i recently asked the question do you ever feel like you run out of song ideas and surprisingly
75 said yes so i'm doing a series on songwriting tips so if you're looking for how to write songs
or maybe just want some songwriting tips be sure to subscribe to the channel but this video
specifically is looking at four songwriting tips to help you so you never run out of song ideas
and you never forget the ones that you start and as you'll see all four of these tips kind
of work together you'll see that when we get to songwrang tip number four and this video
is sponsored by DistroKid if you write songs and record them you're going to want to release them
and DistroKid's going to get your music onto all of the major online music stores like spotify
itunes and so many others plus they give you 100 of the royalties and it's extremely affordable
to get started with them more on that in a bit i'm zane welcome to audio tech tv where
it's my goal to help you conquer the text you can unleash your creative beasts now let's jump into
the songwriting tips alright so my first tip is to always have an organized way to
write down a song or song idea that might pop into your head and what i mean is you could either have
a piece of paper and a pencil handy on you at any time or because we all have cell phones nowadays
you can get an app like microsoft onenote which is what i use and you can write down your ideas
in there you can keep them organized in there and you can access onenote on pretty much
any device so you can start on your cell phone go on your tablet and continue and then when you're
at home on your studio computer you can continue on there if you really wanted to it's a free app
it's amazing i use it for everything i use it for my videos my songs everything so one of the cool
things about microsoft onenote is you can also record audio into it so say a melody idea comes
into your head and nothing really else of the song just the melody you can hum that into one note or
maybe sing some gibberish lyrics into it and you can record your idea that way and you'll always
have it so you can go back to that later and not have a problem remembering that melody that you
came up with while you were on your walk or while you're at work or wherever it was that you were
when you thought of that idea and another cool thing about microsoft onenote is you can also put
pictures in there so maybe you were coming up with a little bit of an idea on guitar and you
were using your amp or some guitar pedals well you can take a picture of your amp settings or your
guitar pedal settings and you can put those in there and you can go back and look at what those
settings were and then you know oh yeah this was the sound that i wanted for this song and maybe
a few songs later you want to go back and have that same sound for a new song you can look back
see what you had on there and it's a very easy way to come up with the same sound over and over again
now i'll show you what i mean by that so here is a demo workbook that i have in microsoft onenote
and you can see i have some song ideas in here i have a couple of folders if you work with a couple
of different bands or projects you can separate them in different folders which is nice and i
do that quite a bit now let's just look here you can see i have some audio that i recorded in so
demo of ideas what i called it just recorded some audio in then we have a guitar pedal setting that
i used here and vocal setting that i used or want to use this was a previous vocal setting so i just
put that in there so i can easily bring that up again so microsoft onenote is like an office
application but it's amazing for working on music it's an incredible tool you can take it with you
anywhere and if you don't have the internet maybe you don't have any data on your phone
it will work locally on your phone but then when you connect to wi-fi it's going to upload to the
cloud and you can access it on any other device or continue working on it locally on your phone
or whatever device it is that you use to work with onenote there are some other apps out there like
google has one called keep and it's very similar but it doesn't have like the folders idea it goes
with a tags idea and you can kind of organize everything through tags which is neat but i like
this because i can just go in here and i can see what i came up with if i had titles in here i'd be
like oh yeah i forgot i came up with that title go to another folder and it just keeps me organized
it's a great songwriting tip and it's one i use quite a bit and it will have you remembering all
the song ideas you come up with and continuing to add to a database of song ideas so you don't
run out of any ideas for your next song now tip number two is one that i use all the time and
what you want to do with this is listen to a song that inspires you it could be in the same genre of
music that you create or in a completely different genre it doesn't matter if the song inspires you
then give it a listen and try to maybe copy a technique from the song or maybe it's the song's
structure so you don't want to copy the melody or the words or something like that note for note or
anything like that but if there's a technique that you like in there maybe it's a drum
sound or a guitar sound or maybe it's just the way they play the guitar something like that
you can copy that and try to recreate it on your own so you're listening to it and maybe you are
trying to recreate that song a little bit or just the idea or maybe just the structure of the song
like it has an intro maybe a verse that's like 10 bars or something a course that's 10 bars
whatever it is just you know listen to it and then copy it into your own way because the way
that i will filter a song is going to be different than the way say guns and roses filters a song
because we're different musicians they're way more talented than i am so i'm not going to be able to
recreate whatever they've created but i can listen to their song and i can appreciate it and then i
can take little pieces out of there and say oh i want to kind of recreate that in my own way and i
do that a lot with like older 50s and 60s music i'll listen to it and be like oh man i really
like that idea i really like that song structure and then i'll recreate it in my own way so again
don't steal the lyrics don't steal the melody or anything like that but you can take the structure
of the song and maybe a few of the techniques that they used in the song maybe try to recreate the
guitar sound or the vocal effect something like that and that's fine music is all about kind of
borrowing from the guy previous so get inspired by some artists new or old and start making some
new songs from it so now on to tip number three which is similar to tip number two but before i
get into that i just want to talk about DistroKid so like i said earlier they get your music
onto spotify itunes all of the major online music stores and much more plus they give you a hundred
percent of the royalties which is great on its own but they also give you tools to promote your music
once you release it so you have things in here like you go to promote yourself they have hyper
follow now this is a link with every release that you do you use this link and it allows people to
pre-save the song before it's even live on spotify they can pre-save it you'll collect their email
addresses so it can build an email list plus it allows people to purchase it on whatever store
your song is in and you have these mini videos and these create nice little mini videos that you can
share on social media they're great for instagram and whatever social media sites you use now you
can see we have promo cards and they're similar to the mini videos but they create these nice little
cards that you can share on social media they look great they promote your music then you also
have things like playlist spotlight so you can get your music onto some playlists on spotify which is
great and the wheel of playlist again gets your music onto playlists on spotify so all of this
is included for free with your membership which is just under 20 but if you use the link down in
the description you save seven percent off of that which isn't bad and you can release as much music
as you want with your membership so use that link down in the description if you want to get your
music out there now let's look at tip number three and like i said this one is similar to
tip number two it involves you listening to some music that inspires you but instead of looking at
the structure and the techniques this one actually looks at the song itself so what you might want to
do is listen to the song and then try to create something that's the exact opposite of that idea
and if it doesn't have any lyrics don't worry if the beat is a more up-tempo happy beat create
something that's a little more down tempo and maybe sad but kind of follows along the same lines
now if it does have lyrics create something that's the opposite if it's a happy song about happy
things creates one that's not about happy things if it's not about happy things create one that
is about happy things that's whatever the exact opposite of what the song you're listening to
just create that or another idea could be a continuation to the song so take the song
jack and diane by john mellencamp it's about two characters kind of follows a storyline and that's
kind of where the story ends now what if you took those two characters and you don't have to
call them jack and diane but in your mind that's who you're writing about is those two characters
and then you write a side story maybe it's before whatever happens wherever jack and diane starts
maybe it's the story before leading up to that or maybe it's a little side story that happens
kind of during but john mellencamp doesn't mention that now again you don't have to say that they're
jack and diane but you know you're writing about those two and it gives you a starting point
for writing your song so again going along with the opposite idea take carly simon's you're so
vain that song now maybe you want to write about the opposite of that so you'd look up
on google what's the opposite of being vain and you'll see something like
being modest successful something like that and write a song about those ideas and it could be
along the same sort of song structure as you're so vain or it could be a little happier up tempo
and it just gives you a starting point to write a song it gives you an idea for the song so listen
to something that inspires you and write the exact opposite or listen to something that inspires you
and write a continuation or a side story to whatever that song is if it's just a beat
and there's no lyrics or anything just kind of maybe take that beat and what if it went here
or what if it was a little more down tempo a little more slower or a little more faster
just kind of do the opposite but you can follow that same song structure and that sort of thing
maybe use some of the same sort of techniques but you're not copying the song no for no you're not
really copying the song at all you're using it as an inspiration and you're maybe making
a continuation to it or an exact opposite to that song it's a great way to come up with some
new song ideas and now song writing tip number four is creating a road map for your song and
this is kind of like taking all of those tips that you just went through and kind of organizing
them together to lead to the finished product and i'm going to show you what i mean right now we're
going to jump back into one note here so what i mean is we start like this you should have
a artist name or a band name that you write your music under so the very first thing you want to
do is write that up here so for me it's the band name silver rocket surfers and then under that
if you have a song title in mind you want to put that here if you don't you can just put something
like demo song 1 or something just a placeholder for now and then you'll come up with that idea
later but usually you kind of have an idea for a song or a fun song name and you can put that there
then under that you want to put the genre so what kind of music is it going to be is it going to be
punk music rock music rap music techno what kind of music are you going to create and you can see i
put in here kind of old time rock mixed with punk so you might want to put something like that in
there if it's a mixture of genres then under that we want to go with mood now for this song i want
it to be upbeat and you could put whatever you want in there you can put slower or something like
that tempo up tempo i want this to be a faster paced song so you put whatever tempo in there
if you have the exact bpm put that in there that really helps when you know the bpm right away
and you can come back to this and put that in there when you do find out the bpm
now another thing i put in here is similar style to so similar style to let's go to the hop that
old classic rock song let's go to the hop and whatever song you took the inspiration from you
could put that in there i put cakewalk project so i know i'm going to be doing this in cakewalk
because i do work with a few daws you don't have to do that if you only work with one and now what
instruments do i want to use in this song so i want to use guitars so i have guitar 1 which will
be a gretch guitar guitar 2 is super sonic then i want a bass guitar drums and of course i want
vocals in there and that's pretty much all i want in here and you notice with drums i put
ugratone kit which is a drum plug-in that i use and sometimes i use different drum plug-ins so
this kind of gives me an idea right away that's the drum sound i want i know where to go for that
and i'm not searching for it later this i know i want this and it just you can see starts this road
map for our song so we know we have to write parts for guitar one guitar two a bass guitar
we have to program the drums or play the drums if you do that or you have a drummer that is awesome
and then you have to come up with some vocal ideas i also do background vocals as well
but i just include that as vocals if you have more instruments that's great include them all in here
if you use synths like some vst instrument synths you might want to put the actual synthesizer in
there that you plan on using because usually we have an idea in the back of our mind which
one we want to go for first you don't have to stick with it but you can try it out and
see if it works for you and then under all of this that's where i would start my lyrics so i
put lyrics here and then maybe i would go intro because i want an intro to the song then verse
and under verse i would just start writing my lyrics
and then maybe i have a pre-chorus so i'll put that in here and then write your lyrics to your
pre-chorus and then chorus and then maybe you have like an instrumental section after that
that you want to put in there then you go back into the verse pre-chorus and so on you can see
where this is going you're creating that road map to your song before you start recording and once
you get to the recording point you're going to be really set because you know exactly what you want
your song structure to be and it's going to help you so much when you get to that recording phase
now another thing i do once i get all my lyrics in there and stuff i'll grab my guitar and then i'll
start to come up with the chords and the patterns that i want to use so i might go back in here and
i might start it out with like maybe i want to go with e e e e b b something like that and i
will put the chords in and i'll do that for each section it doesn't have to be perfect like tab
you don't have to go above every lyric you want to go above i do that sometimes i do that a lot
of times but you don't have to do it sometimes i'll just put the notes in here i'll just say like
a b c d and maybe that's the pattern that i do and i'll know that okay those are the chords i want
now how did i put it in there oh okay i figured that out now but you want to try to give yourself
as much of an exact road map as possible because when you get to that recording phase you are
going to be set you're going to know exactly how many bars each section is going to be where each
section is going to be and all of the chords and everything all you're going to have to do is just
hit record and you're going to be ready so using a roadmap like this is going to keep you focused
and using all four of these tips is going to help you to continually have new song ideas ready to
go whenever you're ready to record so you're not just starting from scratch every time you're going
to have some little song ideas like sometimes i'll just go in i'll just put maybe a title of
a song maybe i just thought of some sort of title of the song i'll put that up there nothing else
i leave it a day or two goes by i go back in and i have another little bit maybe it's a little bit of
a chorus for a song and i'll put that into another one i'll go to add page put that into here and
i'll just name this a part of that chorus and then sometimes this part of the chorus kind of lines
up with that song title and i can start to build them together or maybe they're two different songs
and i just now i have two different song ideas i have a really nice database of songs i can go to
and record at any time whenever i finally get a chance to record which isn't too often lately
but coming up into the fall i should have some more time and i'm looking forward to recording
more and more music i have a lot ready to go and following these four tips is going to help you to
never run out of new song ideas to record and if you want to watch my songwriting tips playlist
click the video on the screen right now or click the one under it to see what youtube recommends
if you like this video please give it a thumbs up also subscribe to the channel for more videos
like this thank you so much for watching for audio tech tv i'm zane keep creating and we'll talk soon