Lightning Fast Songwriting: Write Your First Song in One Hour | Kate Hart | Skillshare
Search

Playback Speed


1.0x


  • 0.5x
  • 0.75x
  • 1x (Normal)
  • 1.25x
  • 1.5x
  • 1.75x
  • 2x

Lightning Fast Songwriting: Write Your First Song in One Hour

teacher avatar Kate Hart, Musician

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      3:52

    • 2.

      Chord Progressions: Common Chord Progressions

      3:40

    • 3.

      Writing a Chord Progression

      2:31

    • 4.

      Melody

      2:00

    • 5.

      Lyrics

      1:20

    • 6.

      Meter

      3:25

    • 7.

      Rhyme Scheme

      3:20

    • 8.

      Song Structure

      4:39

    • 9.

      Storytelling

      2:25

    • 10.

      Finishing the Song

      3:46

    • 11.

      Write a Song

      61:15

    • 12.

      Closing Thoughts

      2:18

    • 13.

      Bonus Lesson: Just One Hour

      7:48

  • --
  • Beginner level
  • Intermediate level
  • Advanced level
  • All levels

Community Generated

The level is determined by a majority opinion of students who have reviewed this class. The teacher's recommendation is shown until at least 5 student responses are collected.

240

Students

1

Projects

About This Class

In this course, you’ll write a song in an hour.  You don’t even have to come in with an idea.  Just bring your voice and an instrument you can play while you sing, and I’ll walk you through each step in the process.  You’ll go from nothing to a completed song before the laundry’s done!

A Practical, Reliable Method

I’ve written dozens of songs in front of live audiences, on the clock.  Over time, it got easier- I honed my process so that it works every time.  I’m not a beginner, but my songwriting method is a great place for beginners to start.  Advice on “finding your creativity” is fine and all, but you’re looking at a blank sheet of paper and thinking “What do I do now?” 

This class is a series of step-by-step instructions: follow the steps, get a song.  It’s brutally practical, and it works.

Who is this class for?

This course is for beginner songwriters.  If you’re writing your very first song, you’re in the right place.  If you’ve written a song or two, but feel like it was a kind of a fluke, then this is the course for you.  If you’re a more advanced songwriter, you may find this class useful as a writer’s block exercise, or as a method to speed up your songwriting process.

You Will Learn:

How to write chord progressions
How to write melodies
How to write lyrics (even when you have no ideas)
How to develop the story of a song
How to put the pieces together
How to write a song in one hour

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Kate Hart

Musician

Teacher
Level: Beginner

Class Ratings

Expectations Met?
    Exceeded!
  • 0%
  • Yes
  • 0%
  • Somewhat
  • 0%
  • Not really
  • 0%

Why Join Skillshare?

Take award-winning Skillshare Original Classes

Each class has short lessons, hands-on projects

Your membership supports Skillshare teachers

Learn From Anywhere

Take classes on the go with the Skillshare app. Stream or download to watch on the plane, the subway, or wherever you learn best.

Transcripts

1. Introduction: Hello and welcome. I'm Kate heart. I'm a nerd folk musician and I've written over a 100 songs in the last three years. In 2018, I wrote a song every week. And in the spring of 2021, I was stuck at home. A lot of people, I wrote a song every weekday with a self-imposed time limit of one hour. I wrote most of those songs in front of a live audience on Facebook. And dozens of those times, I went into that broadcast with an hour on the clock and absolutely no idea what I was going to write about. But I was never worried because I've developed a fast, straightforward, and most importantly reliable method of songwriting. That's the method I'm going to teach you over there in the next few lessons. This course is not vague. There is no magic to my method. At no point will I advise you to think deeply about what you want to say or get in touch with your creativity. When I first started writing, I wasn't ready for that level of artistic advice. I was staring at a blank page and wondering, what do I do now? I think the most valuable thing for beginners to do is write a song or two to prove to yourself that you can do it. So I designed this course to be a practical step-by-step guide to take you from blank page to finish song in one hour. If you follow the steps, you'll write a song. It's that easy. What are those steps? There are three. Number 1, first, make a chord progression. Next, write the melody and the lyrics. You're going to go through that process several times. The first time through, you'll write a section, probably the chorus. Follow the steps again to write the verse. After that, the chord progressions and melodies are done. And it's just a matter of filling in additional lyrics for additional. Versus. Finally, you'll make a few easy decisions about what order to play things in and you're done. In this course. First, we'll discuss what chord progressions are, how to write a good one, and some commonly used chord progressions that are sure to sound great. Then I'll teach you how to pull a melody out of thin air. Don't panic. It's not as hard as it sounds. Next, we'll add the words with special attention paid to meter and rhyme. Finally, I'll teach you how to take that starting point all the way to a completed song by following simple rules about song structure, rhyme scheme, and storytelling. If you're getting ready to write your very first song, then this course is for you. If you've written a few songs, but you're not sure exactly how you did it and you're not sure you could do it again. You're in the right place. If you're already an accomplished songwriter, you might want to use this method to break through writer's block or to write songs really fast. There are two prerequisites to my songwriting method. You need to be able to sing and play an instrument at the same time. If you can sing along to the radio, you're plenty good enough to write a song. If you want to learn how to use your voice better, checkout my intermediate voice course. We won't cover that stuff here. When it comes to your instrument, you need to be able to play at least three chords without thinking about it too hard. Although of course four or H or being a master on your instrument doesn't hurt. It gives you more options. It doesn't matter what instrument you choose as long as you can play it without using your mouth. The guitar is a popular choice, as is the piano or the keyboard. You can use an accordion or a marimba or anything you happen to have lying around. My main instrument is a ukulele. And if you don't yet have an instrument you can play for songwriting. I definitely recommend it. It's one of the fastest, easiest, most delightful instruments to learn. And I can get you up to speed in my beginner ukulele course. And then you can come back to the songwriting course when you're ready. If you're still with me, hit the enroll button and let's start writing. 2. Chord Progressions: Common Chord Progressions: When I write a song, the very first thing I do is write a chord progression. A chord progression is a series of quartz you play in order, usually many times in a loop. It forms the basis of your song. It's the accompaniment. If you want to get fancy with a scream and keyboard solo, That's up to you. But it's not necessary. Chords are all you need for my method. Out of all the possible combinations of chords, we use a handful of them in Western music a lot. So you shouldn't feel like you need to come up with a totally unique chord progression for your very first song, or really any song because there's no such thing. The popular ones are popular for a reason. So feel free to use them. Lots of people do. Here are a couple of simple examples of very, very popular chord progressions. Here's one in the key of C, it uses C, G, F. Then we'll go back to see to get a group of four. That'll sound like this. Back to say. That probably sounds familiar or intuitive. If you're going to add a fourth chord to that, your top choice would probably be a minor, and that might sound like this. C minor. Now that probably sounded pretty familiar. That's one of the most popular chord progressions in the world. If you use it, you won't be the only one. We could do the same chord progression. It'll, it'll have the same flavor, but in a different key. If we do it in the key of G, that would be G. D. Back to doing, that would sound like this. C, back to G. If you added a fourth chord in the key of G, that would be E minor. That would sound like this. G, E minor. You can do the same in the key of D. Your three chords in d, r, d. That would sound like this. Then if you are going to add a fourth coordinate, that that would be B minor and that key. Those all should sound very familiar, very intuitive. You could take those three chords or those four chords in any of those keys and put them in almost any order and they're short sound grade. Those are just groups of chords that go great together. There are other groups of chords that you might want to draw. And especially if you want to write a song in the blues genre. Blues is absolutely notorious for using the same chord progressions all the time. There's a chord progression. You can look up called a twelv bar blues in any key, like many, many, many blues songs use those 12 chords in a row. As you write your own chord progressions. Feel free to use any of these anytime you like. You won't be alone. And the popular ones are popular for a reason. 3. Writing a Chord Progression: Any series of any number of chords can be a valid chord progression, but some will sound more catchy than others. So take a moment and play some of the chords, you know, in any order. Just try something. And if it sounds goofy, try something else until it sounds right. Try it. Most western music uses four or eight bar phrases. So a progression of four chords usually sounds pretty good. But remember you can double up, especially if your core vocabulary is limited. I could do a progression that's d, d, f, d, and those could be my four corners like this. D Again. You can also use a series of five chords, but two of them share a measure, they share a bar, and they go a little faster. So that might sound like this. You could do a minor. In that case, the a minor in g shared a measure. If you feel more comfortable with your instrument, you can randomize your core progression. Take a six-sided die and roll it four times, and then use this chart to convert those numbers into courts. Now, there's a lot of music theory hiding in that little chart. But the important thing for you to know is that those chords will put your song in the key of C. If you're playing an instrument that lends itself to the key of C, like the guitar or the piano or the ukulele. Those chords should all look pretty easy to play. Again, there are no rules, but these are all good options that are likely to sound nice. These charts are included in the course materials, so definitely feel free to try them out, but don't feel trapped by the dice. Use the dice as a starting point. And you can always make substitutions until you're happy with them. You don't have to write the whole songs chords right now. We're only writing the first progression. If we need another progression, we'll come back to it. What we just wrote. Maybe that's the chorus or maybe it's diverse. 4. Melody: Let's practice writing a melody. What you're gonna do is you're going to play the chord progression that you just wrote through on a loop and start to sing along. Don't worry about words right now. Just saying law or o or yeah, or whatever you like. My chord progression was d, d, f, d. I'm gonna play those through on a loop. Back to D. And then we start over. And I'm just gonna sing on top of it saying, Oh, maybe if you're having trouble with this step, try doing this exercise, singing along to the radio or to music, you know, really well. Don't sing the songs words just ad lib on top of it in the spaces between the lyrics or in an instrumental break. There's kind of a shyness barrier to break through. But you've listened to lots of music in your life and you know how music should go. So just open up and you'll find that you can do this. However, if you're really feeling stuck, try visiting my intermediate voice course. There's a series of lessons on vocal improvisation that will give you a lot more detail on how to write a melody from scratch. Practice the exercises in those lessons until you feel comfortable, and then head back to this course and start writing melodies for your own original songs. As you play a chord progression through on a loop and you sing along to it. Don't worry about memorizing right away. Just keep singing through, keeps singing through. And eventually as you start to figure out something that you like, it'll start to sound the same every time you'll see the same thing every time you loop through. And when that happens, that's the melody that you want to carry forward into your song. 5. Lyrics: Once you've established the melody, it's time to write some words. Maybe you have a topic in mind and maybe you don't. But when I don't have a topic in mind, I like to let meter be my guide at the start, will discuss what that means in the next lesson. You can also use a prompt. Occasionally, you might find a group of songwriters all writing from the same prompt. That's a really cool exercise and it can help you learn more about songwriting, but you don't have to write in a group and your prompt doesn't have to be made specifically for songwriting. Any short story writing prompt will serve you just as well. Use the prompt or the magic of meter to write your first-line. Once you have your first line, the second line drawn with it. At this point, you might be establishing a topic or at least a mood. If you didn't come in with one in mind, you'll continue like that until you finished with your first section. In the next four lessons, we'll discuss a few elements of lyrics that will be crucial to your own lyric writing. Those elements are number one, meter, number to rhyme scheme, number three, song structure, and finally, storytelling. Together, they'll help you narrow down your options from any words in the English language to the right words for your song. 6. Meter: Meter is the element of lyric writing that I see riders of all levels ignore most often. But writing lyrics with good meter will help your lyric sound better. And in my method, it can even help you figure out what your song is about. Meter is the emphasis we put on words which gives them their rhythm. Just like with Melody, your brain has you covered here. Even if you've never thought about meter before, you would immediately know something was wrong if my emphasis went out right? If you pay attention to my speech patterns or your own for a minute, you'll be able to recognize emphasized syllables in your song. Generally speaking, syllables that fall on beats should be emphasized, but you'll know what's right when you hear it. You'll know what's wrong when you hear it. Let's look at an example of really good meter from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. If you're familiar with their music, you might have noticed that the vocals often sound like they're part of the rhythm section. Of course, there are also often do brush. If you pay attention to the meter, you'll notice that it is perfect. Here's the lyric I love from the song, Come on girl. Disenchanted diplomat asleep inside the laundromat conveyor belts are moving and once you to be sure of that, now obviously that's nonsense. But if you just spoke those lyrics, the emphasis would fall in exactly the same place. Disenchanted diplomatic sleep inside the laundromat. It's kind of hard to speak those words without sounding rhythmic. The rhythm isn't being imposed on the words. It's already there. The song is just matching that rhythm. Let's try an exercise on matching meter. Picture the teacher from the Charlie Brown cartoons. Can you hear it? Won't lot want, want, want, want. We're hearing the rhythm of the words and nothing else. Those six syllables want, want, want, want, want, want. They could be a lot of things, but not anything. The moon is in the sky fits. The moon is in the sky. But the Lion Sleeps Tonight, doesn't fit. The lie against sleeps tonight. Sounds terrible. The word lion is crossing a gap in the rhythm and you would never stop in the middle of the word while you were speaking. The word sleeps is just one syllable, but in the context of the sentence, it should be emphasized. So it sounds weird when it isn't. And tonight only night should be emphasized. But in that rhythm, both syllables are sort of equally emphasized and that sounds weird to try this exercise for yourself. Try to fit six syllables into want, want, want, want, want, want. Rhythm. With good meter. There are lots of right answers. You could say, my books are almost here, or when will you return? Try to think of your own example that would fit that rhythm with good meter. That is exactly how you're going to use meter to guide your lyrics. As you write the very first lyrics of your song, start with some words that fit the rhythm you've already established. Don't think too hard about it. Just the first thing you can think of that fits. Once you've done that, consider what you've written and let it help you figure out where to go next. Always keeping meter in mind. 7. Rhyme Scheme: Every song has a rhyme scheme. There are no wrong answers about what yours should look like. In general, you're going to be creating rhyming lines at a minimum. That means rhyming the very last syllable of a line with the very last syllable of another line. If you've done that, the two lines rhyme. With one exception. Rhyming a word with itself doesn't count. So yesterday, my troubles seems so far away. That last syllable day rhymes with the last syllable way. The two lines rhyme. But you can go further. You can rhyme the last two syllables or the last three or more. In a precise rhyme, the final vowel sound and the final consonant that comes after that, if there is one, should be the same in both words. Cat rhymes precisely with hat, they will have at, and then me rhymes precisely with Jubilee because they both have e and then nothing. You have the option as you write your rhymes to be flexible and use a slant rhyme. Slant rhyme, maybe the vowel matches or maybe the consonant matches, but not both. For example, Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly all your life. You were only waiting for this moment to arrive. That's Night. Fly life and arrive. And they all have the I vowel sound, but they end in a different consonant. In each case, there's slant rhymes. They're still considered rhymes for the purposes of that songs rhyme scheme. And they feel like rhymes when you sing the song. Feel absolutely free to use slant rhymes anytime. Don't force yourself to be unnecessarily precise. In addition to writing lines that rhyme, you can use rhymes inside lines. That's called internal rhyme. For example, why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say say is going around with yesterday in the next line, but go and no rhyme inside the line. Internal rhymes are always optional, but they can add a little spice to your lyrics. The way we arrange rhymes in the song constitutes the songs rhyme scheme. Rhyme schemes for songs are just like rhyme schemes for poetry. You probably learned about them in school. For example, couplets. That's when two rhyming lines are placed right next to each other. The notation for that would be AA or the a lines rhyme with each other. You could also have a four-line section of a, b, c, where the bead lines rhyme with each other. But the ANC lines don't. And that's also very common and intuitive. You can use the rhyme structure of a limerick. Have a AA, BB, AA. You can write a whole verse where every single line rhymes, like in the example we just looked at, Blackbird. You can also write a song with almost no rhyming in it at all. Look at the lyrics to Here comes the sun. Almost. None of those lines rhyme with each other, and yet the songs still sounds catchy and normal. I'm not here to advocate that you use a certain rhyme scheme or that you use rhyme at all. You should write with total freedom. But if you can analyze your rhyme scheme as you write, it becomes a tool to help you finish the song, and we'll cover that in the next section. 8. Song Structure: While there are no binding rules to songwriting, my songwriting method assumes that you'll have a chorus and at least two versus to your song. Most songs do. A chorus is the part of the song that's repeated several times, sometimes with a little variation. It's often catchier and more high-energy than the verses. It's also usually more central to the theme of the song. So the first thing you write is usually the chorus, although it doesn't have to be. Versus, on the other hand, are unique. Though one verse may be similar to another and it probably should be versus usually have the same rhyme scheme. There, usually the same length and sometimes even have repeated lyrics or nearly repeated lyrics. They usually have identical or nearly identical melodies. And that's all very good news for us because it means that once you've written your first first, you've already made a lot of progress towards your second third versus less like magic at that point and more like filling in a Mad Libs game, you can still bring your creativity to it, but you have a path to follow. You might also choose to add a bridge to your song if you like. That's a section in the song structure that's unique. It usually has its own chords, it almost always has its own melody. It can have its own rhyme structure. It isn't bound by the length of the verse or the chorus. It can be very, very short or very long. The only thing that's predictable about a bridge is its position. It's usually right before the last chorus. So that could be chorus, bridge, repeated chorus, or final verse, bridge, final chorus. If you're writing your first song, I don't recommend including a bridge, but if you're ready to get fancy, try it out. Think of it like a third section that's distinct from the chorus and the verse. And use the same method to write it as you would the course of the verse. That's chord progression, melody, lyrics. The bridge should be the last thing you write after you've already established the music and lyrics for the rest of the song. It's an opportunity for you to emphasize an idea you've already established or introduce a twist that changes how the song is interpreted. It's also an opportunity to do something musically different than the rest of the song. Try using cords you haven't used elsewhere, or switching from mostly major chords to mostly minor chords or vice versa. You might also consider other optional sections like an intro or an outro. Those sections go at the very beginning or at the very end of the song. And you can think of them as being similar to a bridge, because those sections also have the freedom to be completely different from the rest of the song. That's especially true of outros. If you're playing with a full bands or if you're an advanced instrumentalist, you might choose to add an instrumental break or solo. I can't really help you here except to say that the instrumental solo section is usually following the same chord progression as either the chorus or the verse. So you'll probably want to start writing that solo. You're screaming keyboard solo. You want to improvise on top of those chords, just like we did with the melody. Until you figure out something that you like. If you've written your chorus and your Vs, and maybe some additional sections or maybe none. The last thing to consider is how your songs should begin an end. What order should you play those sections in? As with most things in songwriting, there are several right answers. You can use averse or a chorus to begin or end your song. Either one in either position will work. The most basic configuration is to start with averse, then alternate with courses until you run out of verses, then add a final chorus on the end. So if you had three verses, that would be verse one chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Or you might choose to end by repeating a chorus. Or you could repeat the first verse or just the beginning of the first verse. Or you could end with a unique verse. The very last thing you decide will probably be what to do at the very, very beginning of your song. You can jump right into your chosen first section right away and start singing. But it's more common to play a few chords. First, you can play the chords all the way through of your first section. And that will always work. But sometimes there's a shorter series. You can use maybe just the last one or two chords of the section you're starting with, or the last one or two of the opposite section. Try a few of those options and just figure out which one you like best. 9. Storytelling: As your song starts to take shape, you'll need to flesh out an idea or a feeling, or maybe an event into a whole song. There are no wrong answers and the process in this lesson is not a set of rules. It's just a straightforward way to quickly develop a few lyrics into a whole song. Every time I write a line, I asked myself what I've learned about the story of the song. At first, that usually means establishing the songs two main characters. Most of my songs have at least two characters, me and you. And that's a really common construction. You can call them the narrator and the object. If you pay attention to the music you listen to, you'll notice that a lot of songs are structured this way. There's a me and to you, and it's a great way for you to start building out your story. As you write your first lyrics, pay attention to what they imply about those two main characters. Who are they? Who is the narrator and who's the object, the one that song is being sung to. You can work from there into the plot, the things that happen, and the emotions. If you've established that the narrator is feeling a certain way, ask yourself why, what events or actions caused that or what events or actions caught will follow from that feeling. You can do the same with the object of the song and you can work in the opposite direction from plot to emotions. How did they established events make both characters feel? You just keep working outward along that ladder from plot to emotions, emotions to plot backwards and forwards in time for both characters until you start to sketch out a story. It's at this point that the story will probably run ahead of your lyrics. Maybe you'll get excited about a character and invent an elaborate backstory. Sometimes I use direct or indirect inspiration from stories I already know or characters I'm already familiar with. But those details don't need to make it into your lyrics. They just need to inform your songwriting so that the plot and the emotions of the song makes sense to you. Be explicit, be vague. Either approach can make a good song. But generally speaking, you need to know exactly what happens once you know that. It's just a matter of telling the listener pieces of that story in lines that fit the rhyme scheme you've already established for your song. As a final note, remember that nothing is written in stone. So anytime something isn't working, you're always free to circle back and change your mind. That's normal and it often leads to a better song. 10. Finishing the Song: So let's assume you wrote a chord progression, that melody, then some lyrics. So you have one section done, it's time to write another. I'm going to assume that what you wrote first was the chorus and you're about to write your verse. Usually the first thing you write is the chorus because it captures the central idea of the song. But if you decide the first thing you wrote was the verse, and now you're going to write the chorus. That's fine. It works just as well. You're going to use the exact same steps to write the verse that you use to write the chorus. First chord progression, next melody. Finally, lyrics. But this time you have a little bit more information to help you with each step. On the chord progression, you can choose to use the exact same chords for the first that you use for the chorus. Or you can start over and find new ones by any of the methods that you would use to write the first section. You could use a common chord progression or you can roll dice, or you could just wander through the cords, you know, until you find something you're happy with. If you decide to use a new chord progression, make sure you like the transition in both directions into the verse and back out. Once you're happy with the chords, you can move on to the melody. For the melody, if you use the same chords, you can choose to use the same melody, but you probably don't want to. The reason to use the same melody throughout the whole song is to help the audience catch on and sing along faster, which you might want if you're writing a children's song or a drinking song, or a protest song, or a sea shanty. Outside of those contexts, you probably want a new melody, even if you're using the same chords. So just like before sing all are o or yeah, on top of your chord progression until you converge on something you like when it comes to the lyrics. Now that you're in your second section, you have a lot more to work with. At first, maybe all you had was the meter, but now you should have some idea of what the song is about. You might know who your two main characters are, what they're feeling, what happens in the song. Now it's just a matter of filling in lyrics that fit that story, the meter, and probably rhyme with each other in some way. If that feels like a lot of constraints, don't worry, you still have lots and lots of possibilities. And narrowing down your options make this section a lot easier to write linear first section, once you're happy with the sections lyrics, you've got a chorus and the verse, and you're actually almost done. Your next step is to write at least one additional verse. And you're well on your way. As we discussed in the song structure section, you're going to use the same chords, the same melody, the same rhyme scheme as the first. First of all you have to do now is fill in the blanks. If you can match the rhyme scheme precisely, use internal rhymes and multi-syllable rhymes in the same places. You use them in the first first. You can also repeat parts of the first verse lyrics wholesale if you feel it's appropriate. Once you're done with your verses, you can consider adding in some optional sections. You might add a bridge or an instrumental break or an intro and outro if you feel comfortable and if they contribute something to the song, those sections are always optional. You don't need them. Finally, you want to decide how to order your sections. How will you begin and end the song? Should you start with a chorus or averse? What chords will you play before you start to sing? Should you end with a chorus or repeated chorus or a unique verse or repeated verse. Once you're happy with those decisions, your song is complete. It might not be finished. You can continue to fiddle with it to your heart's content, but it's a complete whole song. You can perform it, get feedback recorded, and let it loose in the world. 11. Write a Song: It's time. You're ready to write a song. Print out the one-hour songwriting worksheet. Strap yourself in with your instrument and a pen for one hour. No distractions, no interruptions. You're going to work your way down the worksheet from top to bottom. And after an hour, you will have a song. I'll leave you here with a countdown timer and some reminders from the whole course about each step in the process at about the time I expect you'll need them. Good luck, and I'll see you on the other side. 12. Closing Thoughts: At this point, you've at least attempted to write an original song. If you came up short, keep working on it or scrap it and try again. None of this is magic. And I hope that at this point in the course, you can see the path from nothing to a completed song and you have some confidence that you can get from a to B. Even also fairly prolific songwriter, I continue to use the method described in this course most of the time. For me, completing songs is crucial. I tend to write quickly even when I'm not on a self-imposed time limit. And I find that I end up recording about half the songs that I write. So it's better for me to spend two hours writing two songs, one of which will probably be pretty good, then to spend days and days on one that might or might not turn out. I don't sweat it when I write a song and then decide that I don't really like it very much. It's part of the process. Not every song is a hit. For me. Quantity leads to quality because if I write enough songs, a few of them are bound to be good. And the more you write, the better you get at it. So writing in high quantity without worrying too much about quality has really worked for me. But there are a lot of great songwriters out there who take the completely opposite approach. They spend meditative months with their songs before sharing them as gleaming, polished masterpieces. And that's great. I got you started with a method that emphasizes finishing a song quickly. Because as a beginner, I think the most important thing for you to do is to prove to yourself that it's possible that you're capable of writing a song. And I wanted you to get to that point as fast as possible. But as you progress, you may drift away from that approach. You may find that any number of strategies in this method don't really serve you anymore. And that's fine. If you find yourself writing your lyrics first instead of your music. Go ahead and write that way. If you want to write several songs in parallel, start this one and then start another one before finishing any of them. That kind of freaks me out, but go for it. If you want to break all the rules of structure and meter and rhyme, I will be absolutely delighted to see you do that and to have helped you get started on that journey. So please go out there and explore the joy and the art of songwriting, knowing that you have what it takes to write a great song. 13. Bonus Lesson: Just One Hour: This is a bonus lesson. I'm going to step you through a song I wrote in an hour. It's the last one I wrote in the series I did in the spring of 2020. And it's a bit meta. I wanted to write a song about writing songs in an hour. So this can be an example for you to see how the whole process works and also encouragement for you as you write your own songs. I started with a chord progression that goes like this. I started with D, F, C, G, D. This was a pretty random choice. It wasn't I didn't roll dice for it. I think I was just desperate at that point to use a chord progression that I hadn't used before. And D major in C major hardly get used together. So I was pretty confident that I hadn't done this one before. And that's really all there is to it. Here I am with deep time during the melody. You just improvise on top. I gonna do. I'm not sure exactly what I improvised, what I did this before. But it was something like that. The kind of thing you might do to do. Now it's time to write some words. If I wanted to assign to be balanced, I have some starting point. I want it to be about writing songs and an hour. I decided that long bit, this is gonna be the word song. First-line would be, you can try it. I have derived what songs. So clearly it's gonna be, it's okay if it's wrong. So that's it's okay if it turns out bright, but it's okay if it turns out wrong. And then I decided to just run with that again and say, listen to your heart and it won't take very long to write. And then I'm just gonna do song again. I have my chorus that's done. Four lines, four chords. And two of them were basically the same. Now I need a verse, and I decided in this case to use the exact same chords. Again, I didn't write new chords. I used the exact same chord, so I'm back on deep. Now I need to Melody. I am provided something like this. Students to do. Those two melodies were exactly the same except one resolved in the same place at one result down. So it really, I've only written one line of melody, but it's going to count as two. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Same thing again. Do-do, do-do, do-do, do-do, do-do, do-do. That's the melody. It's very simple. It's actually a little bit similar to what I did in the chorus. And I started to put words on top of that. And I changed the melody a little bit. As I added the words. I added just a little bit more variation. So it ends up being, I knew I wanted the song to be encouragement. I wanted it based on what the chorus ended up being. You can write a song. I am encouraging you to write a song. The intro was gonna be, maybe you think you can't, but actually you can. The words ended up going like this. Maybe bed thinking that you just don't add the tie, pull it in seven different ways. Got so much on your mind. Let me be the one to tell you that you can do amazing things in just one hour. I decided at that point to make the chorus twice as long as that. Since I said amazing things and not just a song, I decided that the second half of that verse was just gonna be a list of things you can do in an hour. And then the second bursts was also going to be a list of things you can do in an hour. And at that point, it was just a matter of filling in the lyrics. Then I decided that I wanted to start with averse, not a chorus because that kind of had an introductory feel. I decided to end the song with an additional verse that's only half the length. So a partial verse, just to introduce one last idea at the end of the song. So here's what it sounded like when it's done. This is just one hour, a song I wrote in just one hour. Maybe you've been thinking that you just don't add the bold and seven different ways got so much on. Let me be the one to tell you that Gil, how the past you can do amazing things in just one hour. You can take a walk and get some Vitamin D. You could make a batch of cookies or maybe two or three. You could call your mom. I bet she loved to hear from you. These are just a few things you could do. You could write. Maybe it turns out bright, but it's okay if it turns out wrong. Listen to your heart and it won't take very long to write. You could write a poem or read a chapter of a book. You could try a recipe for something new to cook. You could finally breakout all those art supplies you got. It turns out 60 minutes is quiet a lot. You could tell your diary what's happening today. Drive down to the shelter and adopt to stray. You could start a battle with your favorite nerve. Find a way to have a little fun. You could write it. Maybe it turns out bright, but it's okay if it turns out wrong. Listen to your heart edit ball and take very long to write. I started writing this song not too long ago. I just can't help it. I want everyone to know not to be afraid of what you want. It'll take the pressure off and write your song.