Songwriting is a craft. Unfortunately, most budding songwriters don’t know their craft. And the reason for that is historically there have been no real mentors for aspiring songwriters to learn from, leading them to resort to picking a music artist they can identify with and essentially copying that artist’s musical style to the best of their ability. The problem with that is that most of the popular music artists out there don’t really know what they’re doing themselves, and copying an isolated, underdeveloped approach to songwriting is going to box you in almost as soon as you’ve begun.
Becoming a student of songwriting is the greatest thing that you can do to advance your composing skills. However, it’s a bit of a wasteland out there in terms of where to go to get trained at the highest level. I’m constantly contacted by writers who’s submissions to A & R departments at record labels or to music supervisors for film and TV come back with the message that the songs aren’t strong enough. Writers have good verses and bad choruses, or a hooky chorus and no effective verse story to set it up, or their song structure is trite or ineffective.
Where Do You Acquire a Master Songwriting Skillset?
When looking to learn all there is to know about songwriting, the first place you might think to look is a university music program specializing in composition. The challenge here is that universities tend to teach what is called four part, strict style which was perfected by Bach, and in case you hadn’t noticed, Bach hasn’t had a hit song since he died in 1750. I can’t tell you why most university systems aren’t current in their programs and don’t offer contemporary songwriting degrees, but that most definitely needs to change.
There are some really good books out there on the subject, but I have found them to be overly weighted in the direction of the author’s expertise,i.e. lyricists over-value lyric writing, melody writers think that’s all you need to know to write a good song, and the music theory people can be overly complex with the mathematics of harmony and structure.
What You Need Is a Comprehensive Songwriting Resource
We have tailored our program at Music Lesson Expert in conjunction with My Songwriting Coach to deliver all the skills you need for virtually any style of music you might ever want to compose. We train you, coach you in your progress and give you in depth critiques on all your efforts so that you can continually develop your writing muscles.
For every songwriter, master songwriting skills are the greatest gift you could give yourself.
