Songwriting: Theme

Series Summary

Some call it an art and others a science, but most agree that music is an organized set of sounds and rests between sounds. No one knows how long it has existed but the earliest record of written music dates back four thousand years. However, in Iran, there are five thousand year-old figurines holding musical instruments. Given that humans have so much experience with music, the average person is often mystified when it comes to the nuts and bolts of songwriting.

Learn to write songs from professional musician Athena Reich as she teaches songwriting for beginners in this free video series. Athena has has shared the stage with Sara McLachlan and has taught at Oregon State University. She covers such topics as theme, lyrics, melody, structure, repetition and variance, chord progression, editing, copyrighting and more.

Video Transcript

"We're going to learn how to write a song and, in this clip, we're going to learn about how to pick a theme. What do you write about? Well, some people have a thousand ideas already of things they want to write about. Some people have no clue. We're going to write a song together right now, on the spot. So, I don't care. What should we write about? We can write about the birds. We could write about trees. We could write about fire. We could write about broken hearts. I have no idea. Why don't you throw a theme at me, Mr. Cameraman? "New York in the wintertime." New York in the wintertime. This is my theme. I've got to write about New York in the wintertime. First thing I might do is I might, in my journal, I might do nonstop writing about New York in the wintertime. Let's do a stream of consciousness verbally right now. New York in the wintertime. It's cold and it's sleety and I'm walking and I'm freezing and I'm cold and I'm thinking why did I move here? Why did I move here? I don't know. And everything's wet from my head to my toe. And I'm thinking, why did I move here? Why did I move here? And there's no such thing as a fireplace any more, no such thing at all. I mean you could just like go at it. You can write it or, you know, improvise on that theme and just go with it and see how it connects personally to you. For me, I start thinking about why am I here in New York. I could be in Canada. At least in Canada, you know, that's where I'm from, at least in Canada in the wintertime there's snow and it's beautiful and people have dinner parties, but you know, I'm cold and I'm wet and I'm trying to hustle and bustle in New York wintertime. But at least in Canada there was sleds and there was snow."