How to find a good song title

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I see a lot of people struggle to find a killer song title, they try too hard without getting a result. The song title is one of the most important parts of your song, that’s because it’s the one listeners see first before listening to your song, you could have a great song, but won’t be able to leave a good impression to your listeners because of your bad title !!!

If you want to leave a good impression on your listeners when they read your song’s title, you have to make it unique and touchy, so when people read or hear it, they get curious to hear the rest of your song.

Writing or even finding a good song title isn’t a big deal, and for sure not space physics, it requires only a few songwriting techniques and absolutely a lot of songwriting ideas. The only thing you need to learn is to identify possible places that will serve you some song title ideas. So here are some places you can look at :

1-     1-  Newspaper headlines : these have been serving always as a huge source of song titles, because they mint to be interesting and catchy so people will continue to read the rest.

2-     2-  Quotes : while these are words of wisdom from great thinkers, try to choose deep ones that make people want to listen to your song as soon as they hear them.

3-      3- Listen to people : while this can be tricky, when you chat with your friends, you’ll see that this can give you many songwriting ideas that could be possible titles for your songs.

How to get songwriting ideas?

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An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea "Buddha", this is a great quote because it explains how important taking action is, while there is 2 main problems in songwriting and with almost everything, these 2 main problem are: how can i find songwriting ideas, and how can i apply them in my song.

While songwriting ideas come usually when you don't expect them, you need to carry a notebook with you wherever you go, and as "Albert Einstein" said: "You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I've only ever had one". Writing down or even recording ideas is very important to you as a songwriter, so make sure you get used to it in order to catch ideas as they come to you.

Here is where you can find songwriting ideas:

1- Listen to people: honestly, i think that this is the most important source of ideas, listening to people, especially when they are having problems can give you a lot of ideas, when people get emotional, they usually express honest feelings, these feelings can be transmitted to your audience so they can taste the same emotional situation your song is talking about.

2- Listen to yourself: In order to give your listeners honest lyrics sometimes, you need to go personal, i mean by that going deep in your past or present and try to find emotional moments for you: sad, happy, touchy, disastrous...etc, and try to express it using your songs.

3- Internet: While the internet has made a revolution to our world and thinking, i usually find a lot of songwriting ideas by just surfing the internet.

4- Read: articles, magazines and especially books can act like and ideas arsenal to you, you can find hundreds of great ideas by just reading, so try to read as much as you can especially inspirational things.

5- Experience yourself: this is especially when writing music, you have to experience yourself and try many ideas and combination to figure out how your song will look like when finished, so just grab an instrument and start to play a series of chords or notes (melody) and see if they're good enough for your song.

6- Just improvise: improvising has a lot of potential in it, sometimes i hit an idea just when i'm improvising, whether it's a lyrics or music idea, don't care if it sounds creepy, after that come back the other day or so and you'll be surprised of knowing how to modify it to fit your song.

7- Listen to other songs: inspiration could sometimes come from other songs, i'm sure that at one point when you've listened to a song and you felt like a flow of songwriting ideas is coming to your head. Just don't try to copy songs "this is a bad thing!!!" for your career.

Usually you don't know when an idea strikes, but believe me if you are interested in songwriting, you'll consider everything as a possible idea. When you feel that you are running out of ideas, just go to an empty place an relax (that usually helps me get a flow of ideas), or just try to do something different.

How to write good melodies

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A melody is a succession of notes that have different pitches and durations, in western music it's played along with what we call chords (group of notes played together in the same time). It's a very important part of the song, that's why you have to take care of it using the right songwriting techniques.

A lot of new songwriters get stuck in this component (melody), because they think it's hard to write a good one, i'll tell you that it's not easy, but you can do it if you follow the right techniques. First of all you need to have a good chord progression to start with, these chords will act like the support or structure of your melodies, the next thing to watch for is to choose a rhythm to your melody, actually this is up to you, you have to use songwriting ideas to decide what rhythm you're going to be using.

Writing melodies actually requires some basic understanding of music theory, because you have some restrictions to watch for, for example you can't introduce a note that doesn't belong to your key.

In order to impress your listeners, you need to have a very strong melody, new songwriters usually overlook this part because they think that lyrics and chords are more important, "this is not true". People or "listeners" usually don't recognize chords or bass lines, but the think that catches their attention is usually the melody, in most cases it's the one that determines the good song.

Song writing tips: Writing a good song

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The only difference between a good and a bad song is the harmony between it's parts, some songwriters succeed at making each song component unique and worth listen to, others fail at one component or all of them together,so make sure you follow these song writing tips to better understand how each part should be written.

In order to write a "hit song", you have to take care of each song components at a time, because each of them require different songwriting techniques as well as many (i mean many!!) songwriting ideas.

1- Writing a good intro: In this lesson we've seen how every songwriter should start his intro by setting the mood for the listener, and grabbing his attention.

2- Writing a good verse: right after the intro where the verse comes with it's lyrics, you should be careful when moving from the intro to the verse because it requires an increase in energy and may be an introduction of other instruments. For the 2nd verse, it looks almost as the 1st one.

3- Writing a good chorus: It's a very important part of the song, because every listener can differentiate it well, you should introduce as many songwriting ideas as you can to make it unique, as well as increasing the energy to a very high level. For the 2nd chorus, it looks almost like the 1st one.

4- Writing a good bridge: Here is where you should be intense in order to prevent your listener from loosing interest in your song, it's the part that doesn't repeat itself, so make it unique because you have only one shot.

5- Writing a good outro: It's the part of the song that new songwriters always fail to write, it should be well balanced especially at the end when you introduce the fade away technique.

These are the most common parts of the song, try to take care of everyone of them in order to write a successful song that will be enjoyed every time someone listen to it.

Song writing tips: Writing a good outro

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In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.Abraham Lincoln, a great quote from a great man. The only thing that matters is not the end, it's the journey, the journey of the entire song from the beginning to the end.

Writing songs require some song writing tips (which i provide here!), every song part (component) requires different songwriting techniques. In today's lesson, we're going to cover some song writing tips to write a good outro.

The outro (as the name refers to) is the last part of the song (the ending), it comes usually after the last chorus. The most common form of the outro is to repeat the previous part and make it fade away gradually at the end.

The outro could take other shapes: like repeating the last chorus line or introducing a new composition, no matter what your intro is, you should have a well balanced energy to give your listeners a pleasing end (like in movies, no one likes bad endings), so take care of your fade away techniques and do not make them neither too long, nor too short.

Song writing tips: Writing a good bridge

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A lot of people get confused when it comes to writing the bridge, they think that the bridge is the same as the solo. While the bridge could include an instrumental solo, it usually comes just before the solo, so follow with me to learn how to use the right songwriting techniques to write your bridge.

In a traditional verse/chorus/verse/chorus song, people get bored quickly, here is where the concept of the bridge comes in handy. the bridge is the part of the song that doesn't repeat itself, it's main purpose is to build energy and tension to prevent your listener from loosing interest.

The bridge represents a change in rhythm, lyrics and melody. The end of it should be very intense when it connects to the final chorus.

In the case of a 3 verse song, it should have a decrease in intensity in order to connect to the 3rd verse.

While the bridge is a very important part of your song, you have to take care of it and try to come up with a lot of songwriting ideas to figure out how it should look like, just follow my song writing tips and you'll be fine.

Song writing tips: Writing a good Chorus

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A lot of songwriters argue that the chorus is the most important part of a song, well they are right in one side which is that the chorus is a very important and fundamental part in your song, but as i told you before you should take care of all of your song parts equally and use the right songwriting techniques to produce a hit song!!!

As we cleared in the "song components" lesson, the chorus is the part that comes directly after the verse, it's the part where you are going to be using a higher energy level. The energy level is built gradually until it reaches the end of the chorus. With the chorus i advice you to use as many songwriting ideas as you can, because it's a very recognizable part even by non songwriters.

Let's analyze the chorus to see how we can construct it:

- The first part of the chorus should be an extension of the verse in an energy perspective.

- When you reach the half of your chorus, you should put an intense increase in energy and musical loudness if you can, and that will continue to the very end of the chorus.

- The end of the chorus represents a decrease in energy level to be able to connect to the 2nd verse.

Like the verse, the chorus could be 4, 6, 8, 12, 16 bars long according to your song theme and composition.