Being a Songwriter

Where to start your journey?

It could be said that the initial stages and the thought process can often be the most difficult and lengthy – some however start with a small melody in their head and pick ideas up very quickly and build on it. Advice and ideas from others can always be helpful but at the end of the day, it’s your idea and it’s up to you what you choose to do and, just as importantly, which direction you would like to take it and what genre you are writing in.

Songwriting and the different aspects

First of all- the thought process and the idea. This is often a very intensive process, and writing is different, depending on your music background. It’s important that you spend time on expanding your idea and making it as good as it possibly can be.

Some people write lyrics and music simultaneously – this sometimes happens if you are also a singer. This is fine, as you can always change bits at a later stage.

Once you have a general infrastructure, you then need instrumentation. Instrumentation and arrangement are vital to the success and marketing of your song idea. This is where you may need expert help, as you may be aiming at a particular genre, but with no real idea about how to achieve that effect. It’s all very well having a melody in your head and different instruments playing but actually laying that out quickly and effectively is another matter, even assuming you have the recording expertise or software. Then you have the production and mixing of your track or tracks to finish.

So to summarise there are numerous different aspects to the development of an effective track: these are arrangement, instrumentation, production, mixing and mastering.

Protecting your track

Before you even start promoting your track you need to ensure that it’s copyrighted and you have registered your ownership for royalties with PRS.

Promoting your track

Promoting your track is something you can do by yourself or get help with – it’s totally up to you. There are several things you can do. One of the simplest things is just to play your song in as many places as and as many times as possible, and then register this fact with PRS. You can also put your song up for download or you can promote it via website, YouTube videos etc. If you are putting up original material you can also monetise it on YouTube.

If you are very confident of the value of your track, you may approach a plugger – a plugger will want to see the value in the whole package – singer,  songwriter , performer. Not all pluggers are actually the real thing, so be cautious and look for recommendations and results.