When I first started writing songs, I got enough compliments on the melodies, rhythms, and my vocal quality that I felt I didn't really need to invest any time improving other parts of the song (lyrics, structure, arrangement, etc.) I didn't buy my first songwriting tips book until 2 years AFTER my band disbanded, and it wasn't because our songs were bad - it was that I knew there was much more to learn and I was finally ready to do it.

Nowadays, songwriting for me is 100 times more enjoyable and fulfilling than it has ever been, all because I finally humbled myself to the art.

If you feel your songs could be better, they probably can be. Below, I've put together a list of the 8 top songwriting mistakes that plagued a ton of my early songs, and songwriting tips to help make them better. They took me a while to discover, so I hope you enjoy! I'll start with the most basic...

1). Too Short or Too Long

Of all the songwriting tips out there, this is probably the best one to start at. If your song is too short, you run the risk of not connecting with a listener. Many mainstream producers insist that their artist sings out the chorus AT LEAST 3 times in a song. That's pretty standard...nowadays you will see more artists doing 4 and 5 times through the chorus.

The main reason is that repetition causes familiarity, which in turn causes people to remember your song. The longer your song, the more opportunity you have to DRIVE that hook into their heads. However, if the song is too long and poorly constructed, you may just bore the hell out of people. Strike for a balance in your song's length.

2). Poor Musicianship/Sloppy Instrumentation

Obviously, if the instruments playing in your song are doing a poor job of sounding 'unified', they will most likely serve as a distraction more than anything. Determine what the 'focal point' of your song is. If it's Pop or mainstream music, the focus will generally fall on the vocals. Make sure that your instruments are not overpowering or cluttering up the main element of the song, as that focus point is the vehicle your song relies on to connect with the listener.

Instruments should work in conjunction, whether it be aligning on the same beats, or by syncopating between beats. While it's great to add cool rhythms and melodies to create a broad audio landscape, be careful not to flood the song with too many moving parts. As you'll notice with well-written songs, the beginnings have much less "going on" than the ends do. It's because our brains need time to get familiar with the moving parts, then eventually those moving parts "flatten" and are no longer considered separate elements.

This layering effect must be gradual to work properly, and it is what helps give a song good 'dynamics'. It's all about balance.

Extra Songwriting Tip: Beware of "layer blindness", a byproduct of "creative flood" (yeah, I coined these phrases!). This would happen to me all the time when writing songs for extended periods of time. I would get used to all the elements in the song and felt it needed something else, something more...and I would keep adding and adding. At the time it would sound cool, but listening to it the next morning would reveal that I've created a mess with too many layers. I call this "layer blindness". It's a byproduct of "creative flood", which is essentially like running a faucet filled with awesomeness until that faucet floods your room and drowns you. Not awesome. Make sure you take a break every so often when writing a song and come back to it with fresh ears. This will maintain a healthy perspective of the song.

3). Ineffective Melodies

Would Ringtones be so popular if songs weren't identified mainly by their melodies? Nope. Catchy melodies give us something to hum. If the goal of your song is to connect with a million mainstream fans, you better have some hummable melodies going on. But there's more to making catchy melodies for a song to be successful. What makes melodies stand out and sound beautiful lies in the chords that fall underneath them. Play around with different chords under a melody to highlight its beauty.

Great melodies strike a balance between being very dynamic (covering a wide range of notes in a scale), easy to remember rhythm (think of nursery school rhymes) and usually they offer a degree of satisfaction when returning to the beginning, or the Home base. For great melodies and more songwriting tips, refer to the Beatles - even if you are not a fan. They wrote the book on it.

4). Incomprehensible Vocals

There are several times when it's Ok to mumble; if you have enough easily understandable lyrics in the song already, it's Ok to mumble. Sometimes, it even helps make a song catchier when the listener is already sucked in and is dying to figure out what the singer says at that certain point in the song. The second time that it's ok to sing incomprehensibly is if it's the 90's, or your name is Thom Yorke.

While I am not trying to impede on an artists style, I am saying that for mainstream music, it's important for most listeners to be able to understand your 'message', and the message in 'most' music stems from the voice. If you have ever felt that listeners don't seem to care about your music, perhaps they are just having a hard time understanding what the hell you're blabbing about.

5). Obscure, Non-visual Lyrics

Here is one of my favorite songwriting tips. The mark of many poor songs is bland, boring, non-visual lyrics. The goal of music and any art is to convey and ignite emotion, and without utilizing the human brains ability to 'visualize', your songs may not be reaching their full potential. Or worse yet, they just plain suck. Sometimes, lyrics are so visually stimulating that the song itself doesn't need to contain a real tangible message.

In Beck's 1994 breakout track, "Loser", the lyrics as a whole are obscure but highly visual. Almost every line is filled with colorful imagery and action verbs. For example:

"With the plastic eyeballs, Spray-paint the vegetables, Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose, Kill the headlights And put it in neutral. Stock car flaming' with a loser And the cruise control."

Now does that make any logical sense?

Hell no. But these lyrics are fun and colorful; they read well and fit perfectly in the meter. 99% of the words in the song are comprehensible, with the exception of the strategically-obscured hookline "Soy un perdedor" which translates to, "I'm a loser". The hook lyric, "I'm a Loser" serves as an anchor for listeners to hitch onto. It's non-visual, but works because the rest of the song is PACKED with visual lyrics. This dynamic makes it a welcome, enjoyable part of the song and gives your brain a break from all that visualizing.

The natural tendency for artists is to just sing about how they feel, which can be extremely boring if they are sitting in their room trying to write a song. "I'm tired, I miss you, You said you'd come back, this guitar is here with me, keeping me company, I gotta get movin'" I would never listen to that song. Even with a highly emotive singer & mood-matching instrumentals, these lyrics just plain suck. Try mixing cool, fun action verbs with colorful nouns in your lyrics. Even if they don't convey a real message at first, they will stimulate your listeners brain and cause them to embark on a visual journey whether they choose to or not. Listen to some Beck.

6). Incongruent Lyrics & Music

Some songs sound dark and sad but lyrically they suggest the opposite. This is called incongruent messaging. But the power of matching the mood of chords & lyrics at key points in a song is a songwriting tip that should not be overlooked. The Beatles were masters of this. Their songs would mix major and minor chords - often striking minor chords in conjunction with a sad lyric or storyline twist, followed by a happy major chord in conjunction with an uplifting turn of events. Since the focus in Beatles music lies heavily on the vocals, you don't even notice this technique occur...you just FEEL it.

Incongruency on the other hand will confuse most listeners. If used throughout a song, the song just won't make sense. It's the equivalent of watching a 1) happy toddler frolic around the yard 2) carrying a bloody knife and covered in blood. Two conflicting emotions playing out here at the same time. It's confusing and downright disturbing! Make sure for the most part your lyrics are matching the mood of your music, and if you want to get fancy, check out the Beatles usage of emotional congruency.

7). No Connect Point

This is one of the most important songwriting tips I have to offer. My earliest songs were catchy, rhythmic, dynamic, and "original", if that's even possible. They, however, also completely lacked a connect point for listeners. This was due mostly to incomprehensible lyrics (mumbling) and non-visuals, both of which could've have been undermined if I had offered my fans a valid 'connect point' somewhere in the song.

The connect point doesn't need to be in the lyrics, some listeners will connect emotionally just through the instrumentals or by the WAY you are singing...but for the most part, a listener will not truly "love" your song until they go home, read the lyrics, internalize that message, and CONNECT. Lyrical connect points can happen all over your song, but one place they MUST take place is in the HOOK.

Your song can make absolutely no sense up until that point, but in order for a listener to invest any more time, you must hit them with a comprehensible, easily understandable connect point which serves as a summarization of "the point" of the song. It answers the question, "What is this song about?" in an easy, hopefully catchy way. Lyrical obscurity can be cool, but for God's sake don't hang your listeners out the car window too long before you start speaking some English to them. They deserve it!

8). It's Just Unbelievable...

...and not in a good way. What I mean by 'unbelievable' lies mainly in the singer's conviction. Is the singer believable? Is this story true? Are these emotions put on for the sake of the song?

Remember when you found that your favorite rapper wasn't "Street" at all and never really killed anybody? You sold all your gold chains, guns, and various bling objects. It's a slap in the face for fans to be dealt that type of emotional trickery. Listeners fear this, and have developed a process for avoiding a false emotional investment in the future - it's called, "Listen to singer and gauge validity." This happens quickly and subconsciously for most people, and will likely affect their enjoyment of the song/artist.

Within the first words spoken we run this analysis program on the singer and calculate how believable they are. The less believable they seem, the less emotionally involved we allow ourselves to get. Older artists of our time were believed to have a ton of conviction. That's why when a new artist redoes an old song, we give them less credit because for one thing, we KNOW that they didn't create that song and thus aren't the originator of those emotions. We can just tell they are 'acting'...

It's hard to articulate which characteristics of a singer's voice and delivery make them 'believable' or not, but as an exercise, turn on the radio and see for yourself. Does this singer convince me that this 'story' really happened to him? If you are the singer of your band, investigate this phenomenon and work on it. It is essential for success.

Isn't the point of songwriting to express real emotion?

My final songwriting tip is just to just keep an eye on the moving parts in your song and always keep the focus on the main element! Hopefully this article gave you some insight into better songwriting.   And always remember...listen to more Beatles!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 7:38 pm and is filed under Songwriting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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