Alternative Pop Songwriting Methods

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Cody Kimmel. I am the lead singer of the band Eliot Fitzgerald. I'm here with expert village to teach you how to write an alternative pop song. Now, let's talk about the different ways of songwriting. There are many different approaches to songwriting and none of them are right or wrong. There are so many different ways. I have approached songwriting in so many different ways. I used to think that it would be one thing, where you just kind of develop a pattern and then go with that and that's how you write songs. The truth is that sometimes that's not how it happens. Let's talk about the different ways. One way is that you come up with the music first. Let's say you are just kind of jamming with your friends or something like that. You kind of come up with a chord pattern or something that sounds good (playing music). You might do something like that and say "that sounds like that could be a song." Then you start from there. Another thing that often times happen is that you will see something or hear something that has like a hook or a catch or something like that. You know like "That could be a good song". You sit down and you write all the lyrics first. Then you take those lyrics and put them to music. Sometimes you kind of sit down not really with an idea with the chords, or with an idea for a song and just kind of within the two of them. Kind of fuse them together. I've written songs all different ways. I've written songs anywhere. I've written songs on planes. I've written songs in cars. I've written songs with friends, at shows, in my room anything. So, there are many different ways. Now, the song that I'm going to show you as an example for how to write came actually from a commission. Now, if you are a songwriter actually paid to write songs, often times this is how you will get song ideas. Somebody will actually commission you, give you an idea, give you a topic and actually have you write a song about this. This was actually for a high school senior prom. They wanted to have a theme song for it. So they gave me the idea, which was 'Last Night on the Town'. That was the theme. They asked me to kind of run with it and the song that will be using to teach how to write an alternative or pop song came from that. So, like I said there are many different ways to write a song. There are many different ways to start writing a song. Those are a few of the different ways. You just got to find what one is comfortable for you."