Hi everyone. I’ll be blogging some more ‘practical tips’ posts over the next few weeks on this site. Thanks for all your great feedback on my previous ‘practical tips’ posts, like ‘Ten Things I Wish I’d Known When i Started Leading Worship”.
Today’s post is on songwriting, and the tips are relevant for people writing for church congregations. This kind of songwriting requires a different set of values and practices than writing a song to sing TO people, or a song people will just listen to. Writing songs that people need to join in with is tricky and I hope the 10 tips below will help!
1. Focus on one idea -most songs cover way too many ideas or themes, and the lyrics lack the punch of one focused idea. When you’ve written a verse and a chorus, the temptation is to move on to a different theme for verse two, and maybe a different theme again for the bridge! Stay true to your initial focus/idea and go deeper into it during verse 2 and the bridge. Resist the urge to pack ten theme into one song – aim for one theme!
2. Be brave and allow others to help – this is always hard! Try and emotionally detach from your song enough to allow people to critique it. It’s the only way to grow as a writer, and it’s definitely going to help your song be the best it can be! Get feedback on what is good and bad about the song, and use it as a learning experience. People will see things about the song that you as the writer, wouldn’t see. Don’t be defensive. Try and see it as a gift to you, to help your song be better!
3. Re-writing is the key – when you think the song is finished, assume that it’s not! Give it another few weeks, where you go over it with a fine toothed comb searching for things that can be improved. Have you really laboured to find fresh ways of saying what you’re saying? Have you defaulted to cheesy lyrics or cliches? Have you let anyone else hear the song and give you feedback? Re-writing can take an ok song and turn it into an amazing song!
For the rest of this article, visit:
http://vickybeeching.com/blog/ten-mistakes-to-avoid-in-songwriting/
