General songwriting tips? How to write something great?

[Botond Papp]

How to write a song?
After playing enough, coming up with a good riff isn’t hard at all, but composing an entire *great* song (like anything from metallica – “the black album”, A7X songs to Ed Sheeran – “I see fire”, “halleluja”, etc) is a different story.
A song is usually made from:
-instrumental
-lyrics
-vocals
=> definitely more complex than just a riff
How should I get started? How should I work my way up to writing smth great?
Any tips, advices?

 

[idssdi]

I think it works differently for everyone. For example John mayer starts with the music and then makes every word in the lyrics fit the music. For example if you have a sad sounding chord progression you usually also want a bit sadder lyrics. Other people write more in a poet way. They basically start lyrics and try to make the music first the lyrics. Just try to figure out what works for you.
In general what you want to look at is key, vibe you’re going for and maybe whether you want to put key changes in there too. Also writing I good song can take a long time so don’t get discouraged when it takes a while until you have one. Usually experience helps a lot with writing songs so just start writing stuff and you will get some good ones at some point.

 

[Richard O'connor]

Well I think that doing that on your own would be difficult, I know this from my own experience. Being in a band definitely would help in my opinion. Everyone can chip in with their own ideas. Everyone will listen to different tho vs which gives them different ideas and will also interpret your idea in a different way. A fresh perspective on your own music is invalid. Some Artists tend to get quite protective over there own music but having members of your band or a producer listen to it and give ideas will definitely help.
I always say this too but listen to all different types of music to help with creativity. Ultimately though I think it comes down to time. Just keep writing and writing. I heard something about the 10,000 theory. 10,000 hours needed to become great at something. Whether it’s true or not I don’t know but can’t be bad to put that amount in lol.

 

[Jak Angelescu]

I agree with Richard. While having a band definitely does help, we should keep in mind that there were amazing composers that wrote entire operas by themselves. People like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Richard Wagner wrote the lyrics, the melodies, AND the parts for over 10 different instruments, all with their own ‘chair section’ (1st chair clarinets took the leads while the 2nd chairs usually played more basic parts). So it’s not entirely impossible to do these great, complicated things on your own. But it all stems from one idea, whether it be a chord progression, melody played on piano (or guitar), or even just a sense of emotion you want to convey. For example with this, Hans Zimmer wrote the music for the stampede scene in the Lion King movie. He utilized what the characters were expressing and the atmosphere of the scene to write his music.
But it all starts with something simple. You build over the first step and you keep building on ideas. Spend time thinking to yourself, “This is MY song. If I did have a drummer, what would I like them to play underneath it?” It’s honestly something you just have to sit down, focus on, and really start creating your own ideas. I like recording my ideas to a metronome on my phone’s audio recorder and then playing over it. Or sometimes playing along to drumming backing tracks that will also open up ideas for rhythm tracks.