Your Songwriting Ingredients, Part Four of Four

Welcome to Part Four in our Songwriting Series. If you have followed the advice of our previous songwriting lessons, then you have probably already seen improvement in your writing ability. By now, you should know the secret ingredient in songwriting ability, how to listen to music, and how to serve the song.

There is one missing ingredient in all of this. I’ll give you a hint: It is necessary for building any skill in music.

Practice.

You need to practice songwriting every day in order to get better. If you are really serious about it, then you will practice every single day.

There are a couple things you need to practice specifically. You need to work on melody writing first of all. This is the most important thing to practice writing. I will post instructions in the future on how you can get better at writing melodies.

You also need to practice your harmony (chords) and lyric writing. I will give you lessons in the future on how to do that as well.

Your songwriting ability is directly related to how many hours you have spent writing songs. So to increase your ability, you need to increase the number of songs that you have written. Sounds simple, right? It is! (Note: I didn’t say it was easy, I only said it was simple. Write more songs. That’s the whole idea)

Now, it’s one thing to talk about doing something, and it’s another thing entirely to actually do it. Guess which one will make you better ;-)

So here’s what to do. Set goals. Ask yourself how many songs you are comfortable writing in a month, and write that many for your first month. The second month will be easier than the first, and you can increase the number of songs you will write.

The best craftsmen throughout history were nearly always also the most prolific. It doesn’t matter what field it is in, whether music or architecture or film-making or plumbing. The more you practice your craft, the better you will get. I realize I am repeating this a lot, but only because I want you to understand how important this concept is. This is the hidden ingredient in songwriting.

That is the whole concept: Practice writing songs as often as you are able, to the best of your ability, and then increase it after you get better.

That brings us to the end of the last part of our Songwriting Series. I have a very important article planned for the near future regarding songwriting, so be sure to subscribe to my blog and check it out when it comes.