How to Write Songs

Video Transcript

"CODY KIMMEL: Hi. My name is Cody Kimmel, and I'm the lead singer of the band Eliot Fitzgerald, and I'm here with the Expert Village to teach you how to write a folk song. Just like in any genre of music, writing folk music, there are going to be a number of different ways that you can approach writing folk music. Because folk music is especially--the content and the message of folk music is especially important, the way I like to suggest writing folk music is developing that moral first and developing the idea of the song first. For example, this next song, the song that I'm going to be using, a song that I wrote, to teach how to write folk music is called "The Picture Song" and it really plays on a metaphor of a child drawing a picture that's not very good for their parents but their parents loves the picture anyway and puts it up on a fridge. It is called "The Picture Song." So starting out with that concept before I ever work on a verse or melody or anything like that, have a picture on your head, it's kinda what are we trying to portray, and really it's talking about how love is really what gives value to things. It's not really our act or anything like that and that's the moral of the folk song. So, even though there are different ways to approach it, you can write the verse and the lyrics first, you can write the music first; you can do all that different stuff. However, particularly with folk music, I really do believe, the most important part before you begin writing and in your way of approaching writing folk music is coming up with a theme and coming up with the moral because that is an element of folk music that's going to be across the board in almost any folk song you will hear."