Career Songwriter

So many of us began with a creative bug when we were young, playing bits of melodic motifs on the piano, picking up the guitar and humming a tune over some basic chords, or writing poetry that later turned into lyrics to our first song. Armed with our influences and a lot of inspiration, we delighted in writing songs, using our wit and our instinct to guide the way. In our best moments, we’re still guided by that instinct underneath all the tools of the craft we’ve collected over the years.

Learning tools for writing songs doesn’t take the place of inspiration. I still claim that my best ideas fall out when I’m not trying. It’s how I structure those ideas and link them together within a song form that uses the craft I’ve worked so hard to develop. With tools, I can control the outcome every time, intentionally creating the landscape I wish to create rather than hope my instinct fills every crack of the verse, chorus, and bridge.

It’s true that some artists have written legendary songs without studying the craft of songwriting. But what these artists have studied is music and songs – whether they were intentional about it or not. Musical ears develop over years of listening, digesting elements like phrasing, cadences, major and modal tonalities, chord structures, melodies, rhythms, rhyme and counterpoint. This is the paint that supplies our brushstrokes with color. Whether we study them individually, or within the context of the whole picture, we’re still practicing our art.

How songwriting is taught is just like anything else – we analyze what seems to work and why, and then apply it to current situations to get similar results. We know that when we move from the V chord to the I chord we achieve a feeling of closure. We know that when we use long notes over fast chords we can achieve good contrast, and can change that contrast by using short notes over slow chords in the following song section. We know that we can raise the pitch to increase the intensity of a song section, and if we sing the lyrics with the same shape as we would speak them in normal conversation, we keep the focus on ‘what’ we’re saying rather than ‘how’ we’re saying it. These are all elements we can identify and take out of context to apply to other songs when we’re looking to create a particular effect.

Becoming versed in these tools takes discipline and time. You might think of it like learning a language. Many times a tool is not a rule, and the only way to truly become fluent is to immerse ourselves in the culture of writing every day. Then we experience for ourselves the link between what our instincts are telling us and why.

I teach several of the Berkleemusic.com courses, including Commercial Songwriting Techniques, a course I’ve developed from my book Popular Lyric Writing: 10 Steps to Effective Storytelling. Each week of the 12 week course you’ll be writing, brainstorming for lyric ideas and setting those lyrics to music. You’ll learn tools for writing faster, more purposeful songs, organizing your ideas into sections of the song, and deciding how to develop the plots of your ideas.
You’ll also gather musical tools such as using contrast effectively and creating more dynamic within the song.

The courses are designed to help you achieve your goals of becoming a stronger writer. To become a stronger writer we’ve got to write – and consistently enough that we run into the same brick walls over and over again. The tools are how we smash through those blockades, and discover the depth of our talent too as we make the tools work for us in our own unique situations.

For years Berklee has set the standard for contemporary music education. In all my years of working within the industry as a songwriter, I know the tools and techniques Berklee teaches to be wholly relevant to the job itself. This is why I believe so strongly in the songwriting courses and why I continue to teach them. To excel in our craft requires an investment, as does anything worthwhile we endeavor. Whether that investment is time or money or both, the dividends we see spring from how much we’re willing to put in. Give yourself the gift of dedicating at least 45 minutes a day to your writing. Over the next 3 months, look back and see what’s come back to you as a result. I assure you, the reward will be worth the sacrifice.

Andrea Stolpe

I consider myself a bit of a hopeless romantic. I’m a sucker for a good romantic comedy. I love watching the groom’s face as the bride walks down the aisle. Even though I know Valentine’s Day dinner and a movie at twice the price is a cheap exploitation of true love, I still make the reservations.

You’d think with such a soft spot for affection I’d eek out a few hundred love songs now and then. The problem is not writing a love song, but writing a good love song that people want to hear again and again without chewing their own arm off. For me, songs have to connect - and connect with a depth of purpose. If that depth of purpose only runs skin deep with phrases like ‘ever since we met’, or ‘I was so blind,’ my willingness to believe the song reflects actual experience is compromised. I want to be swept away by the love song, not just mildly interested. I want to feel down to the marrow of my bones that this love is worth every ounce of passion and vulnerability the artist is asking me to invest by listening to it. Anything less and there is a discordance between what the writer/artist intended on making me feel, and what I actually feel.

I’m not saying that a love song can’t be reggae, can’t make me smile, blush, or can’t bounce along with the pitter-patter of a new romance. I am saying that a great love song has to deliver some actual life experience between the clichés. It’s got to be real, intimate, and totally accessible.

It is for this reason that I find love songs especially difficult to write. In my opinion, my most successful love song attempts result from two techniques, both of which I only realized I was using in hindsight. The first of these techniques is using a location as the basis for the story. By setting the first verse in a specific ‘place’, such as a laundry mat or a coffee shop, the song finds its roots firmly planted in a real-life experience instead of whizzing out in nowhere with scattered thoughts and feelings. Take a listen to some of the more recent popular love songs and look for this ‘location’ within the lyric. Many artists within the pop or rock vein come to mind, such as Jason Mraz, John Mayer, Edwin McCain, Sting. As with any songwriting technique, look within your genre to find examples of the tool at work. For more detail on this technique, refer to Popular Lyric Writing: 10 Steps to Effective Storytelling, chapters one, two, and three.

The other technique is using a metaphor to ground the song. For instance, love is a rose. Love is a rent-controlled apartment. Love is an open field. Love is a landing strip. Thinking about the characteristics of these nouns, we can draw contrasts and comparisons and come at love from a unique perspective. When I write with a metaphor in mind, I also choose my verbs wisely. If a landing strip is my launchpad for this technique, I list all the verbs, nouns, and adjectives that come to mind related to that idea. Taking off, zoom, jet fuel, screech, burnt rubber, passenger, wingspan, etc. This gets me on a path towards more ideas: What happens when love takes off? When would I describe love with the word ‘zoom’? What jet fuels love? What happens when I smell the burnt rubber, the screech, am I ever a passenger in love, and what wingspan can love have?

On a final note, I find break-up songs just flow out of me. Even though breaking up hasn’t been a theme in my life for years, I find I can access that well of painful words and images as if it happened yesterday. Perhaps it’s because so much of love is deliriously happy and almost removed from the details of mundane reality. But to connect in intimate ways, generalizations just won’t do. While you’re writing your next love song, how vulnerable are you willing to get for the sake of connecting with your listener with purpose worth writing?