How To Write Catchy Vocal Melodies and Lyrics (Songwriting Tips)

[Music] [Laughter] and what's up YouTube I'm Kevin Pfeffer aka Atlas and welcome to the erock school rock star 101 series this is our first episode today I'm gonna teach you guys three helpful tips on how to write great melodies and lyrics in the studio alright let's get right to it tip number one pre-production always start with a pre-production track we call this a scratch track and you want to lay down scratch vocals you're never gonna catch that great song on your first second third time through it might even take you 50 tries hunter tries before you get that perfect vocal track so the best thing to do is start with a good pre-production track and use these scratch melodies I call this gibberish you just want to basically seeing a bunch of melodies that fit a good rhythm that go along with the song now if you don't have if you're not a songwriter and you don't play an instrument just download some free tracks you can find them all over the Internet just give the songwriter some credits as you do that and use that track that bpm to give you some inspiration to just start practicing writing jibberish melodies and I'm gonna show you right now in the booth [Music] alright I'm gonna try something here some gibberish to get the first idea she's gonna try some random melodies first sound alright guys so you just saw I laid down a melody it didn't make any sense lyrically it was just gibberish and that was kind of an idea that was floating around in my head it's a good idea when you're first writing a melody or a song structure to use a metronome to kind of fill out a BPM that you like that'll help a super important with the final of groove and getting it in the pocket tip number two take several takes of your melody ideas most modern thought software these days has a comm editor where you can lay down two or three or four takes as many as you want and click that and it'll drop down all your takes and you can listen an audition your several different versions you want to have lots of ideas of melody arrangements so that when you go to write your actual lyrics later you have lots of inspiration for good poetry that will fit back alright tip number three as you might have already guessed it's time to write your lyrics so write lyrics out the final lyric ideas based on the melodies that you already created this is easy because now you have these great rhythmic using melodies that you can take consonants poetry the rhythm of the lyrics and you can find the words that fit really well into those melodic sections this is great because this approach allows you to write sometimes the catchiest song if you're looking to make it hit you know if you write poetry first which is also a great way to work you often then have to figure out how to squeeze all that poetry into your song arrangement and melodies and sometimes that can be hard and sometimes you have to compromise the lyrics that you will or move them around and make changes now that works but I'm going to show you guys how I do things which work best for me and as you saw in tip number two I write out the melodies first by singing in gibberish and then I now have a great track a great melody as a foundation to write my lyrics to and usually and I'm already inspired by a song theme so I'm already in the right ballpark of what I want to write about I just need to find some good poetry now a terrible writing okay I like the idea I'm seeing here is my hands are cold a heart of gold yeah I'm a rebel shake me down never do what I'm told kind of fits that you my love you're my uber like that that's a good melody right there ah so my hands are cold uh how to go you know my rabble shake me down never dude until other work I also like my hands are cold hada gold might that might be something to try later let's try this first one first all right we're gonna lay down the actual lyrics see if I can remember these let's take it up Aidan can you give me a give me my track so I want to give a shout out to Aidan today what's up in like remember this my hands are cold a heart of gold yeah I'm a rebel shake me down never do it I'm told that works pretty good in that River [Music] all right let's listen to it come over here you guys will be able to keep the cameras rolling okay so this was the idea I'm gonna turn down the track and turn up the vocals when you're doing pre-production you don't need to worry about you know great quality mixes or you know is my track perfect no this is the freedom track you want to be free with it you don't want to have restrictions this is a creative process let's see what this sounds like I'm just gonna roll in on that virtual quake [Music] my hands are cold a heart of gold yeah I'm a rebel shake me down never do it I'm told that's pretty good if we turn up the mix a little bit and we balance the salikus out pretty here let's see [Music] all right there you go that's that's a pretty good one that works and once once you get it down then you can really start to rehearse it get it into your muscle memory it'll be even better it'll have more tone that you like you'll have more swagger and the feel and the groove and the delivery of it and then you know you can start adding all your effects you can get your vocal chains set up your your delays your reverbs compression all that good stuff but basically that's how we do it guys that's how I do it and I'm just gonna be showing you in the rock star 101 series what works for me all right also I want to give a shout out to my music partner down in LA Tomas Mejia for sending us this track it's actually an arrangement for a new project that we're working on together called two suns of Stardust that's going to be coming out in the next year too it's a big project working on Tomas isn't it got some really good credits with Cee Lo Green James Fauntleroy and a whole bunch of other songwriters so shout out to Tomas for this track we use in today's lesson and feel free to check out the description guys I have some of my original music compound over radio check out Kevin Pfeffer launching a new project this year called Atlas with the record called California fever that'll also be down in the description give us a shout out leave a comment let us know what you think and subscribe to our Channel I'll see you guys in the next video [Music] [Laughter] you

Channel: eRock School

Views: 5,922

Keywords: Songwriting, Songwriting Lessons, Songwriting Course, Songwriting Tips, Singer/Songwriter, Writing Vocal Melodies, Arranging Music, Writing Lyrics, Studio, Recording Studio, Kevin Pfeffer, eRock School, eRock Tv, How To, How To Video Music, How To Make Music, How To Write Lryics, How To Write Catchy Melodies, Musician Tips, Music Success, How To Record Music, How To Write a Song, How To Put Lyrics To A Chord Progression

Id: IbMysMfZ6to

Length: 7min 18sec (438 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 10 2019