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Show - don't tell: Most important! Listeners will enjoy your music if your songs communicate feelings to them which they identify with. This happens best if the meanings are shown to or hinted at rather than told to them. If their imagination has to work a little they'll empathise more with what you're conveying. For example, don't say "The sun was setting" - which is merely a blunt fact with no other undertones. Instead, describe the scene in terms of colours, emotions, time, etc. so that the listener has the option of conjuring up their own feelings about such a scene, for example "Fading reds across the bay..". Or, "Ain't no sunshine when she's gone" instead of "I'm so lonely without her". This is the technique used in poetry. Use simile, "Easy like Sunday morning" and metaphor, "We're just two ships passing in the night".
Getting started: There are four usual ways of starting a new song; vary your approach, especially if you hit a 'dry' period:
● Chords: Noodling around with chords on the guitar or piano often reveals interesting patterns with potential.
● Melody: You think up a fragment of catchy melody and go to the piano or guitar and try out pleasing chords under it.
● Lyrics: You have an idea to convey and it suggests itself in words first. Get it down on paper before you forget!
● Rhythm: Going through the patterns on a drum machine/soft synth very often suggests a whole song.
Let your ideas flow: Don't worry about getting stuck. Just go around the problem and work quickly - the muse when it comes upon you will not last too long! Getting your ideas down is more important than honing each one to perfection; you can always edit things later.
Cheat: For example, reverse a couplet that isn't working: If you have a couple of lyric lines which you're happy with but one half of it is stronger than the other, swap it around so that the stronger line comes second, for example: "We're making two hearts black and blue, And there's nothing I can do." will have more impact at the end of a verse if reversed to: "Now there's nothing I can do, We're making two hearts black and blue."
Always have something changing: We all get bored quickly with music that drones on without changing, (except for notable exceptions like Bob Dylan, where we primarily listen to the lyrics and backing instrumentation is secondary). This is the reason songs have structures involving Verse, Chorus, Middle Eight, etc. as well as other common techniques designed to make the listener stick around and listen to the song all the way through. Some common arrangement moves are:
Start very simple with just solo piano and voice
Make a variation on the main melody in the middle eight, which is the portion of a song (usually eight bars long) that breaks things up just when it might become boring, e.g. the part in the Commodores' "Easy" that starts "I wanna be high, so high.." is the middle eight.
Introduce tambourine or other percussion instruments halfway through to add excitement
Introduce strings and/or brass at successive stages
Use the dreaded upward key change (!) near the end of a dramatic ballad before the last chorus.
Still Can't Get Started? Listen to some music: I often find that a good way to get started is to play some tracks in the style I'm looking to write a song in. This doesn't prompt copying, subconsciously or otherwise, but it fills my head with music patterns, chords, sounds, etc., and puts me right in the mood - and so 'primes the pump'. This was a tip given by John Mayall to Peter Green when they were first getting to know one another and Peter was starting out trying to write his own blues songs.
Composing melody - the hard bit! A song's melody is at least as important as any other component of your song. In fact, your audience probably won't bother listening to your song at all if your melody is weak. Articles and books can't tell you precisely how write a melody because if there was a formula it would be too valuable to share! Here are some of my experiences though:
● Noodling notes on a keyboard (even if you don't play properly, like me) can turn up interesting melodies. This doesn't work on a guitar, probably because of its bias towards chord playing, but playing chord changes on a guitar often enables you to 'hear' and then sing out a melody that's woven in those changes.
● Beware monotony: vary the range (high and low notes) of the melody to make it interesting. Don't fall into the common beginner's trap of composing a melody largely following the root notes of the chords; try and use other notes of the chords, or even ones not in the chord but suggested by it. Experiment by playing different chords under the same melody to see if that's more harmonically appealing. By experimenting like this you sometimes find it's an iterative process whereby your original melody changes for the better and the chords also change as you try different combinations.
● If you're stuck putting together a melody resist the urge to just change the chord - this won't substitute for lack of a clear melody line. Great songwriters seem to devise clever melodies using a few simple chords. Check out some of Brian Adams' big hits. He writes big, memorable rock songs around a handful of chords in what we guitarists call the first position, i.e. the easy chords that we all learn first like C, G, Ami, D, at the beginning of the fretboard. The most outstanding example of this is the Mavericks' 'Just Want to Dance the Night Away' whose verses, choruses and middle eight are all entirely different melodies sung over the same two alternating chords throughout the song - E and B7!
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