There are many ways we can start writing a song. We can start with a chord progression, we can start with the lyrics, or we can start with the melody. There is no right or wrong way to start it. Sometimes we have a melody and we want to add other components to the songs to get a full arrangement – for example, a bass line. So let’s see how can we add bass if we only have the melody of the song first.
If you are a beginner songwriter but you’ve already written a few songs, you probably realized that it’s not that easy. It’s not like you just sit down and your first songs will be good right away. Hopefully, you also realize that you shouldn’t give up because songwriting is a skill that you can develop. And one of the keys to becoming a successful songwriter is to write more songs. The question is: how many songs do you need to write before you come up with a good song? Here is my answer.
Many songwriters think that it’s better to write happy songs because people don’t really like sad songs. But it’s not true at all. People love sad songs. They listen to sad songs all the time. Because sad songs evoke more emotions and they help people cope with sad things that are happening in their life – for example, a breakup or a tragic event. So what songwriting tools we can use to write sad songs?
A funky groove is probably the coolest thing you can do with a bass guitar. And if you are writing songs in a genre that fits this bass style, you definitely need to know how to write a groovy bass line. Of course, sometimes you can trust your bass player to create a groove around your chord progression, but the reason you want to create your own bass groove is that a unique bass groove will make your song more unique. And of course, you, as a creator, want to hear the bass sound exactly how you want it to be.
Keep in mind that you can write a groovy bass in almost any genre. For example, even though I write Cuban-style salsa music, I like to write groovy bass lines. Listen to this song I write, and how groovy is the bass in it: https://bit.ly/3vNGlrD
Even though I don’t know how to play the bass guitar, many professional bass players told me that I can write bass lines as if I were a bass player. So let me show you how I create amazing funky, groovy bass lines for my songs.
There are many different ways we can start writing a song. We can start with the lyrics, the chord progression, or with the melody. But it’s completely possible to start writing a song from a bass line. In fact, maybe that is something that suits you better. Especially if you are a bass player. So let’s say you already have a great bass line. Now how do you find the chord progression for this bass line? Here are some useful techniques you can use to easily create a chord progression.
Writing a really good melody for a song is not an easy thing to do. In fact, even the most experienced musicians can struggle with it because writing songs requires a completely different skill set than playing music. Let’s be honest, when we try to write melodies the first time, they sound really bad. But why is that? Although there isn’t a quick fix for this, learning from successful songs can help us a lot in writing better melodies. There are many aspects of a good melody, but here are some of the most important things you need to consider if your melodies sound bad.
Writing songs is not an easy process. There are many great instrumentalists, singers, arrangers. But the fact that there are not many good songwriters out there shows us how complex songwriting is. At least it’s a very different approach from playing music. And one of the keys to being a good songwriter is to be able to choose our best ideas from the many ideas. The question is, can we trust our own judgment, and if not, then how do we know if a song we wrote is any good? There are many different ways you can measure the quality of your song, so let me share with you some of the most important ones.
It’s probably obvious to everyone that if we want to write a slow song, we have to choose a slow tempo. But are there any more differences between faster songs and slower songs? Actually, there are some distinctive differences between slow songs and fast songs, but I will also write about what are the tools that both slow and fast songs have. So if you want to learn how to write slow songs, this article is for you.
The chorus is obviously the most important part of your song. You want people to remember the song by remembering the chorus, and you want them to sing it. So it’s evident that we want to emphasize it, we want to make it sound big. Now, I saw many people talk about this topic online, and almost everyone wants to deal with this issue in the mixing phase when the song is already written and recorded. And of course, there are some ways you can enhance the chorus at the last phase in the studio, but the truth is, I believe that we can make the chorus sound bigger at the songwriting AND arranging phase. In fact, it’s even more important to compose your song in a way that the chorus is relatively bigger than any other part of the song. So let’s see some examples of how you can make your chorus sound bigger from a songwriting perspective.
Regardless of the genre, the bass is an essential part of any song. There is no music (in modern popular genres) without a bass. Many people think that writing a bassline is the role of the music arranger or the producer, but I believe that all songwriters need to have a basic understanding, and ideally, all songwriters should know how to create a bassline because a good bass can make a huge difference in how the final song will sound.
This post will be in connection with the topic of music arrangement. So let’s take a look at some of the basics you need to know to start writing basslines.
