Songwriting: Music or Lyrics First?

Video Transcript

"In this clip I'm going to talk about the age old question of whether you should write the words first, or the lyrics first, or do it at the same time. There is no answer to that question. Everybody works differently and I personally sometimes write the words first, sometimes I write the melody first, sometimes mostly I write it at the same time. There's advantages and disadvantages to both. If you write the words first you might want to read the words over to yourself and see what feeling comes up for you, what the feeling is like and then find the melody from that. If you just are walking down the street and this beautiful melody comes to you, you might say what feeling is this melody, what could this melody be expressing? I kind of like to write a little bit of words, write a melody, and write at the same time. So there's try it all three ways. Try it every way. I mean you can even collaborate with someone and you can write the words and get a friend to write the melody or vise versa. The point is there's no right or wrong way. Do what you want, try all ways, and each has their advantage I've done both. So have fun and find your own style. "