The 7-Step Formula for Writing a Full Song (That's Actually Good)

[00:02] of good ideas. They struggle because they don't know what to do when a good idea shows up. It's not a problem of inspiration. It's a problem of process. So, in this video, I'm going to take you through a simple 7step process to write

[00:16] a song from start to finish, from blank page to complete first draft. The idea is to take the guesswork out of the process. The goal is also to show you that you don't need endless amounts of time to write songs and finish more of

[00:32] them. For the most part, most people just need to know exactly what to do in the next 15 minutes to make meaningful progress to actually do something that moves the song along rather than kind of sitting there noodling for half an hour,

[00:45] if your computer or your notebook is full of promising starts, but you'd actually like your songs to reach the finish line, even if you only have small finish line, even if you only have small pockets of time, this video is for you.

[01:01] So, we're going to break the process into seven steps. And one of the reasons we're doing that is because we're running a 7-day songwriting challenge in January. So, these seven steps mirror closely the seven prompts of the seven

[01:15] days of the songwriting challenge. So, that challenge is open to everyone. You are welcome to join. The link to join is in the show notes below. So, you're welcome to just follow along the video, do it by yourself, or if you'd like to

[01:27] do it in the company of hundreds of other songwriters from around the world, as well as the company of Benny and I in a more structured community supported enriched environment. Join us for the challenge. do it alongside other

[01:40] songwriters and hopefully we'll see you there. If not, you can follow along here the steps and a lot of the value of working through this step-by-step process. Along the way, I'm going to give you some key tips that really help

[01:54] songwriters get over the habits that prevent us from writing more songs and finishing more songs. And also in step seven, I'm going to share with you a little bit of a secret technique that very experienced songwriters use all the

[02:09] time. Whether you are a Joanie Mitchell, Paul Simon fan or you are an Olivia Rodrigo, Olivia Dean fan, it's old, it's new, it's something that you see all over pop songwriting from whatever genre or era. It's really, really simple to

[02:23] use, but you need to know what it is in order to use it. So, let's dive in. The simple goal for step one is to come up with some lyric ideas and material upcoming steps. And the way that we're going to do that is through a simple,

[02:39] going to do that is through a simple, effortless writing technique called free freewriting or even done some free writing, but the type of freewriting that we're going to do has just a few interesting parameters or limitations.

[02:52] So, it's like semifreewriting. Firstly, what do we even mean by free writing? So freewriting I would define as writing in uncensored loose pros. So let's work backwards with those words. So what is pros? Pros is writing in sentences. And

[03:08] that's really important because what we do not want to do, you are not allowed in this step to try to write lyrics. Okay? If we try to write lyrics, writing to write in this sort of like poetically

[03:22] elevated state, it's an immediate way to just completely suppress the development of ideas, the exploration of ideas, just writing to find out what we're thinking noticing. We don't want to start out writing lyrics. We want to be much more

[03:37] expansive and generative than that. What do we mean by loose? Well, what I simply mean by loose is that we can be expressive and fluid in the way that we express ourselves in our sentences. We're not writing a university English

[03:50] paper. It does not need to be grammatically and syntactically perfect. It can be quirky and weird and wild as long as we're not like writing lyrics and as long as we're not just bulletpointing individual words, right?

[04:03] We want sentences, lines, phrases, but they don't need to be a perfect English essay. Now, uncensored is probably the most important part of this and it's most important part of this and it's also our first tip in terms of the sorts

[04:15] of things that prevent us from doing our work and doing more of it. All of us have an inner critical voice. It's a voice that is there designed to shut the creative process down. Most creative people have it. It's like the belly

[04:29] button lint when you get a new cashmere sweater. You know, it's just an unfortunate byproduct of a beautiful thing. And knowing that can be really helpful cuz we can say, "Oh, you're not real. You're just part of this process.

[04:41] You can just sit over there while I'm busy over here kind of getting loose and getting creative and getting wild and not caring if things aren't a staggering work of heartbreaking genius just yet. So, as you are freewriting, no

[04:55] So, as you are freewriting, no censoring, no composing, no crafting, no us that we should stop cuz it's not good. We are just going to keep writing. We're going to set a timer for 15 minutes. And in that 15 minutes, we're

[05:09] just going to write and write and write. As Ed Sheeran says, often what we need to do is allow the rusty water to run to let the clear stuff come out. So, let's not turn the tap off just because the first things we write are not

[05:24] necessarily up to the highest standards of our expectations. The other two thing that makes it kind of semifreewriting is simply that I want you to focus on two particular things when I give you a prompt. Okay? So the

[05:39] freewriting responds to a prompt. When I give you the prompt, the two things I want you to focus your writing on firstly are details. So whatever moment, firstly are details. So whatever moment, memory, scene, experience or kind of

[05:54] amalgamation of ideas comes into your mind in response to the prompt, try and describe it in as much detail as you can. So use all of your senses and just can. So use all of your senses and just to remind us our primary senses are

[06:09] to remind us our primary senses are sound, sight, smell, taste, and touch. So don't just use one or two. Try to use a variety of different senses to really paint the picture. Now, we don't need to overthink this. The idea is just imagine

[06:23] that whatever memory or moment has come to your mind, you're on the phone to a the scene for them. You're really trying to put them in there with you. They really trying to make them feel like they were there with you. That's your

[06:36] job. That's what we mean by paint the picture. The second thing that I want you to focus on is simply the thoughts and feelings that arise in response to the prompt. When you reflect on the prompt, what does it make you think?

[06:50] What does it make you feel? What does it make you wonder about? Ponder on? What emotion or feeling does it conjure inside your body? So, I'm about to give you a prompt or an example prompt. And the idea with this step is to set a

[07:04] timer for 15 minutes. So feel free to pause the video right here, right now if you're working alongside me and take the prompt and do this freewriting exercise for 15 minutes. So the prompt that I'm going to give you is garage sale.

[07:27] Step two is to use the raw material from our freewrite to craft a fourline section of verse lyrics. So, this is where I get to engage a little bit of rhyme if I want to. I'm also going to give myself and you a parameter, which

[07:43] is to try and make the lines of lyric at least on the page more or less the same length. Later down the line of steps, we're going to introduce some music and the lyrics might change at that point, but just to give us a basic working

[07:56] aren't sort of radically different lengths is going to be more workable and a little bit more usable. Another really important tip [music] and this is related to the first tip from the first step is don't burden yourself with the

[08:11] pressure of again writing something that is just a staggering work of poetic awardwinning literary genius. Just save that pressure for somewhere else another day someone else a different writing room. Okay.

[08:27] What we want to go for is something that is just interesting to us and compelling to us. So, the first thing I'm going to do is just read through my free writing and highlight or underline any words, phrases, or lines that I find

[08:40] interesting, pleasing, that jump out to me for whatever reason. I'm not going to judge the reason that they jump out to me. I'm just going to highlight it joyfully and let the ideas emerge out of

[08:52] writing. So, here's my example, a short excerpt from my freewriting in response excerpt from my freewriting in response to garage sale. And just extracting some of the words and images and the character and language, I come up with

[09:05] this fourline section. She's selling off her memories, photo frames, and old paperbacks. They're all knicknacks and brick. She doesn't need them anymore. And inside the 7-day songwriting challenge, which you can join right now,

[09:19] can you tell that I want you to join? Um, I'm going to share a secret. Or is But I'm going to tell you something that not many people know about the English language and how rhyme works inside the English language that is really going to

[09:34] English language that is really going to help you unlock fluid, uncliched, totally natural sounding rhyme that just arises in natural speech. So if you need an impetus or a reason to join, let that be one of them you can join right now.

[09:49] be one of them you can join right now. Okay, let's move on to step three. In step three, we are going to add music. Yay. So, we have a lyric idea and now we're going to start integrating music. Before we dive into step three, I

[10:03] question, which is why are we doing things in this order? In the real world of songwriting, a song can absolutely start with melody and we can bring in lyrics later. In professional songwriting rooms, so much of the time,

[10:15] a song will actually start with a title, and songwriters will actually start thinking about anything else. But the reason we're doing it this way is because it's a very neat, sequential, organic, almost chronological way to

[10:30] write a song. It's very easy. It's very uncomplicated, and we can really break it into these meaningful chunks that get us from nothing to song draft very quickly and very easily. So, let's do step three together. Step three is where

[10:43] we introduce music. And yes, we are introducing music now because we're going to start to let the music and lyrics dance together early so that we have both lyrics and music at play together as we forge ahead past verse

[10:59] together as we forge ahead past verse one. Step three is to set our fourline lyric to melody over a simple chord loop. We aren't going to overthink it. I'm going to simply put some chords together. I'm going to hum some melody

[11:12] notes to start to get familiar with the kind of notes that fit over those chords. You see, I don't need any music theory to do this. I just need my ears turned on. And once I'm humming a melody, I'm going to start just

[11:25] naturally singing the lyrics and seeing what fits. Inside the 7-day challenge in January, we offer three different chord pathways. So, like the total beginner pathway, the familiar with chords pathway, and also the chord wizards

[11:41] pathway. But for our purposes here, what I'm going to do is use a simple combination of chords that are all drawn from a basic major key. from a basic major key. She's selling off her memories,

[12:02] old [singing] photo frames, and paper [music] bags.

[12:16] She [singing] doesn't need them. She doesn't need them anymore. chorus. And what we're going to do in this chorus is keep things really

[12:29] simple. So the instruction for this chorus is that we are going to write a one line chorus which is to say the chorus can only have one line of lyric. Now that one line of lyric might repeat but there is only going to be one line.

[12:45] Now this one line lyric chorus is a tried andrue tradition. Some of the most extraordinary songs ever written are exactly this. So the song Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, not even one line. It's really just one word. Some other songs

[13:00] that come to mind are Your Body Is a Wonderland by John Mayer and Don't Let Me Down by The Beatles. So, where am I going to find this one line? I'm going to go back to my freewriting and I'm actually going to scan through the

[13:12] entire piece of freewriting I did and just see if anything jumps out to me. It might be one word. It might be one line. It might be a combination of words that It might be a combination of words that I then expand on. So, I don't need to

[13:26] stay contractually obliged to the words that are on the page. I can be inspired by what I've written and feel free to write something else, but I'm really of that language is already there. The imagery is already there and see if

[13:40] anything stands out to me that I feel like could be a line that firstly can repeat and secondly that has some kind of logical essence to it that feels like a chorus. It's something that feels like a central message, a core idea, a peak

[13:56] emotion, or even just an image that feels like it resonates with the whole idea. This step also includes putting it to music. And there are three really important things I want to tell you about setting it to music that are very,

[14:10] very simple, very easy to do, and are going to set you down the right path of making this simple chorus really feel like a chorus. These three things are contrast. So, what I'm really trying to do here is make this section feel like a

[14:25] chorus, which is to say, I don't want it to just sound like a tag to the verse or just a continuation of the verse. So, it needs to be contrasting in some way. So, three ways that I could use to make it contrasting immediately are the

[14:41] following. Whatever chords you have used for the verse, use some new or different chords for the beginning of the chorus. Two, experiment with changing how long

[14:53] you are holding chords for. So whether you are using a combination of the same chords or introducing new chords, what I'm going to do is look at how fast I've been changing chords inside the bars of my verse and try changing that up. So

[15:06] that might actually be holding chords for longer or it might be changing chords faster. And a third thing has to do with melody. So, I'm going to really use melody to create the contrast. And again, it's just about asking myself,

[15:20] what have I been doing so far? What pitches have I been singing? Can I hit a heard before? It might be about saying, well, how quickly are the words coming out in the verses? And how can I change that in the chorus? Might I hold a note

[15:35] for longer? Or is it the opposite? I think coming out really slowly and actually speeding up the melodic pace and the melodic rhythm is the thing really contrasting. All righty. So, here is the full bit of freewriting that I

[15:48] did in response to that prompt. And when I scan through it, there are three lines that jump out to me as contenders for the chorus line. So, the first is I can't find what I'm looking for. So, we've got the image of this woman who's

[16:01] at the garage sale and maybe I as someone who's searching through all this stuff. I can't find what I'm looking for. That has potential. Also, this line, I see her dancing. So, dancing or I see her dancing or she is dancing.

[16:14] This is a really lovely image. It's very evocative. It doesn't smack you in the face with, you know, this is what this song means. It's something that is very image-based. Um, but it could end up being quite metaphorical or symbolic and

[16:27] is much more about her than it is about me necessarily. Um, and then the last line, now she's selling everything. Um, so those are the three contenders. I think of all of them based on what I've come up with in the first verse, the one

[16:41] that feels like the kind of lowhanging fruit, the natural thing to come back to and and also something that I feel like I can build upon is the last one. Now she's selling everything. So that's what I'm going to pick as the line for the

[16:57] lyric. So here's what I came up with musically. everything. [music] Now she's saying everything. Now she's selling. Now she's selling

[17:13] [singing] everything. [music]

[17:27] now we are fleshing out the song form. We are really giving the song shape. And when we give a song shape, we give it momentum. We give it direction. We give it somewhere to go. So where am I going to find the lyrics for my verse 2? Well,

[17:42] there are two ways I might do this. The first thing I might do is simply to look there's anything else in there that feels like a logical development from the first verse. The other way I might

[17:54] go about this is simply to write some new lyrics without reference necessarily to the free writing material that I already have. Now that I have the verse and the chorus already there, the song has some personality. It has some

[18:08] direction. It has some story. So I can feel free if I want to and something occurs to me to to just write some new lyrics that flow on from the ideas that are already there. For our purposes here, I'm going to put together four

[18:21] lines drawing quite heavily actually on the freewriting that's already there. the freewriting that's already there. Cigarette [singing] smoke.

[18:35] She leans [singing] back in on a wicked chair. [music] [singing and music] ring. Fold it up real neat.

[18:48] She paid the price. She paid [singing and music] the price. Now [singing and music] the price. Now you've got the receipt. there. So in step six, you may not be surprised to know we are going to write

[19:03] the bridge. A bridge is very simply a section that is there to provide a new perspective both lyrically and musically. If you want more detail and ideas and examples and demonstrations on bridge writing, definitely check out

[19:18] this video right here. But for our purposes, I want to give you one specific tip to really dive into this. And it's a lyric writing tip. And the tip is this. I'm going to look at the type of language of my chorus and employ

[19:34] a different type of language. So, what the hell do I mean by type of language? There are three generally types of language in English. There are statements, questions, and commands. Now, there are a few more in reality,

[19:46] categories that can be very helpful for look at the chorus and I'm going to ask myself, is it a statement, question, or command? My chorus is a statement. Okay? It's not a question and it's not a

[19:59] command. I'm not telling anyone to do anything. I'm simply making a statement. So, I'm going to use one of those other two types of language in my bridge. And the story, the character, the themes that have started to emerge and what it

[20:15] means to me, this idea of kind of selling off your memories and your memories and your life being represented in these physical objects and that these physical objects can mean so much and then become just these kind of tokens of

[20:29] a transaction. Um, it raises a lot of questions. So, I've just whipped down a few lines of lyric for the bridge that are really based in this kind of questioning idea. What questions arise

[20:43] for me? I'm not in the business in this song of giving answers or insights. To me, it's much more reflective. So, these are the lyrics that I came up with for the bridge. How much does a memory cost? Can years be weighed in pounds? If you

[20:56] put it down, can you find it again in the lost and found? and we'll see when we get to the end of step seven what I do musically there. I don't even know to tell you the truth to just give you a little bit of um backstage entry here. I

[21:09] haven't actually written any of the music at this stage. So all of the music at this stage. So all of the scenes of me playing this song are me in the future cutting me back in. So I read those lyrics. I actually have no idea

[21:21] what the melody or chords are going to be. I'm excited to find out. Okay. but I'm not going to play it for you until the very end of this video. So, we can listen to the whole song if you like at the end.

[21:34] Step seven is where I get to show you this songwriting tip and technique that experienced and pro songwriters use all the time when we get to the last chorus.

[21:46] encourage you if you haven't checked it out already to check out the link to the 7-day songwriting challenge. It's really there to give you a short structured boost of songwriting accountability and motivation to really ride the January

[22:04] energy. Benny and I are also running two live sessions at the beginning and the end so we can actually meet everyone that is joining the challenge, answer spotlighting some of the songs that are written during the seven days for the

[22:17] hundreds of other songwriters that are going to be there to hear as well. So, if you're interested in joining us, it is honestly just cheap as chips. It is the most accessibly priced thing we offer. So, I really encourage you to

[22:31] something like this in this structure. And we really hope that you will come alongside us and the other songwriters who are already joining as we speak. Our who are already joining as we speak. Our final step is to repeat the chorus, but

[22:46] chorus [music] as is. And this is the tip or technique that experienced and pro songwriters use all the time, which is to introduce some

[22:58] all the time, which is to introduce some kind of variation into the repeating chorus at the end. Now, the reason why we wait until the end [music] we wait until the end [music] is because variation is only meaningful

[23:11] once we've actually heard repetition. So, repeating the chorus once and then repeating it again is that repetition. Once we've heard the chorus repeat exactly inside the song form, we can now introduce some kind of variation at the

[23:27] end. And that variation is going to feel surprising and delightful on the ear of a listener. It's very tempting for songwriters to change the lyrics of every chorus, to swap one line from this line or that line. But so often that

[23:41] actually dilutes the power of the variation rather than using variation in a meaningful and appropriate way. So we are going to save the variation for the last chorus. Let's quickly talk through four different kinds of variation that

[23:58] four different kinds of variation that you might include or try out in your last chorus. The first technique is simply doubling. So, we're going to extend the length of the chorus simply by doubling the chorus at the end. Now,

[24:12] with a chorus that is one line repeating, that might get a little bit overly repetitive depending on our melody and chords and what's going on. So we can also engage other things even with a simple doubling technique that's

[24:25] going to create a lot of interest. So dynamics is one thing that is super underutilized and extremely effective. So for example, what I might do is strip everything right down and sing the first chorus after the bridge really really

[24:40] quiet, really dynamically suppressed and then use the final repetition to bring the dynamics up again and really give it a nice belt. or I might do the opposite. So, it entirely depends on what the bridge has come off of and how I want

[24:54] the song to end. But simply engaging this idea of dynamics in doubling is a great way to introduce variation. A second technique of variation is extension. So, in extension, what I might do is actually play some extra

[25:09] chords inside the chorus. Whether that's leaving space, I might add an extra line inside the chorus. I might extend by repeating a line at the end of a chorus.

[25:21] So I'm going to extend the chorus in some way without fully doubling it, just extending it. A third technique is chord substitution. So whatever the chords I've been using in the first and second chorus, I might swap the order of chords

[25:36] or I might introduce a new chord. So swapping out one of the chords for some other chord is going to introduce an element of differentiation and surprise and variation that can feel very satisfying for the ear of a listener.

[25:49] repeat inside the chorus using chord substitution is a great way to hold that thing constant while changing something underneath it. It feels really good. It's very satisfying. I think I might try that one. A fourth technique that

[26:02] you can use that's very easy, simple, very accessible is melodic variation. So, this is simply taking the melody of one of the lines and doing something different with it. That could be enough. Another way to think of it is to look at

[26:15] the melody I have and ask, well, is the melody going up on line two? Well, the direction of the melody and have the melody go down. And that might be the way that I create melodic variation. So, it's not a melodic variation to every

[26:30] single line. It's really about picking one discrete moment inside the chorus and using that one moment to introduce that melodic variation. All right, I'm going to play you the whole song start to finish now. And if you have made it

[26:44] [laughter] And if you want to stick around to the end of the song, I would really really love you to comment in the comments below and tell me which of those four chorus variations am I using in my chorus variation. And just as a

[27:01] hint, it might be one of them or it might be multiple of them. Keen to know if you can hear the variation happening and if you can name it. All right, guys. Enjoy. [music] >> She's selling off [singing] her

[27:14] >> She's selling off [singing] her memories, old photos [singing] and paper bags.

[27:36] She doesn't need them. She doesn't need them anymore. everything. Now she's selling. Now she's selling

[27:52] [singing] [music] everything.

[28:06] Cigarette [singing] smoke curves through her hair. She leans back in on a wicked [singing] chair, [music]

[28:21] slides off her wedding ring, fold [singing and music] it up real neat. She paid the [singing] price. She paid [music] the price. Now you've got the [music] the price. Now you've got the receipt.

[28:36] Now she's selling [music] Now she's selling Now she's selling [singing] [music] everything.

[28:54] memory cost? [music] Can years be weighed in pounds [singing and music] If you put them down,

[29:07] can you pick them up again? [music] And now she's selling [singing] everything. Now [music] she's selling everything. Now she's selling. Now she's selling

[29:22] [singing] everything. [music] everything. Now she's selling [singing and music] everything. Now she's selling.

[29:37] Now she's selling. Now she's selling [music and singing]