Central Coast

Songwriting
Lessons

What is Songwriting?

Put simply it’s having the skills and knowledge to craft and edit a song with control and flexibility. Writing songs is the same as most crafts and skill sets. Its a solid and practised set of techniques and skills that allow you to create, edit and change a complete piece of music to make it do exactly what it is intended to do. After teaching songwriting for so many years, we have found there is a misconception that songwriters just sit down and write, people seem to think this is talent or something that you either have or don’t. Songwriting is a set of skills and techniques you apply to create, edit or rework a song. The better your command of these techniques, the quicker and easier you can create exactly what you need.

Music

1. You create a brief. A brief is the purpose of the song or track, it may be for an album, an EP, a piece of television or media or to appear with supported graphics. Sometimes briefs are given to you by a producer, another artist or yourself for your own original work.

2. You decide your form, function and flow. These are elements in a song that set the speed, dynamic, emotional movement and structure. These elements are used to determine the length of a song and where the high and low points are.

3. You apply the colour elements.
These are chord inversions, melodies, bass lines, harmonies and instrument parts. These elements work together to create the moods and emotional movement of a song.

Lyrics

1. You create a brief. A brief is the purpose of a song or track, it may be for an album, an EP, a piece of television or media or to appear with supported graphics. Sometimes briefs are given to you by a producer, another artist or yourself for your own original work.

2. You decide your voice, form, and flow. These elements create the style the lyrics will take on. They create emotion and lyrical movement of the song.

3. Lastly, you decide characters, perspective and content. This gives you the perfect foundation to create absolutely anything you like. Once you understand the tools needed to create the lyrics you can manipulate the elements to support a character, give them an opinion or point of view. You can make listeners love or hate them agree or disagree with them. You can colour your songs to do exactly what the brief intends them to do.