using the text of the Psalm to suggest ideas.
Did this many years ago, but haven't done it in a while: pick up a magazine or two, cut out all the headlines to the articles, then chop up the headlines into one or two word pieces, and then put them back together in the strangest combinations you can. Every now and then, pick one out, decide what the phrase means to you, and write it into a song. "If I was going to write a song called The Long Words Passenger, what would that song be about???" Even if you wind up tossing out your original "weird" phrase - if it got you started writing, it did its job!
Another thing I've realized is that there are several "steps" to my own songwriting process - that initial inspiration is one step, but there are lots of others. When inspiration hits, I try not to let myself stop with one lyric, one idea. Write five or six rough lyrics, even if they're not that great. Take advantage of inspiration when it hits.
Part of this whole process of taking advantage of a creative mood when it strikes is "forcing" myself to keep writing, even when I think what I'm coming up with stinks. There have been times when I was ready to go do something else after the first three attempts were really awful, but by pushing through, maybe number seven and number twelve will work out. I just keep telling myself: "okay, I wrote fifteen lyrics and thirteen of them suck. That means I just wrote two good lyrics!"
What all this does is: it fills up my songwriting notebooks with lots of ideas, lots of song starts. On days when I'm not feeling particularly idea-filled, I'll just sit down and look at some of the rough drafts - do the same sort of critiquing process on myself that I do on others' lyrics over on Glade's board. Or I'll pull out the guitar, find a rough draft lyric that shows some promise, and try to turn it into a "finished" song.
Other thoughts: I've frequently found that hotel rooms are good places for me to write, if I'm alone. There's something sort of inspiring about hotel stationery :-) Another thing that seems to help get my creative juices flowing is simply the process of playing music. I'll pick out a few songs that I wrote years ago, and go in my studio and put together multitrack versions of the songs... I frequently find that, after I've put a couple "oldies" on tape, I start getting ideas for new stuff to write.

GUIDING THE LISTENER

The first few lines of a song are particularly important, because they tell the listener what the rest of the song is going to be about. If you misdirect them in these first few lines, they'll be confused all the way through the song. If the song is about a single mother, but you start out with several lines about the husband who walked out on her, the listener will think the song is about HIM. A good trick: type out the lyric, and then slide a piece of paper down the lyric, exposing one line at a time in the order the listener will hear them. Read the lyric this way, and keep asking yourself, "does the listener know everything they need to, at this point, to understand this line?"

Generally, in every song, you are creating a "character" who is singing the song. That character may or may not be like the songwriter who created them, but the character needs to be consistent. The listener has to believe this character who is singing, even if they don't agree with what the character is saying.

Starting with the chorus: usually, the chorus of a song is where you make it most clear what the song is about, what you're trying to say in the song. If you start with the chorus, then you're establishing right away, "here's the message." If you start with a verse which leads up to the chorus, you can establish some suspense, some mystery, first, and then resolving the listener's questions when the chorus hits.

Obscure words and references: it's usually unsafe to assume that the listener is going to understand obscure words or references - you can't say "the seventh commandment" and assume they'll know that's the one about adultery.

(One exception: when you're using these words just to establish an atmosphere, but understanding the specific meaning isn't critical to understanding the song - for example, I wrote a song called "The Long Words Passenger" where I referred to this guy talking about " sanctified, justified / trinity, divinity / sacraments and evidence / of scriptural inerrancy...." The listener doesn't need to know what any of those things are - just that this guy I'm singing about uses words like that.)

Emphasis - De-emphasis. An important part of guiding the listener through a song lyric is giving them little clues as to which parts they should pay attention to, which they can, for the most part, ignore. Referring to a character in a song by their name will emphasize their importance; mentioning some unusual characteristic of that person will emphasize them. But sometimes you want to de-emphasize a character; for instance, in a song about a single mother, you don't want the listener to be too interested in the father who is out of the picture.

Loaded words: there are certain words which trigger a lot of associations with the listener, some of them the wrong ones. For example, the word "free" gets tossed around a lot in relationship songs; someone will say "I want to be free," meaning "I want the feeling of 'flying free' that being in a relationship brings." But we're so used to "free" referring to "I want out of this relationship," that it can frequently misdirect the listener if it's not used carefully.

SONG STRUCTURE

The song needs to be ABOUT something specific. This tends to be a problem especially with Christian songwriting, where someone says "this is a Christian song" and then proceeds to string together a bunch of unrelated thoughts about God. Say something specific about God - write a song about God's "grace." I've also seen songs where the verse is about one thing, but the chorus is about some other topic entirely. Each part works ok on its own and is well written, but it feels like two separate songs have been forced together against their will.

Frequently when I'm first writing a lyric, I will actually write out a few notes about the song structure - what I want the first verse to say, the second verse, etc. This can be helpful later when I'm revising - it lets me look at a lyric section and ask myself, "did I say what I meant to here?"

Past, present, future: not always, but frequently, the structure of a song is expressed in terms of things that happened in the past, are happening now, or that we hope will happen. It's frequently worth a pass through your lyrics, looking at the tense of each line - when you're talking about that thing that's happening now, don't refer to it in past or future tense, even if it's happened before and will probably happen again.

Song structure basically consists of understanding where a character is coming from, where they are now, and where they're going. And then arranging those different bits of information in a logical - not necessarily timeline - order. For instance:

I treated her bad (past)
so she left me (present)
but I'm gonna get her back (future)

I'm gonna get her back (future)
I treated her bad (past)
but I'm gonna get her back (future)
she just walked out (present)
but I'm gonna get her back (future)

I treated her bad (past)
I'm gonna change my ways (future)
but today, she's gone (present)

When you have a song structure in mind, it makes it much easier to know which lines go where in the song - what information do you want to get across at each point? The four structures above take the same situation and present it in four different ways - and you can see how the different structures emphasize different parts of the whole idea.

Another element of song structure and timing: every song has a point that it "turns" on, and if you introduce that point TOO early in the song, you leave yourself with nowhere to go.

Click here for another really good article on song structure and plot development.

RHYMING & PHRASING

Establishing your rhyme scheme: I'm not opposed to using rhymes that stretch the rhyme scheme a bit - rhyming "go" with "more" - but in the first couple sections of the song, it's important to be a bit more strict; establish the rhyme scheme in the listener's ear and then you can get away with stretching it. Equally important at the start: don't leave any "accidental rhymes" lying about that will cause the listener to expect rhymes later on where you didn't put them...

The "anacrucis": I'm not sure this is the right name for this, but what I mean by anacrucis is the words which you squeeze in before the main downbeat of a line. Take a line like "every time I talk to you" and imagine singing it with the "1" downbeat coming at different points:

The word that falls on the (1) beat is going to be emphasized to the listener - so it makes a difference where you put it.

"Bury the Baddie" - one of the signs of a "beginning" songwriter is that there will be rhymes where the first line of the rhyme is strong and clear and well written, and then the second line of the rhyme is weak, just so it will rhyme. For example:

That's not a horrible lyric, but the "dear" at the end sure seems like it was stuck there just to rhyme with "hear." The technique of "burying the baddie" is: if you have to have a weak line, make sure it's the setup line, not the payoff line. In this example, look at how much stronger it comes across simply by changing the order of the lines so that the weak line is buried in the middle of the verse, and the payoff line is strong and clear:

The "Flagpole" theory: I like to think of the one or two syllables at the end of a pair of rhyming lines as "flagpoles" - they're fairly rigid. The lines that lead up to those one or two rhyming syllables: those are the FLAGs. They wave and flap in the breeze, in all different directions; they have their own unique colors and designs. Even if you need a line that rhymes with "killed her" and all you can think of is "filter" - there are a million different ways to get to "filter." Don't settle for the first line you think of that ends with "filter" - keep working it until you've got a great line that just happens to end in that word.

I also find that thinking of rhyming lines in terms of flagpoles is helpful, because it's a reminder that, if I just can't come up with two flags that fly nicely on my particular set of flagpoles, I can always put up TWO entirely different flagpoles. If you just can't say what you want with "way" / "day", maybe you can do something with "bed" / "red".

Clever rhymes draw attention to themselves, and you don't always want that. There's really nothing wrong with rhyming "day" and "way" in a lyric, as long as you're saying something important in the lines that lead up to them. Bob Dylan is a master of writing up to the rhyme: going back to the flagpole theory: he doesn't necessarily put up a lot of great flagpoles, but he's flying some of the best FLAGS you'll ever see.

Longer Phrases: one of the things I realized about my own writing, as it got better, was that I was able to work longer and longer phrases into the lyric. A short couplet went from four individual five-syllable sentences to something like:

Where the sentence, the thought, actually flows through all four lines.

THEM TINY LITTLE WORDS

First, second, third person: particularly in Christian songs. Although there are exceptions, I've always felt like one of the signs of a poorly written Christian song is that it starts out talking about God as "He" and then, suddenly, it's referring to God as "You." This happens elsewhere, too: "She's so fine, she's so fine, she's so fine, that's why I love you, baby."

When you're working on a lyric, it can help to make notes off to the side: who is "he" in this song? Who am "I"? Who does "you" refer to? If there is more than one "he" in the song, is it clear every time you encounter a "he" who it is that it's referring to?

Conjunctions: these are little words like "and" "but" "or" "until" and the like that songwriters use to connect parts of a song. And I've seen a number of lyrics where the wrong conjunction - one little word - can derail the song.

Consider how different the meanings of these phrases are:

Conjunctions take two different thoughts, and, in one tiny little word, tell the listener what the relationship between those thoughts is. The wrong conjunction creates the wrong relationship. Be especially careful of conjunctions that take you from verses into choruses and the like - these words may need to change from verse to verse, depending on the song structure.

One more comment on conjunctions: a "double negative" can work sometimes, but a "double but" is a sure sign of trouble. "My baby left me, BUT I'm smiling, BUT she'll be back..." Generally, if your lyric has too many "buts" it's a good chance you're trying to say something too complicated for a three minute song... or that the thought could be expressed more clearly. Even the example sentence could be rephrased as "My baby left me, BUT she'll be back, SO I'm smiling..."

Highbrow / Lowbrow - this relates to the concept of the singer of the song as a "character" - I read a lyric one time that was supposed to be a down & dirty & angry guy singing - but right in the middle, he uses the word "whilst." Make sure EACH word in the song is consistent with the character of the singer.

TRICKS & TECHNIQUES

When I'm working on the very first draft of a lyric, I make a point of not giving it a song title, even if a particular line seems like it's obviously going to be the title. The reason is that, once I've titled a song, I become very resistant to throwing out or changing the line that contains the title - and sometimes, that's the line that needs fixing.

Cut, cut, cut. During the initial writing of a song, I will frequently write about twice as many lyrics as the song actually needs; then, when I'm finishing the song, I can pick and choose what works best.

A general rule: if you feel the need to explain what a song is "about" before you start singing it, it's usually a clue that the lyric isn't doing its job.

Another interesting way to judge whether a lyric is working or not: give it to someone else, without any explanation, and ask them what THEY think it's about. Remember - regardless of your intent when you started writing the song, whatever gets across to the listener is what your song is REALLY "about."

"PRAISE AND WORSHIP" SONGS

The last three or four years, I've been writing some P&W songs to use in our church contemporary service. A few notes on writing P&W songs:

set the tempo of the song so that the WORDS go by at a comfortable rate - not too fast, but not held-out either. P&W music is meant for the congregation to sing, so it needs to move at a comfortable speed for them.
be sure to leave plenty of "breath breaks" in the song. The people in the congregation aren't trained singers who can squeeze in a breath. At the same time, don't leave TOO big a pause between phrases, or they won't know when to come back in.
keep the vocal range of the song limited - in general, from middle C up to high C. As soon as you go outside that, you'll start losing people.
let me re-emphaisze: decide whether you're singing ABOUT God or TO God, and keep the pronouns straight! If you refer to God as "you" in the song, don't start referring to God as "he" later on. (But don't be afraid to try re-casting the text you find in Scripture: a psalm that sings ABOUT God might make a better song if it were addressed TO God). As a very general rule, songs where God is "you" tend to be slower, "worship" songs; songs where God is "he" tend to be faster, "praise" songs. But there are lots of exceptions.
frequently, I'll begin the process of writing a "praise and worship" song by looking at one of the Psalms or other scriptures and paraphrasing / rewording that. Something I've learned to do as part of that process is to try variations on the "casting" of the psalm. For example, several psalms talk about the virtuous man (person) and all the things "he" does. I've developed a couple of songs based on those sorts of psalms by reworking them so that they are about the kind of person "I" want God to make "me." Putting them in first person instead of third person.
Another comment on writing from the psalms: you don't have to include everything that a given psalm talks about in order to write a song. Choose one idea which is stated well in that psalm, and use that as the theme for your song; use other lines from the psalm which support that central theme - but pick and choose. For example, many songs based on Psalm 51 talk about "create in me a clean heart," but there are plenty of other ideas in that psalm you could base a song on - the song you write might not have anything about "clean heart" in it at all!

STEREOTYPES / INCLUSIVENESS

Inclusive Language: it's a big deal with some people, a non-issue with others. Most commonly, the issue is male/female imagery: using "Father" or "He" or other male terms to refer to God. But it can be more subtle, too: a lyric which sends a message that, for a person to be a good Christian, "he" must be xxxxx. Other physical limitations - blindness, deafness, and so on, are frequently used as symbols of ignorance or rebellion; look at your lyrics and ask how a person who is literally blind or deaf might take them.

At the same time, though, there are a lot of "stereotypes" that people keep in their minds, and if your song lyric goes against one of those stereotypes, the listener's attention will be drawn to that. A major example: when someone tries to get around the exclusiveness of referring to God as "Father" by referring to God as "Parent" or "Mother" or "Father/Mother"... unless it's handled very carefully, the song is no longer about God, it's about inclusiveness.

MY SONGWRITING PROCESS

For me, lyric writing definitely comes first - sometimes I can "hear" a melody while I'm writing a lyric, but I generally don't even try to capture it at that time. I have a notebook where I write the first draft lyric (or paste in a copy if it was written elsewhere). The goal here is just to capture inspiration, and leave the details for later. If I can't come up with a particular word in a line, I'll just leave a blank rather than putting in something that's not the right word. Or I'll write the line that came to mind, but out in the margin I'll write "boo!" or "yecch" as a reminder that I probably need to fix this line before I make a song out of it.

Although I usually resist the temptation to try to capture a melody right away, I frequently will add some notes about the general musical feel I think a song should have - "upbeat and bouncy" - "slow and thoughtful". I've even been known to change my mind about these notes later on, but they do help prevent taking a nice lyric and a nice tune that don't work together, and force-fitting them.

Every now and then, I sit down with my songwriting notebook, and thumb through looking at rough draft lyrics. Frequently at this point, I'll spot a line that could be improved, or realize that a song is structured wrong. Sometimes I'll fix things, sometimes I'll just add a note - "this is way too scattered" or something like that. A given lyric may go through three or four separate sessions like this, where I just look at it and see if anything strikes me as needing work.

Eventually, I have some time available to work on music. At that point, I pull out the notebook and a guitar and just thumb through the book, looking for a lyric that I think is ready. If a melody seems to be working out for a lyric, I'll write it out on staff paper in rough form - just enough that I'll be able to recapture the song later on. Still very open to changing things - a section that was going to be the chorus might become a bridge; lines from two different verses could become the chorus, order of verses switched, parts of verses recombined.

The "anacrucis" thing mentioned earlier is an important part of melody writing for me, too. Even before I'm working out what the NOTES will be, I'm frequently trying out different ways of phrasing lines rhythmically - how many words should I push out before that first beat, which words need to be held the longest or emphasized the most?

And, finally, it will be time to go into the studio. If I've got a bunch of rough lead sheets for new songs, I'll look those over and see if any of them strike me. If not, I'll thumb through the lyric notebook.

For me, the recording process is where things start to solidify. Once I have a version of a song that I like down on tape, the song is probably not going to get changed much beyond that, but I still try to remain open to changing things all through the recording process - words, chords, melody...

A LITTLE BIT FURTHER...

I've been a regular participant in Glade Hoffman's Songwriter Message Board for some time now, and in the process of commenting on others' lyrics - and having my own commented on - I've learned a few new tricks here and there. This last section is dedicated to passing along some of the latest things I've learned!

When You Say It Like That...

I worked on a song with someone from Glade's board; the song started out (and stayed) in second person most of the way through. "I know of a love, a love that lifts you up..." My suggestion to him was to recast the whole thing in first person - "a love that lifts me up." When he went through and made those changes, it seemed to me like it just lifted the whole song up to a higher, happier level. Instead of talking "Life Theory 101," the singer was now telling a story about his own life - it made it a lot more interesting to listen to!

So: when I catch myself writing a song in second person, I'll stop and see what would happen if I rewrote it in first person. Make it about "me" (even if it isn't about me, the songwriter, the singer who is telling the story is now telling it about themself).

Top to Bottom...

I included some comments earlier on reading a song from "top to bottom," the way a first-time listener would hear it, and making sure that, at each moment, they have all the information they need to understand where the song is going. In the process of critiquing songs, my sense of the importance of the opening lines of a song has grown even more.

In the opening verse of a song, several things get "established" in the listener's mind. One of these is the rhyme scheme. While I'm as accepting of "near rhymes" ( for example, rhyming "feet" with "need" ) as the next guy, it helps if you can stick to perfect, or near-perfect, rhymes in the opening verse, so that it's clear to the listener what the rhyme scheme of the song is. And it's just as important to avoid accidental rhymes that might throw them off. For instance, one person posted something like:

When I heard "again" and "been" in the first two lines, I expected the third and fourth lines to rhyme - that is, I expected line four to rhyme with "night." But it turns out that it's an ABCB rhyme scheme throughout the rest of the song - the second and fourth lines rhyme, and that's it. The fact that "again" and "been" rhymed was just an accident, but a confusing one. My suggestion: change that first line to anything that doesn't rhyme with "been."

The opening verse of a song also tends to set up the whole story line of a song, and clues the listener into what to watch/listen for in the rest of the song. If there is a reference in that first part to "what you said to me last night," the listener will expect to find out later in the song what it was that was said. If that's not what you want them to be listening for, then don't mention it. They'll be listening for "what got said" and miss whatever it is you want them to hear.

Similarly, you need to get your "imagery" working for you right away. If a central theme of the song is going to be how the singer is "addicted" to a relationship, then include some sort of reference to that early on, so that the listener will be listening for further development of the image. If they don't hear anything about "addiction" until the second or third verse, they may think that it's just a passing reference and not pay attention to it at that point.

Part of the job of a songwriter is to build a story, or a feeling, or an idea in the listener's head. The opening lines of a song are the foundation for that idea. The story, feeling or idea may not be expressed in that opening section, but the opening lines create the "starting point" for the song. If you can't get from that starting point to what it is you really want to say... the rest of the song is a waste.

Another thing the opening lines of a song do is to set the whole mood of the song. I wrote a lyric called "Rewrite," all about the struggles we poor songwriters go through. The song is meant to be humorous, so I started off with a deliberately awkward couplet:

The only way you can make "six" and "lyrics" rhyme is to horribly mis-pronounce "lyrics," but that's the intent. By including this deliberately bad rhyme right at the start, I'm letting the listener know that things are going to get goofy before we're done. (Of course, if this was going to be a serious song, then starting it off like this would've been a good example of shooting myself in the foot right out of the gate...)

Vague Lyrics and Double Meanings

One of the things we run into occasionally on the Lyric Message Board is a lyric which is "intentionally vague." The main comment that comes back is, "I can't figure out what this is about..." This doesn't necessarily mean that the lyric couldn't be turned into a hit - witness R.E.M. - but, of course, it's difficult to critique a lyric that doesn't "make sense" to the person hearing it.

Regardless, there are things that "work" in a vague story and things that don't. If you've ever read any Jung, or even Joseph Campbell, you'll have some understanding of the way certain great themes work on the subconscious, even if the conscious mind can't say just what they're about. A lyric can consist of a number of disjointed phrases which invoke feelings of, say, "loneliness," and it will work, even if it's not specifically "about" something. The songwriter can still look at the lyric, line by line, and ask themselves, "is this line working for me or against me?"

Somewhat akin to vague lyrics are lyrics which work on more than one level. The Beatles' song "Julia" was written about John Lennon's mother, but it works as a normal love song just as well. It makes the song more meaningful if you know the "subtext," but it doesn't prevent the song from working for the person who is hearing it, unexplained, for the first time.

Occasionally, I'll write a song where the "real" meaning of the song is never stated, but at the same time, I'll try to make the song work on some more "obvious" level. Maybe the inspiration for the song was my favorite sports team losing a big game, but I'll try to write it so that it also works for the listener who thinks it's just one person consoling another person in a time of trouble.

I remember one song with a "double meaning" like this that I wrote many years ago - our church was doing an Easter musical, with various different people who had known Jesus singing to him as he was being crucified. There was this girl I was sweet on, who was going to be moving out of the area in a few months; I wrote a song for her to sing in the show, as "the woman at the well", coming to say goodbye to Jesus, but the song was also about how I felt about her leaving. She understood both meanings. Unfortunately, her dad (who wasn't that wild about me) did too...

More About "You"

One thing that turns up frequently in all sorts of writing, including songwriting, is the use of "you" as part of an expression of some sort of general applies-to-most-everybody idea; sort of a "platitudinal" use of the word "you." A singer who has just been laid off will sing, "When you lose your job, it makes you feel so small." The sense is that he's expressing some truth that applies to all of us, including the listener.

As I said, this is widely used, but there are times when it doesn't work so well - in particular, in a song where the singer is singing to a "you" character. "That's what I like about you," or "Baby, don't you want me, too?" I've come across a number of lyrics (and I've caught this in my own lyrics as well) where the singer is singing to some specific "you," and they make one of these general platitudinal statements, but it's a statement that does not apply to the "you" in the song. For example, in a song where the (male) singer is trying to convince "you" (female) to stay with him, or come back to him, and somewhere along the line, he makes one of these platitudinal statements like, 'when it's late at night, you need someone to hold onto.' Well, if she left him, apparently she doesn't feel that way. He's making a statement about how he feels, and he's using the platitudinal "you" to imply that (just about) everybody feels that way. But in the context of the lyric, anything he says about "you" is going to be interepreted by the listener as referring to "you," the character in the song.

Platitudinal "you" statements can work in a song, but be careful about using them in a song where "you" has been defined as referring to a character that the singer is singing to. Once you've ( :-) declared who "you" is, any statement in the song about what "you" think or how "you" feel will potentially be interpreted by a listener as referring to that same "you" - and if it's one of those platitudes that applies to everyone but the "you" of the song, it's going to weaken the lyric by diluting the character.

Praise and Worship Song Titles

An thought that came to me while I was critiquing somebody else's praise and worship song: for this kind of music, it's useful to make sure the title of your song somehow suggests what your song is about. In this particular case, someone had written a rather nice "call to worship" type song, but they called it "Changed By Your Grace." The phrase "changed by your grace" did appear once in the song, but that was really the only reference to being changed, or to "grace" in the lyric.

As a worship team leader, who has spent many hours poring through Maranatha, Vineyard, Integrity, and other songbooks: the reason it helps if the song title matches the song content is this. Let's say our minister is going to preach on the topic of "changed by grace" and asks me to find a song that fits that topic. I'd see this song title, "Changed By Your Grace," and think, "hey, this might just be the song I'm looking for!" But after digging out the songbook and looking at the lyric itself, I'd go... "no, this would work as a call to worship, but that's not what I need for Sunday." On the other hand, if I was going through all my songbooks looking for some new "call to worship" songs, I probably wouldn't look at one called "Changed By Your Grace," because I'd expect it to be more of a worship / dedication song.

So - praise and worship writers, think about whether your song title matches up with what the song is really about!

Maintained by Charles Wolff; Last updated 4/2/98

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