March 12th, 2010 – These days, producers write songs and songwriters produce their own songs. DAWs are so powerful, and with the great plug-ins out there to compliment them, a song written and produced in the basement can rival a commercial release with thousands of dollars into it.

With people creating fantastic music on their own, many without any formal training, there are many different ways to go about building a track from scratch. Sometimes a synth line will set off my ideas, or a melody will suddenly come to me while I’m trying to get to sleep. However the idea comes, I almost always start with the hook (either melody or sound), build drums to it, then add a bass (if the bass isn’t already the hook). Finally I’ll add instruments to lift choruses, and complimentary counterpoints to the main melodies.

I tend to come up with lyrics last, I find it hard to write a song to lyrics that already dictate a specific melodic rhythm. However some songwriters I work with create lyrics and smooth them around the melody and rhythm of the already created track. Everyone has their own way that they’re comfortable building tracks, and I’m interested in hearing how you go about. How do you typically build a song?

This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 6:31 pm.
Categories: Producing, Questions, Songwriting.

4 Comments, Comment or Ping

  1. Charlie

    I quite often work in a similar manner to you and always work on making the hook fantastic first because if you don’t have that you don’t have much. However, I’ve been working hard lately to start with lyrics. They are what I have the hardest time with and I often end up settling with ok lyrics over (what I think) a great tune. So by starting with lyrics I’m trying hard to make sure they work as well as the rest of the song.

    Charlie
    http://www.intuneaudio.ca

    Mar 13th, 2010

  2. Sean

    @Charlie: I have a hard time with the lyrics too, so I’ve been working with other artists so they can write them. :P

    Mar 14th, 2010

  3. Adam

    At my work they force us to listen to B-101, where shitty pop music goes to die, and the one thing I notice is that every single song has an incredibly catchy hook in the vocal melody. So I’ve recently been forcing myself to come up with lyrics and vocal melodies that are catchy in and of themselves and then build a song from there.

    I take these little slips of paper and come up with a lyrical phrase and write it down and then spend the rest of the day/week/whatever trying to find the most creative way to sing it. If I find something I REALLY like I’ll use it as a stem to branch out and create a whole song. If not, I throw it in a box and come back to it later.

    I think this is a great musicianship exercise also because it forces me to build my guitar and bass tracks on an unfamiliar foundation.

    Mar 21st, 2010

  4. Sean

    @Adam: Yeah, most professional songwriters start with the hook first. If you really want to catch an audience then the chorus has to be super catchy.

    Great idea on the songwriting snippet box too!

    Mar 23rd, 2010

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