A Beginner’s Guide To Writing Your First Complete Song

So you want to write your first (or next) complete song… How exciting! Maybe you already have a notebook with some ideas, or voice memos for melodies, but you don’t know how to actually turn those ideas into a song… Or maybe you started writing a few songs, but you can’t figure out how to actually finish them and write complete songs.

The good news is that both of those issues are easily fixable. To solution to getting your ideas out into a song and finishing all the songs you start is to follow a step-by-step framework. Yes, songwriting is something very creative, but if you don’t really know how to get that creativity out of you and into a product (in this case your song), you’ll always feel stuck.

Let me show you how I approach songwriting and how I teach my students how to write songs, so that you can get unstuck and get back into flow so that you can take advantage of your creative moments.

Step 1 - The Music

It is much easier to write a song when you’re not starting with a blank canvas. So before you even worry about turning your ideas into songs, let’s set the scene for your song with some music.

There’s two ways you can go about this:

1. You can write a chord progression on your guitar or piano

2. Pick a track from the internet/have your friend create a track for you

I have written tons of songs following either method. But I personally prefer writing a song to a track over creating my own chord progression because that way the song starts sounding like a “real” song much quicker.

Writing to a track also allows people who don’t play any instruments or know any music theory to write songs! And no, it’s not cheating… It’s actually industry standard! There’s even a name for it - Toplining. Toplining means you’re writing only the lyrics and the melodies to a track that already exists.

So if you want to write to a track, just head over to YouTube and type in “[favorite artist] type beat” and go through all those tracks to see what you speaks to you! If you prefer writing your own chord progression - great! Just make sure you’re not making it too complicated or spend too much time on it. Remember, unlike lyrics and melodies, you can’t copyright chord progressions.

Step 2 - The Melodies

Now that you have some music, it’s time to create some melodies! The best way to go about creating melodies is to put your track/chord progression on loop and just start singing. Start with one section (ex verse) and solidify your melody there before moving on to the next one (ex chorus).

Most people overcomplicate creating melodies. Don’t think about anything when you’re first singing along to your song - just sing in gibberish and see what happens. This might take some time getting used to at the beginning, but when you create melodies this way, they will sound a lot more natural than when you try to incorporate music theory or just think about it too much.

Yes of course there are things we want to consider when writing melodies like finding the right balance between repetition and contrast and making sure that your melodies are singable (not too complicated), but when you’re just getting started it’s important to first learn to let go and just create.

So don’t judge yourself if a “wrong” note comes out! You wouldn’t believe how many wrong notes I’ve sung when I first played around with creating melodies… Still to this day I create melodies with wrong notes at first. But that’s just a part of exploration! You’ll quickly see what you like and what you don’t like. And that’s why we’re putting the track on a loop, to give ourselves enough time to find melodies we like.

Step 3 - The Lyrics

You’re already almost there with your song, now you just need to add lyrics! I’m not gonna lie, but I used to be so bad at writing lyrics… Like RALLY bad. But when I developed and started following my 4 step lyric writing formula it got so much easier to write stories that made sense, express myself authentically and to finish all the songs I started.

Here’s the 4 step lyric writing formula:

1. Summarize the topic of the song in 1 sentence

   Be detailed! The more specific you are here the easier the rest of the process will be.

2. Topic writing

   Write about your topic for 10 minutes - anything and everything that comes to mind is fair game! Don’t censor, judge yourself or edit your words as are you’re writing.

3. Create the song/story outline

   Write down what you’re going to sing about in each song section. This will make sure that your story stays on track and that you’re not just repeating the same thing over and over again, just in different words.

4. Write lyrics!

   Many of your lyrics will be in your topic writing already - now it’s just copy/paste and fill in the gaps and you’re good to go!

Lyrics don’t have to be super clever - of course it’s cool when they are! But the most important thing about writing lyrics is getting your story out. That’s what people will relate to!

If you want to dig deeper into the 4 step lyric writing formula and songwriting in general, I highly recommend getting my Songwriting Framework PDF! It’s currently on sale for just $7 (usually $27). Grab your copy here: https://lessons.voxtapestudios.com/the-songwriting-framework-pdf

Step 4 - The Recording

Now that your song is done, it’s time to record it! This can be as easy as just a voice memo or as advanced as a demo.

The reason why we do this is so that you’ll never forget the songs you wrote - and trust me, you will forget some of the songs you wrote, especially if you write a lot of songs! So create a folder on your computer and save all your songs there. Together with the lyrics and chord progression and/or track you wrote to.

Make The Choice

I promise you, writing songs is not nearly as hard or complicated as it might seem. You just have to get started and not judge yourself as you’re writing. The first draft of your song probably won’t be the last one! You can always go in and edit the lyrics or change some of the melodies. But you just have to get started…

So that is why I urge you to make the choice right now to block off an hour and sit down to write a song. Again, you just have to get started… I promise, it’s not that scary.

🎧 Check out the full episode on writing your first song here:

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