How to Write a Song for Acoustic Guitar

How to write songs from a variety of approaches and how to make them sound good.

Things You'll Need

• Pen
• Paper
• Guitar
• Creativity

Instructions

1. Think of something you want to express- Love, frustration, discontent, optimism, anger, realization, whatever. Inspiration is the most important key to writing a song.

2. Start writing. In the beginning you don't have to be jotting down structured stanzas and whatnot, just write down what you're feeling and what you want to say. Write about a page. Then once you can see your ideas on paper, start to arrange them into stanzas and make the most important part of your message the chorus, which will be repeated. The trick is to not say what you mean directly. Look at any popular acoustic guitar song and you'll see that artists speak in metaphors and symbols, not in direct prose. This is the difference between songwriting and prose writing.

3. Once you have a rough draft for your lyrics, play around with an introduction. Use hammer-ons, slides, and chords to create a melody that matches the tone of your lyrics. This can be intimidating, but again, just start messing around until you find something you think sounds good and fine tune it until you have a 10-15 second intro. Or you can choose to go right into the verse.

4. Develop a chord progression for the verse. There are a number of ways to do this. An important thing to remember is to make your strum pattern and chords match up with the words. What I mean is, make your progression the length of a line (or two or three, whatever) of your stanzas so that it has structure. Again, there is no right way to do this, just play to your ideas and words.

5. At the end of each stanza you can add a riff and an interlude between stanzas. For the chorus, make the chord progression at least slightly different from that of the verse so that it stands out.

6. Add an outro that gently leads the song to a close. This could be the same as your intro or something different. An outro isn't always needed depending on your taste.

Tips & Warnings

• If you're stuck, just listen to other songs, read lyrics, and even poetry. Get a feel for how other people write songs and pay attention to the techniques they're using. Don't get frustrated, remember, you're creating something out of nothing; it's supposed to be hard.

Resources

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