“For a songwriter, you don’t really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they’re made of, and wonder if you can make one, too”
Tom Waits
When learning an instrument we usually apply ‘deliberate practice’, working methodically and efficiently to improve our skills. When writing songs, however, we instead use intuition to express our feelings and emotions.
In reality, they are two sides of the same coin: with enough deliberate practice a new skill sinks into our unconscious, becoming automatic intuition. But how can we use these two parts of the brain to help us write better songs?
With deliberate practice we must learn something so deeply that we can then forget it. We would learn scales until we no longer consciously think about them, and they instead form an invisible framework that sits in our unconscious.
There are a lot of musicians, such as Jeff Beck, Eddie Van Halen and Noel Gallagher who claim to know no music theory, relying instead on intuition to write a song; although I’m sure they spent many years learning lots of songs. This may not be ‘deliberate practice’, but all those songs will sink into the intuition of the artist and inform the songs they write in the future. Noel Gallagher’s years of listening to The Beatles clearly had a massive influence on his song writing.
So one way to develop our intuition for writing great songs is to simply learn lots of songs by other artists. But if we wanted to go deeper than that, we could analyse songs more methodically. At the moment I am teaching a student ‘Patience’ by Guns N’ Roses . The verse chords are C – G – A – D, so the key is G major, starting on the IV chord (‘C’), and then moving to the I chord (‘G’). It then starts to shift key, using A major to temporarily modulate to D.
The fact that we know this doesn’t necessarily help us to write a song, but we could steal the chord progression to use in our own songs, twisting it and blending it with our other influences, internalising the chord progression and adding it into our vocabulary.
Analysing music helps you to understand why a song works (i.e. after it’s been written), but it doesn’t help you write one from scratch. The pop songwriter Max Martin, who has written numerous hits song for Britney Spears, Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson, said in an interview with NME magazine:
“…a great pop song should be felt when you hear it“
Max Martin
Although you may not be writing pop music, the point remains the same – don’t let the theory get in the way of the song. When I studied music at university, there were many teachers who were really good classical composers, but they couldn’t write a good song. Their music was too deliberate and lacked spontaneity.
Composers are more like architects and songwriters are like gardeners: to write a classical piece you need to have balance, thought and structure deliberately built into the process; to be a songwriter you need to let the piece naturally grow from a source outside of yourself.
The initial spark of the song will be ignited by your intuition; but the fire of your intuition must be fuelled with continual practice. If you do that, your intuition will always be there when you need it.
Ways to develop intuition in song writing:
- Play anything for ten minutes without judging whether it is good or bad. I really struggle with this, but my brain eventually calms down after a few minutes.
- Record yourself whilst playing for ten minutes. You may listen back later and hear a few gems that you missed. Distance often helps us gain a new perspective.
- Write with other people.
- Don’t expect anything to happen – just let it happen.
- Write often. You need to write a few bad songs to get to the good songs.
- Whilst I’m writing, I sometimes visualise that I’m improvising a song to an audience of friends, family or strangers. This takes my conscious mind off what I’m doing and helps with flow.
Ways to apply deliberate practice in song writing
- Learn lots of your favourite songs.
- Analyse the chord progressions.
- Analyse how the notes of the melody sit over the chords: are they consonant or dissonant (i.e. are they notes within the chord or outside of the chord)?
- Analyse the shape of the song: is the chorus melody the same as the verse melody (e.g. ‘I Wanna be Your Lover’ by Prince); Are the chorus and verse chords the same (e.g. ‘High and Dry’ by Radiohead)?
- Analyse the note clusters of the melody: is the verse melody made up of only long notes, or only short rhythmic notes, or a mixture? Does the chorus melody contrast this by doing the opposite?
- How are the principles of repetition, contrast and development used?
My latest book ‘Guitar Gymnasium: Habits, Hacks and Tricks to Accelerate Your Playing‘ is available on Amazon now.
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