Songwriting: Path to Inspiration

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 a professional artist as she teaches songwriting for beginners in this free video series. You will cover such topics as inspiration, lyrics, melody, structure, tempo, purpose, components of a song, structure and more. Get started making your own music today.

Video Transcript

"So, as we begin this journey of putting together a song, I'd like to talk a little bit about inspiration. Every song has an inspiration or something that started the idea, I call it the seed idea. Well, just look around. Look at this vast world and it is amazing to me how, with all of the choices that there are in this world and all of the many forms of inspiration, how songs actually get created. That's kind of the mystery in this process. Again, there's no right, particularly, right way to do it. But what we are going to be exploring is how we take that inspiration and move it into what would be kind of a pop form of songwriting. Songs that you might hear on the radio, for instance. I want to give some examples here of different types of things that kind of drive a song. Every song has what I call the heart and soul of the song and that's something that is identifiable about it in its structure or its form. A message that moves through it and may repeat a couple of times. In pop music, we call it a hook. A hook can show up in the form of a chorus, something that repeats over and over again. Or, it can show up in the form of a refrain, maybe a phrase that ends with a certain statement and it continues to end with that statement or something that is aligned with that statement. This is kind of the seed of the song. But there's lots of different kinds of ways that a song's heart and soul can be felt. Something that's really important in songwriting is that we have mentors or models. And, if there are a couple of writers that you particularly like, you either like their songs or the way their music flows, try to write down for yourself and analyze what it exactly it is about those writers that you enjoy, that you're inspired by. Because that may be a way that you are going to be fashioning yourself. The other thing that I want to suggest is that you look at all of life as an opportunity for a song. Songwriters are people who listen, who observe, who feel. And, oftentimes, a song can be coming from a concept or an idea. It can be coming from a very deep emotional place that needs to be expressed. Or it can be coming from something that you're hearing musically in your head. Or it could be coming from something that you've observed, maybe a social commentary or something in the world that you want to write about."