Writing your first song can be an incredibly rewarding experience. It can also be incredibly frustrating and overwhelming. Most people who want to write ask the same question: “Where do I even start?” As a novice songwriter asking this question, I was frequently given bullshit answers like, “everybody has their own process and you’ve just got to figure out what works best for you.”

Words of fucking wisdom, right?

Seriously, though, everybody does have their own process. Personally, I feel like we could all benefit from sharing our methods and also help some beginners learn to develop theirs. With that said, I’m going to walk you guys through my songwriting process. I encourage you to share yours in the comments, or, if you’d rather PM or email me, we can have a more private discussion.

So, first things first:

Start with a single, individual part.

When I first started writing, I thought that I needed to have a vision for my song before I put pen to paper. I would spend hours just thinking about what to write. This is a good way to overwhelm yourself and never actually get anything done. In my experience, it’s much easier to add pieces as you go.

I start with one part and build upon it. It can be anything. Sometimes, it’s a chord progression, sometimes it’s a line. The majority of the time, I play random chords until I wind up with a good progression and go from there, but that may not work for you. Other times, I’ve started with an 2 bar lick, or 4 lines of lyrics. The idea is to take something you really like, and build the song around that.

Take your original idea and expand upon it.

Okay, so you’ve got a chord progression, a lick, or a line that you really like. What do you do next?

Well, how can you compliment your original idea? What chord progression can you segway to from your lick? Pick some chords to play over those lines. Or, if you started with a chord progression, write some lines. I’ll play the same progression over and over again for hours, thinking of good lyrics to fit the “mood”. Again, it’s all about building on top of what you’ve already wrote. Start with any line – it could be the first words of the song or the last words of the chorus, and add to it. Now you have 2 lines. Keep building.

Oh, and when it comes to chords , don’t worry about whether or not someone else has played that particular progression before. Unless you’re ripping off something really unique, it doesn’t matter. If you’re a beginning songwriter, the point is to figure out your method. You can worry about being completely original later. Also, plenty of very different songs are written over the same chord progressions, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Eventually, as you add to your idea, you’ll start to get a feel for what part of the song you are writing. Is it the Chorus? Verse? Bridge?

Repeat.

Okay, so you’ve got the chorus down, or the first verse, or whatever. Now you have to figure out the other parts of your song. Get another idea, and build on that. By this point, you’ve probably got a good vision for what the song is about. Once you’ve gotten the first bit out of the way it usually gets easier to create other parts, but that isn’t always going to be the case. If you find yourself getting frustrated, put the pen down and go take a walk, smoke a cigarette, or drink some coffee. Do something else. Frustration kills creativity, and it isn’t very fun.

Don’t feel defeated if you just can’t figure out where to go next. I guarantee you every songwriter has random verses or choruses just lying around, and they have no idea where to go next. Maybe it’ll take you years to finish that song. It’s okay. At least you’ve written something.. You’ve gained experience. Work on something else and come back to that verse later.

That’s pretty much all there is to my songwriting process. Like I said earlier, I would love for others to share their process with everybody. Hit me up, or leave a comment.

One last thing – I’m new to blogging and would love some ideas on what to write about. If you have any questions or thoughts, let me know!

-Michael