The Simple Songwriting Formula that Changed Everything for Me

[Music] do you have folders full of half written and unfinished songs You Are Not Alone In this video I'm going to share with you a songwriting formula that has changed everything for me as a songwriter learning this simple formula has helped me identify great song ideas to know whether the idea is likely to be a good song at all and it has also helped me be able to write better songs faster and I'm excited to share it with you too this is a formula for thinking about song ideas before you've even written them and the formula is all about finding a writable idea so what's a writable idea well here is our formula a writable idea is three things a concept plus a title plus a song map I'm gonna break each of these three components down in detail and when we get to song maps I'm not only going to show you examples of great song maps but I'm also going to share with you a free pdf of a song map template that I've created just for you if you want to grab it right now the link is in the video notes why is understanding a writable ID so important when we have the combination of these three components it gives our song structure and a plan it guarantees before we've even written the song at all that the song can be written the combination of these three things is almost like giving your song a bucket and your job is merely to fill the bucket rather than splashing water around everywhere and hoping it accumulates into something which is often what the songwriting process can feel like when we don't have that structure so let's dig into the first component of our formula the concept what is a concept a concept is the general idea of what you want to write about in the book June Smith written by the very celebrated and famous songwriter Jimmy Webb Jimmy Webb gives an example of a song concept so a song concept is something like I want to write a song about someone who goes through acute mood swings from Euphoria to emotional exhaustion I love this person and want to address the song to him a song concept can also just be an interesting angle of approach for example I want to write a love song about the person I want to marry but I'm going to address the song to the person's father who's refusing to let me propose to that person that's the first component of our three-part formula but here is the crucial thing as Jimmy Webb says Simply Having the song concept is not yet a song idea to quote Jimmy Webb if however you add the following sentence I want to call the song Problem Child then you have an idea even though the song may not end up being called Problem Child the second component of our formula for finding writable ideas is having a title giving your song concept a title does two important things the first important thing that it does is it gives your song an anchor which a lot of people call a hook it says this song is about this one thing this is the way that I'm going to talk about this idea that I have if my idea is a house this is the door that I'm gonna walk through to get into the house it is actually about limiting possibility limiting options and putting parameters around all the big ideas and that brings us to our second important thing that picking a title does for your song concept it gives you a target for all of your lyrics it means that every line of lyric in the song has a destination in mind let's look at an example of this in Ed Sheeran's song first times so the concept of this song is all about Ed Sheeran writing a love song for his partner in which he's celebrating all of the small intimate daily first times that he gets with his partner which are way more emotionally significant than the Epic grandiose first times of being a world famous performer the title of this song is first times and if we actually peek inside the lyrics we can see that every single line of lyric from the first line is forging a direct path to the Target idea first times that first line there is all about the first time he played Wembley so that's a grandiose epic first time that he's using to create contrast to the real first times that he's talking about in this song all of the first times that he has shared with the love of his life choosing a title gives you a destination and when you have a destination in mind all of your lyrics have direction from the beginning of the song but let's remember an important thing you can change the title as you go you're not contractually obliged to stick with the first title that you pick but the key is giving your concept that directing through choosing a title puts you in motion and it's that momentum that will often set you on the path to discovering new and better ideas let's talk about our final component of this formula the song map so in essence a song map is nothing more complicated than having an idea in your mind about how you could approach this title from at least two different angles where the meaning and the emotion will grow as the verses progress the cons concept plus the title needs to contain in it a clear way that your song idea could start develop and then escalate even a song like Happy by Pharrell Williams has a clear song map in it the title of that song is happy and the chorus is all about happy but let's look at the song map verse one is merely a description of how happiness feels the sense of elation verse one is all about describing simply what it feels like to be that happy but verse 2 is not just a reiteration of the same idea verse 2 introduces a new idea it introduces the idea of obstacle it's talking about voices getting in the way voices talking this and that trying to bring me down it's all about introducing challenge or obstacle to the feeling this is actually a usable Soul map if you ever want to write a song just about a clear mood or a feeling which has lots of applications in the market for songwriting so for example in film and TV songs need to convey a clear mood or emotion and this is a great song map for writing songs like that that are not narrative but really just clearly focused on describing a mood or emotion so the song map that we can extract from this is verse one how it feels verse two an obstacle or a challenge to that feeling and when we understand that song map you can see how that could apply to any feeling at all there are two other song maps that I want to show you that I think of as universal song maps which means the song map itself is a clear trajectory from beginning middle to end and a way that we can approach the same title or same hook every single time with compounding emotional impact so the first song map looks like this we start with the problem intensification escalation a great example of this is the song slow dancing in a burning room by John Mayer when we peek inside that lyric what we can see this song as a concept is all about a relationship that is on the brink of collapse the extraordinary sharing title of this song is an incredible image slow dancing in a burning room and the song map here starts with the narrator of this song sensing that there's a problem the two characters can no longer connect with each other then the problem intensifies not only are they not connecting but they're actively arguing with each other they're picking fights and then the final point of escalation is not just picking fights but deliberately trying to hurt each other we have a clear song map here of problem intensification and escalation another Super usable and repeatable song map is called Situation context consequence in this song map we tend to start in the present moment we describe a situation that again is really introducing the problem or the story the development is where we Zoom the camera lens out we might go back in time to talk about how we got to this moment we might Zoom the lens out to look at a broader social context in which this situation is happening and the final final part of this song map is consequence which is where we get the emotional heart of the song The Emotional consequence of the situation that was introduced and the context in which it's happening a great example of this is the song The House That Built Me by Miranda Lambert in this song The Situation sees Miranda knocking on the door of her childhood home the context then zooms the camera lens to her childhood it gives us a broader emotional context to understand why knocking on her childhood door is Meaningful to her and finally the consequence is contained in the bridge of this song the emotional consequence of leaving her childhood home was that she got lost she forgot who she was and coming back to her childhood home is an attempt to reconnect to her deepest self every well-written song has a soul map blueprint that you can extract from it and use to write any song that you want about anything that you want and I've created a free pdf that guides you through a series of specific questions that will help you create super effective song maps every single time you can grab that for free by clicking in the link in the video notes I also want to put a massive caveat on this whole idea of song formulas okay because I know that the idea of formulas can rub people the wrong way showing you this songwriting formula is not about saying that all songs should be written this way there's no one way to write songs and sometimes we absolutely need to just write in order to figure out what we're writing about however having this formula available to you is so helpful when you find yourself adrift in unfinished songs with no plan of how to get them finished if you want one more tip on how to make sure even the first songs you write sound like you've been writing for years check out this video right here happy writing guys I'll see you soon

Channel: How To Write Songs

Views: 71,547

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Id: My2AKeFwLuI

Length: 9min 45sec (585 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 03 2023