Want To Be A Songwriter? Be A Music Player First!

You’ve heard the advice they give to people who want to write fiction. Read fiction, they say. It’s the same with everything. You want to write poetry? Read poetry. You want to paint? Study other artists’ paintings. And so on.

It’s good advice, if you think about it. By reading the work of another author, particularly one that is popular and/or well-respected, you will continually expose yourself to proper, well-received writing. Your subconscious mind will gradually pick up on the nuances that make good writing work, and with enough reading you will begin to “automatically” incorporate some of the same techniques and points of style in your own writing.

The same holds true for visual artists. A series of trips to the art museum can plant numerous seeds in the mind of a creative person that will cause his or her own work to develop and bloom. Seeing example after example of the effective use of line, color, and form will implant the underlying principles deep in the mind. Upon beginning a new work, an artist is subconsciously influenced by all of the paintings she has seen up to that point.

You probably think I am going to say, and so, as a prospective songwriter you should listen to a lot of music. Well, that is important, but it’s not what I’m going for here. You see, music is different from writing or the visual arts in that it is possible for a music listener to to “join in” by singing or playing along as the music is heard. (In contrast, you can’t really “write along” with a book as you read it or “paint along” with a painting as you look at it.) The music listener can effectively recreate the musician’s work.

Getting Behind the Song

You can take advantage of this unique aspect of music and use it to “get behind” someone else’s song in a deep way by learning to play the song yourself. That means learning the chords, melody, and lyrics. It means practicing the chords on guitar or keyboard. It means learning to sing the song as you play. With practice, you will eventually get to the point where you can comfortably pick up the guitar (or sit down at the piano) and just bash out the song.

But why would playing songs help a new songwriter more than just listening to good songs? It’s because, unlike with mere listening, in order to play and sing a song you have to really know it, the same way you really know the songs you write yourself. You may listen to a nifty chorus in a song, for example, and think “Hm, it sounds like they went to a minor chord right there.” When you actually play that same chorus yourself, you know that the chord in question is in fact a Dm7 and that the verses are in F, the relative major, and that that’s why the change sounds so cool.

So which leads you to being a better songwriter, listening or playing? Obviously, if you can play a whole bunch of great songs yourself, you have the pieces in place that you can re-assemble into a great song of your own. Just listening can give you a feel for song structure and arrangements, as well as a sense of which recording and production techniques produce which results, but to properly study the song itself as an example of songwriting, you have to learn to play it.

An Action Plan

OK. Here is my recommendation, an assignment that you can take on as a personal challenge. First, identify the type of music you are interested in writing. Is it heavy metal? Folk rock? Disco? Whatever it is, pick three songs in that genre that you wish you had written, and learn to play each of them pretty darn well on your chosen instrument while singing along. You can find the chords and lyrics to most songs on the Internet by Googling the song title (in quotes) along with the word chords or lyrics.

After you have mastered these first three songs and can basically play them on demand, add a couple more just to make sure you have a good variety of songwriting styles represented. Now here’s an amazing fact. During this time of learning and playing these songs, you do not need to make any special effort whatsoever to notice particular chord sequences, key changes, and so on. Your subconscious mind will do it all for you! Just play.

Getting to know other people’s songs in this way will definitely give you a leg up when you go to write your own, similar songs. Without even trying, you will draw on the song-knowledge you have planted in your subconscious mind. And don’t be worried about “stealing.” It’s the oldest tradition in music!