Songwriting: Write Top Lines with Captivating Lyrics and Catchy Melodies

1. Introduction: Hey guys and welcome to The Ultimate Guide to top whining. My name is Sam Dawson and in this course I'm going to be sharing with you a foolproof method for writing incredible top lines. This is a method I use every day when I'm writing. And it's allowing me to achieve international cuts with artists. And my hope is that it will help you to do the same thing. So firstly, why did I create this course? Well, I created it because as a songwriter, I've been in a lot of writing sessions, met a lot of other songwriters. And what I've noticed is many of these guys, they really struggle when it comes to writing the melody and writing the lyrics. And often they're incredible musicians. They really know their instruments than other scales, than other cards. All the theory side of things, when it comes to actually writing a song, that's where they struggle. And it tends to be this common myth that in songwriting you can either do it or you can, you can learn how to do it. And I just do not buy into that whatsoever. The reason being is that I used to be terrible at writing songs. That was until I studied it. I researched it, and I found out what separates a badly ruined song from a well-written song. And that's why I love to teach. That's what I'm going to teach you in this course. Obviously, we're going to focus specifically on top line. Now, top line as a skill is incredibly important because it is so in demand these days. If we think about in the past, if you wanted to release a record, you had to hire a recording studio, you had to hire a mix engineer. You had to hire a guitarist, vocalist, drama, basest, pianist, possibly all their gear as well. You can see how expensive it was just released one record. Whereas these days all you need is a laptop and a pair of headphones. And consequently, there are so many people creating music, It's just gone through the roof. There's this surplus of music being created. And it's good quality stuff is sounds like it's been recorded in a studio. However, what laptops have not helped anyone to do is to write better lyrics, are to write better melodies. And consequently, there's this huge demand now for guys like me and knew for top liners who can provide top lines for this huge surplus of music. In this course, we're going to break it down step-by-step, how to top wine. We're gonna go from the very beginning looking at things like how to find tracks to top line, right through to the end, where you're literally sending your track off to the producer, to the publisher for review and everything in between. Now as we go along, I'm gonna be doing a live example. So you can see this stuff in practice and not just me talking to you, telling you what to do. So I'll start by covering the ideas and the concepts and then I'll show you it in practice at the end of each section. By the end of this course, you're going to have a solid step-by-step plan to follow whenever you are top line, so that you don't get stuck. You're going to learn how to create captivating lyrics, which we'll hook the listener in from the very first line. How to write melodies which gets stuck in people's heads and the cast off singing. And most importantly, how to give the producer exactly what they're asking for when they asked for a top line. If you're ready to get going, signup to the course. And I'll see you in the next video. 2. What Is Toplining: I'd like to start by just simply defining what top-line is and what top lining isn't. This may seem really obvious, but I think it's important that we're on the same page with this. So top lining in a nutshell is simply writing the lyrics and the melody to a preexisting track. So for instance, producer might have come up with a backing track. They've recorded the drums, the guitars, synthesizers, bass, all that kind of stuff. And it's your job to write the lyrics and the melody that will sit on top of that. It's not your job to alter any of the track. So always try to refrain from actually chopping an opportunity in the structure or anything like that. Now sometimes top-line is, are also vocalists, meaning not only did they write the lyrics and the melody, but they ended up singing on the track that was released. And this is where some of the confusion comes in because people start thinking to be a top liner. I've also got to be a vocalist. And that's not true. They're separate things that can be done by separate people. However, what I will say is, if you want to be a top line at learning, a bit of vocal technique, really, really helps. The reason being is that it helps you understand what is comfortable for a sinner, what is easy for a single thing? You're not going to write melodies that are to learn too high enough, crazy range. If you know a bit about vocal technique, you'll start to understand different registers. So chest voice, head voice, falsetto, and how they sound different, and how you can use that in your writing. So just learning a little bit of vocal technique can really help your top-line writing. As I said, this isn't a vocal cost, is the top line costs, so they are separate. We're going to focus on top veining. And let's get to it. 3. Finding A Track: Okay, so the first step is to find, attract to top line, because if you haven't got a track, then you are just normal songwriting and you're not top lining. So this isn't a step you want to take lightly because different tracks are going to be on different quality for one. And they're also going to have a different likelihood that your top-line is chosen for the cook. These two things tend to work against each other, however, because if you imagine a really big act, they just produced a brand new track. They want to top line for it. It's gonna be a good-quality track. There were big act. However, they're going to have loads of songwriters pitching in for this track because there'll be Equality Act. Everyone wants the big cup. So trying to find that balance, the trade-off between these two things is essential when you're looking for a track. Personally, I try and find small to mid-size artists and try and work my way up from there. You do it in every other industry, you to pitch rate for the top job when you have no experience. So start by working with a small to mid-size artists and labels and publishers, and start working your way up. I'm going to show you the five main places that I look for tracks when I'm talking lining. Obviously there's loads more particularly online. You can find loads and loads of websites that do this. But these are the five which I think has the best opportunity versus quality trade-off. So the first place I'd recommend looking is online. And in particular, we're going to start with YouTube. Now I'm going to jump on my computer and show you what we're gonna do. Okay, so I'm on YouTube, I'm looking for I attract top line. What I'm going to search for is the name of the genre that I want to work in, followed by the word beats. So for instance, hip hop beats, trap beats, puppets. Or possibly the artists that I want to work in the same style as a chain smoker style beats, something like that. Let's go for trap beats. And you'll probably get loads and loads of results like so. Let's just click on the first one. I've heard this already. It's a really good quality track. Let's say that I want the top line over this. What do I do? If you go down to this, the description box, you will probably find some information about how you can do that. So here it says purchased beat download. I'm going to click on that. And obviously every track is going to be different. But there'll be something like this where it says, you can purchase this track for $30, $50 if you want to have a wav lease or make an offer for an exclusive release. Every track is going to be different, but you'll often get something similar to this. Now, a lot of people think YouTube is gonna be like a low-quality kind of thing. But if you remember back in 2019, there was a huge song called Old Town Road by a guy called Lil Nas X. It was the second biggest selling song of the year. Absolutely huge track. And he bought that backing track music on YouTube for about $30. It could have been this same guy. $30. It turns something pretty average into an extraordinary worldwide hit. And that's what I love about top line in it because it just, it can transform a fairly basic song into an incredible worldwide hit. So YouTube is one of the best places to look for when you're looking for backing tracks. Also, I'd recommend doing is if you find a guy that you attract that you like, check his YouTube channel. And you'll probably have loads more, which you also like. You can sort of find a bit of a niche. And just keep coming back to the same guy for tracks. The second place I'd recommend is a website called song link, song lync.com. And although this looks dated, it's actually a pretty good resource, not only for top lines but for songwriting as well. You pay so much every month for song link. And in return, they give you an email containing a list of people who are looking for songs. And sometimes their songs are top lines. So that's another one to check out. It does cost. I'm not affiliated with them whatsoever, but I can recommend them. I had some cuts with song link. So they are real, they are legit. The third place I look is a website called Music gateway.com. And this is essentially a jobs board for musicians. It's a subscription. Again, you pay so much a month and in return you get access to these, these potential jobs. So for instance, this one here, they're looking for '70s classical children's choir, Christmas songs. That's not a top lining one. But if I search for top line, I might find some opportunities. Here we go. Looking for someone to write slash singer top-line. Yeah, there might be a few of them on music gateway as well as other opportunities. So that's another one worth checking out. Another place to look for tracks is with music publishers. Now the key here is to get on the writer's e-mail list for a music publisher. Because if you can get on that, you'll find this any tracks all the time saying we need to top line for this. We need the top line for that. It's just a great way to develop your top line and skills. The trick is, how do you get on the e-mail list? Now this is where it helps to go to networking events, meet other writers, write with other writers. Because if you know the right people, it's simply a matter of just asking the question. Can I get on the list? Can you put in a good way for me? And without any track record, you'd be surprised how many publishers just stick you on the list, no questions asked. Now a lot of people think you have to be signed to get on one of these mailing lists. But that isn't true. If you're assigned writer simply means everything you write goes to that publisher. They own a percentage of it. These lists are primarily for unsigned writers. So for people, I don't mean amateurs, people who like to write in different genres for different labels, different artists, that kind of thing. Again, when you're searching for publishers, remember to evaluate the size. Do I have a realistic shot at getting on their writers list? Finally, don't forget, you can always produce your own tracks. Or if you're not a producer, you can get your MIT produce some tracks for you that you could top line. It's gonna be so much easier to get a cut on your mates track than it is on Calvin Harris's track of David getters track. So don't be afraid to start small, work your way up. And then you can start saying to these publishers, look, I did this track with that guy. I did this track with that guy and they went on to do that. It's gonna be a lot easier to open doors once you've got a little bit of track record. So those are the five main places where I look for my tracks. Obviously there are loads more, but those are the five which I keep coming back to time and time again. Now the key thing here is to always pick a track that excites you don't ever start top lining a track which you don't like, it doesn't work. I've tried it. You always come up with something that's naff. Nothing will fix the fact that you don't like the backing track, know top-line will fix that. So always pick something that really excites you and you're on to a winner. 4. Research: Okay, so we've got our track that we want to top line. Now before we start getting creative, we need to do some groundwork before we can actually begin writing. This might sound a bit boring, but you must always, always, always do some research. Now, unless the track that you've chosen, you bought outright and you own the license, and it's yours to do whatever you want with the chances or whoever gave you the track, whoever asked for the top line, so the producer, the publisher, etc. They've got an idea of how they want the song to go already. And it's your job as a top liner to bring their idea to life, not to just use your own ideas to bring their idea to life. That's the most important point here. It's all about what they want. Obviously, you can use your own ideas and make the song better as a whole by using yours and there's their ideas. But if you ever lose sight of what they are after, then you won't get the cut. So always keep that in mind. So how do you know what their vision is? You simply ask them, often, a publisher or producer will give you a reference track along with the backing track. And they'll say to you, we want it to sound a bit like this. Or they might give you a few reference tracks. If you haven't got one asked for one. And also you might want to ask some questions like, do you want a male or female vocal on this? What lyrical themes can I use? What should I avoid? Things like that? Start to try and paint a picture of what they want. Whatever they gave you, start listening to it as much as you can and really analyze all the detail and start making notes. So things like, what's the structure of the song-like? Is it verse chorus does have a pre-chorus, does have a bridge solar wrap section. What's the melodic contour like? Does it go up in the chorus? Does it stay fairly flat throughout? What are the lyrical themes like? Does it talk about love, heartbreak, lost, hope, nostalgia, happiness? Start making as many notes about that song as you can, because you're going to refer to that later on when you're writing. Also, you're going to want to listen to tracks in the same genre as the reference track. So yes, you've got your reference track and that's like your, your shining light, which is going to guide you when writing this song. But by listening to tracks in the same genre, you're going to start to understand this style of writing a bit better start to understand these trends and really get to the bottom of what the producer has asked for. So spend a couple of hours before writing anything just to prime your brain, prime your mind by listening to this style so that you can absolutely nearly when it comes to writing. Okay, So this is gonna be our first example. I just want to show you the kind of research that I did when I was top-line in this song. Now this is a track which I wrote myself. So I didn't have any sort of reference tracks to follow. And I also didn't have anything in mind when I wrote the track. So I just produced a very simple backing track and came back to it about a year later and thought actually that's pretty cool. I could do something with that. So I gave it a go at the top lining. So I'm gonna play this track for you and then we can talk about the questions I was asking and the research which I did behind it. So here we go. That's about as far as I got with the track. Obviously, if I top line this up to that point and think it's good, I will produce the rest of it. If not, I will just call it a day and forget about it. So as I said, I didn't have any reference tracks to go with on this because it's a track that I produced myself. So I had to go and find one. And the one I found was heroes by a lessor. I chose that because if I was a lot of the same chord progressions and it's something I really like that seemed to work for me. Obviously, if you've been given one by our producer, then go with that. You can pick your own if you are working with a producer. So I listened to that alert and also a lot of his other songs. Where are we? A lesser? This guy, I listened to heroes and all of these. It is top ten as well, just to get a feel for what makes his songs popular. What is it about these ten songs that were so big compared to all these other ones? Then I look, This funds also like similar artists. A big one was a Vici who's not actually there at the minute, but it's very similar artist, listen to his top ten. What have they got in common? And again, nice Swedish House Mafia were a big one. Listen to these and just get a feel for this style, this genre, and this way of writing. Then start making some notes about all these songs. So the structure I found was often intro verse, pre-chorus, chorus, and then the drop, and just do the whole thing times two. So it didn't tend to be verse chorus, verse chorus. Having three or four choruses. It just tends to be this big buildup to the drop and then do it again. So it's a much longer sort of structure. Lyrical themes tended to be love, either lost or found. A being young. What if, you know what, what would have happened if we fell in love? I'm hopeful themes, elements of sadness, even in positive themes. So even when it wasn't really happy song, we seem to be something that was just a little bit sad about it. Contour. They tended to be static melody in the verses. And then the choruses were really big and anthemic. Sing-along Chorus is, in terms of extra notes I just put, imagery was used straight away. So from the first line, there was often a picture painted in your head, some sort of object to imagine. Chorus was usually fairly sparse in terms of both production and lyrically. So as I say, it's kind of like one word held out, which is why I've put here the verses were much wordier, a lot more going on. So there's some other notes that I made for this track. 5. Creating An Image: Okay, So we've listened to our reference tracks and we've got some ideas from there. Now we need to start bringing in our own ideas. And what we're gonna do is start painting a picture around this song. So what I like to do is turn the music up really loud. Close my eyes and just think, what visuals do I associate with these sounds? How does it make me feel? What we're looking for? Here are two main things. The first one is an emotion. When you listen to this track, how does it make you feel? What emotions do you associate with that sound? Those instruments? Try and be really specific if you can. So you might think, oh, it's a sad sounding song, it's a happy sounding song. That's not very good. We want to be much more specific than that. So underneath sadness, there's a lot of other feelings. For instance, heartbreak, loneliness, Feeling lost on the happiness. You can be an ecstatic, excited, joyful. They're all different emotions, but they're all happy to train niche down as much as you can. The second thing we're looking for here is a scene. So I like to do here is imagine that the music, a backing track to a TV show or a film. What would be happening in that scene as the music playing? Who are the people in the scene? What is their relationship to each other? How are they interacting with one another? Again, try and be as specific as you can and start painting a picture around this piece of music. The reason we do this is in order to generate lyrical and title ideas later down the line. And we need those lyrical and title ideas to be related to the music. Because we want this to be a whole picture. We want this all to be coherent. So by starting with an image and a scene and emotion, we generate better lyrical ideas which relate to the music. Okay, so these are the notes that I got from my track. The emotion that I came up with was nostalgia. For me. It gave me a nostalgic feeling. It was largely positive, but it had a sad kind of yearning element to it. The scene that I came up with was to teenagers falling in love, wishing I'd worked out in my mind that sat in a garden at a party somewhere. And I think the scenes a flashback, I think to get that nostalgia in there, looking back at this time, wishing it worked out. So Devin notes I made for this track. 6. Finding The Title: Once we've created an image around our song, we need to expand on that image and start to generate some lyrical ideas for our song. The way we're gonna do this is through brainstorming. You're going to take your scene and your emotion that you came up with. Stick them on a piece of paper, draw a circle around it, and just branch out ideas that all relate to these two central ideas. And you're going to try and fill the sheet of paper. Don't hold back. Because as soon as you start holding back and say, that's no good, that's no good. That's when you kill the creativity. So don't filter anything, just whatever comes to mind, write it down. Once you feel that sheet of paper. We're essentially going to be the same again with the ideas that you like the most. So pick a few and then write them on a sheet of paper. Do the same thing again and just play word association to try and generate as many ideas that are all related as you can. And that's exactly what we do and trying to create this huge bank of words that are all related to the first idea we had. And this is gonna be great for liberal ideas later on. However, at this stage, what we're looking for is the title of the song. And the reason we want to start with the title is because it acts as the destination of the song. It's going to help us to structure the lyrics in the verse, in the pre-chorus, in the chorus, so that we can take the listener from a to B, and B being the title. If you don't start with the title, to me, that's like getting in the car and not knowing where you're going or writing a book, and not knowing what the middle and the end or any kind of story and not knowing what's going on in the middle and the end. A good example of this is the TV show Lost. They did this. They set off with brilliant ideas to begin with, and everyone loved it. And then after a couple of seasons, people realized this show has no structure, is not got an ending that's planned out and people lost interest. And the same is true with songwriting. If you don't have a definite title, then you're leading the listener on a journey that you don't even know where it goes. So starting with the title is very important. Okay, so we've got actually it's a paper with all of these ideas on how do we know which one is the title? The title is gonna be the one idea that firstly, it sounds really cool just to listen to, just to say. But secondly, it's got the potential to have a story built around it. And the way to test this is to take your idea and put it into a larger context, put it into a sentence. And then think who is saying that sentence and who are they saying to? So think back to your scene. Who's in the scene? Who's saying it and who's receiving it. If you're able to do that and it has some significance, then the chances are you're able to sort of rewind and play out the scenes that happened that led up to that event. Because that's what we're gonna do when we write in the verse, the pre-chorus, chorus. We're essentially writing what happened before, before we got to that point where we said that thing. It could be as well. That is not you who's saying it is not coming from the point of view of the guy is saying it. It could be from the point of view from the guy who's receiving it. If you're able to do that and create story as well. That's a great indication that you've got a good title. Remember to always think back to your research as well. So when you did your research, did you notice that the titles were all one word or they were a bit longer? Maybe they used profanity, asked questions. Think about lyrical themes, and just allow all of these decisions to influence you when you are picking your title. Okay, this is a scan of the first mind-map which I did for my track. As you can see, I've got the emotion and the scene in the middle of the sheet of paper. Then all of these ideas stemming out, which were related to these two ideas. At this stage, I've got a bank of words, but I didn't particularly like any of them as a title. I didn't feel that way unique enough. But what I did have was a solid idea of what was going on. Now. I liked this idea of high, like being high or sort of floating up. So that's my first 1 s one is this idea of it being at night, being in a garden, a garden party somewhere, and just getting drunk. So that was my first two ideas of tying these two together. So did the same thing again with these two words. And these are some associated words that I got. And I stopped here because I got to the title. I really liked this idea of helium. And the picture I had in my head was two balloons being let go, bumping into each other. And those balloons represent the two teenagers that are falling in love. Sounds really artsy. But that was the picture I wanted to recreate in the song. So I ran with helium. And the line that I was thinking of that one of them would be saying to the other, was, your love is like helium. So I think that's gonna be aligned in the song. We will see how it goes. 7. Creating A Roadmap: Okay, So in the last video, we talked about how the title of the song is like the destination. That's where you want to take the listener. Now if we continue this analogy, we're going to need a roadmap in order to get there. And that's what the structure of the song is going to act as. It's sometimes called the form of the song. Now, if you don't know the four basic song forms there now it'd be a great time to check out the bonus video called the four forms. And it's just going to talk you through the four main song structures that you're going to come across when your top line. And not only that, it's going to explain the different purpose of the sections. So what is for, what our course is for pre-chorus is for things like that. So if you haven't seen that yet, now would be a great time to check that out. Now usually when your top line in the structure of the song has been given to you in the backing track. So very rarely will you get a note from the producer saying, Yeah, this song goes verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus and out. They'll expect you to listen to it and figure this out for yourself. The way you do this is just to listen out for changes in the song. So this could be a change in the instrumentation. That could be a base comes in, the guitar comes in and the drums dropout could be a change in the chord progression. It could be a change in the volume, so it could be allowed a section, quieter section. These are all indications that the section has changed. So it's gone from savers to a chorus or columns two of S. So start to make a note of these. Write down, say at 20 s, there's a change in Section, 40 s, there's another change in section and just map out the whole song for your backing track. Now the chances are the song structure is going to be something very similar to pop form. And pop farm goes like this. It starts with an intro, goes into averse than a pre-chorus, chorus. And then we repeat them three. So go verse, pre-chorus, chorus, then a bridge section, final chorus. And then you're out. And yeah, that's pop form in a nutshell. So 90% of the tracks that you get given a Good Fall structure very similar to that. There are three main alterations to watch out for. The first one being that the intro is sometimes dropped. So you just come straight in with the vocals for reverse. Second one is that the pre-chorus is often dropped, so it's just verse chorus form. And the third one being that the chorus at the end is doubled up, you end on a double chorus. Another one is that you might start on the chorus as well, but that's not so common. So listen to the song and tried to identify the song form that you're backing track followers. Remember to always look back at your research as well. So does your backing track match up with your reference track when it comes to the song structure. And if it doesn't, is there another reference track in the same genre that you can find that will match up. Also start to think about instrumental sections as well. This is really important because if you sing over an instrumental section, I'll walk should be an instrumental section is going to come across a little bit naive, like he didn't really understand the structure and the idiosyncrasies of the genre. So for instance, in dance music, often there'll be a one-minute intra, or even longer. If you start singing straightaway and you don't leave time for that intro, It's going to come across like you don't understand that genre. So yeah, do your research and stick to it and make sure it guides you when you are mapping out the structure. Okay, so here's my track. Now I'm just going to play through this and mark down whenever I hear a change in section. So it could be a change in cards are in the instrumentation, the volume, things like that. Obviously, I know how this is going to pan out because I produced it. But let's just pretend I got this from a producer. And I have to listen to this and mark down the sections. So this is exactly what I do. Okay, at that point, I'm hearing a guitar come in. So I'm just going to mark down when that happened and add a little located here. Obviously you don't need any fancy software to do this. You can do this just by marking down the time. Here. 22 s, a guitar came in. So it's probably a change in section. And I would continue from there until I hear something else different. Okay, at that point there's some cushion coming in, some extra cents. So I'm going to mark another locator, and that would be 37 s. And again, continue from there. Okay, again, got another instrument coming in, the bass, synth bass. So I'm going to mark the third marker, and we start to see this pattern of every 8 bar. We're getting a change in sections or predicts. There'll be another one here. Let's have a listen. Yeah, exactly. So again, got definite change their create a marker. And yeah, I said it's 8 bar, but we could say it's every Why is that saying 14, 15 s or so? Every 15 s, we're getting a change in section. So it starts to look out for these patterns when you're working with your backing track. Let's go one more time and listen to this. Okay, we've got another change there. Some open hi-hats coming in. So there we have our last changing section. The next one, as I said, it just fizzles out because this is only half a song so far. So we've got this structure here. We can see a repetition every 8 bar. Now I'll compare that to my reference track and see how that matches up. The reference track I had was heroes by a lessor. And the structure of that was intro verse, pre-chorus, chorus, and then a drop section. And then repeated that. I'm looking to get up to the drop section. So we can safely say that the drop is here. So I'm going to label that drop. Then it's a bit of a idiosyncrasy in this genre to have a second drop. Which is what I would treat this as very similar field, but it's just like it's got a little bit bigger. This section. I'm going to label that dropped to even. I could call this anything, I could call this Fred and Dave, as long as I know what that means, drop and drop too. I'm happy with that. So taking it from the start in the reference track, the intro was quite sharp. So I don't like the fact that I've got however many 12 bar here of intro. I reckon if I just give myself 4 bar before him into the verse. So we'll start with an intro here, then a verse, and then possibly a change in section here. It could be another verse. The chorus. I want the corners to be twice as long as the verse section because that's what happened in my reference tracks. I'm always referring back to that. I think 2.3 together should be the chorus. Let's get rid of that. Now I've got twice as long section. And then this would be the pre. And then we've got my song mapped out up until the end of the drop or the second drop. 8. Creating The Story: Okay, So we've mapped out the structure of our song and we know at what point certain sections occur and how often they repeated. Now we need to think about what actually happens in these sections. So what happens in diverse in terms of the story? What happens in the pre-chorus? What happens in the chorus? And the way we're gonna do this is by working backwards from the chorus. Because the course is more than likely where you're gonna put your title and that's where we want to lead the listener. So what I'd like to think about is if you were just telling this as a story to your friends in everyday English, how would you tee up the climax of the story? Because that's what the title should be. It should be the, the punchline is the climax of the story and it needs teeing up somehow. You need to set the scene. And however you do that, whatever happens before the main event is what happens in the pre-chorus. And then if you've got a verse before that, again, you need to think, how can I really sort of set the scene and lead the listener from the very start from knowing nothing to delivering that punchline. So that's what these initial sections or four. Now, as I said, at this stage, it doesn't need to be poetic. Anything lyrical is literally just in plain English. One sentence. What happens in this section? What happens in the section before? When you read through the verse pre-chorus, chorus, it should almost read like beginning, middle, end. And it takes the listener from knowing nothing to that punchline. Now it's worth noting at this point, you might want to play around with the tendencies of each section. Because one really common trick is to write the verse in the past tense. So this is what happened. The pre-chorus in the present tense. So this is how I'm feeling about it. And the chorus in the future tense. This is what I'm going to do about it. And again, it just adds more progression to the song and leads the listener. Now once you plot it out up to the end of the first course, you need to move on to the next section of your song according to your roadmap. But more than likely this will be V2. V2 is your opportunity to really develop the story and take it to the next level. Really, it's almost like the sequel of a film to what happens next. That's what you want to be doing. Invest too. Again, if you're talking to your friends, it's like meeting up with them the next week and filling them in on the latest gossip, the latest news, what happened next in that saga? So that's your best to now be careful here because V2 needs to lead into the chorus again. And ideally, this course is going to be identical to the first chorus because we want that repetition so the listener can remember. So you can't go off on a tangent too much in terms of the story. Because you still want to deal with the same punchline at the end. But it does need to be different. It doesn't need to expand on the first verse. I want you to invest too. You could potentially have the whole song mapped out because you might not have a bridge to do. And it could be that you can reuse the first pre-chorus as well. But sometimes you won't be able to do that. And in those cases, you need to rewrite that pre-chorus idea in order to just twist it back around so that it leads into the second course. Now if there is room for a bridge in your song, then this is your opportunity to put a twist into the story. So bridges are just great for this because it grants and new perspective on the third chorus. So for instance, you might write in the bridge from a different perspective, from the point of view of the person who you're singing to. Or you might write in a different tense again, you might start to look back on this and reflect from the future. And it will grant the third course a different perspective. So that's one little trick you can do in the bridge to start to play around with tenses and perspectives. Another one for the bridge is just to summarize the song as a whole. What is the n, What is the lesson you've learned out of this whole story? How is it going to change you moving forward? At that point, you should have your whole story mapped out so you know exactly what happens from the first verse to the last course. So read it through from start to finish. Does it make sense just in plain English? Because if it doesn't in plain English, writing the lyrics is gonna be really challenging. And again, always remember to refer back to your reference tracks because it could be that in the genre you're writing in certain sections just don't exist or they always follow a particular trend. So always refer back to your reference tracks. So here is the structure of my song just mapped out. I've got all the sections written down. And I'm just going to start to fill in what happens in each section. And I've got this line across here too. Just for a visual reference. This is kind of like a two-half song. But obviously your song might be slightly different. In the chorus. I'm just going to start by writing my title line, which was your love is like helium. I'm going to copy that for each course that happens. And then I'm going to think about what happens before I say that. So I think I'd say before I said you'll love is like helium is describing lifting sensation. Describe the lifting. How it was. The first time we met. And maybe you're on cloud nine to sort of go with that analogy. Okay, So what would we be saying before we said that in reverse? I think we'd have to describe how it felt before we met them. How it felt. Before we met. Perhaps you are stuck on the ground looking up, wishing that you're in love. Okay, so now when we read it forward, Does it make sense? The first verse we're seeing how it felt before we met, stuck on the ground. Then we go into how it was when we met. You lifted me up. I'm on cloud nine. Therefore, your love is like helium. So yes, that makes sense. There's progression there. And again, if we focus on the tenses, it's like past tense, present tense, and then sort of a summary in the course. Okay, So then when we move forward to the second verse, remember the second verse was our opportunity to expand on the story. It's like the sequel. And we can have more description, more imagery in that, in that section. So I think this would be a good place to, again, describe what's going on. So at this point we're probably looking down everyone. Although maybe not everyone, but other things. Maybe it's like the city or the rooftops. Yeah. I think that's probably enough for us to we can we can fill that out. We can pad out with lyrics, definitely. Pre-chorus. What would it be saying after that? Could I say the same thing as in the first pre-chorus? Yes, To an extent, I could describe the lifting sensation, but I couldn't say it's the first time on that. So it could be like how it gets better, how you get higher every, every day that goes by. Every day. Therefore, your love is like helium. So again, we've got this progression that leads into the chorus. That's all we need for now, just a couple of sentences for each section. And then we can start to fill out the lyrics. 9. Writing The Melody: Okay, so at the start of this video cast, we said that top lining is two things. It's writing the melody and it's writing the lyrics. Now so far we've not actually done either of them things. But what we have done is a lot of planning. And hopefully this planning is going to really help us when it comes to tackling the meat and bones of top lining. Now this next stage is a little bit of a weird one because we're going to try and write the melody first. But often when you start writing the melody, certain limits will just come out naturally just as you're singing along. And you don't want to forget any of them lyrics because often, the most natural ones, some of the best ones. So from this point on, I recommend sticking your phone or a dictaphone onto record. I'm just letting it run. So you don't forget any ideas as they come out. So this is what we're gonna do to get started with writing the melody. We're going to refer back to the brainstorming session that we did with that huge word bank we created. And we're going to use some of those words in order to help guide the melody. Now it's important to remember, we're not writing the lyrics here, we're writing the melody, but some of these words might end up being used in the final cook. So we're going to try and pick some of the most interesting words. By the most interesting words, I mean the ones that evoke the most imagery. So I nouns, things you can imagine, things you can draw. So for instance, if you have the word heart and the word love on your page, you can't draw love really. It's an emotion, you can't draw it. You could draw two people, but you can't draw love. Whereas the heart, you can draw heart. So it's much more engaging for the listener because they can start to imagine the objects are the things that you're placing in the song. Now once you've got a handful of interesting words, you're going to try and sing them along to the backing track. And you're gonna do this along with some humming, along with some filler words in order to pass this melody out. And really just try and get a **** for how it goes. So we're not focusing on the lyrics, but if certain words fit within the melody really well, then obviously we're going to keep them and we've got that recorded our funds. So we can remember that idea later on. Now the way I like to do this is to put the backing track onto a loop. And I'll just select the first verse and just let it play round and round and round. And I'll use some of these words to help me guide the melody. And I'll just keep doing that until I find something that really resonates with me that I really like. Now a general rule of thumb here is that the more words your section has, the less melody it wants to have. So for instance, if you have a very descriptive section, for instance, diverse, where there might be a lot of storytelling, a lot of describing going on, a lot of lyrical content. Then you don't want to distract the listener from that by having a melody that's pinging around loads of different notes and trying to get their attention. Let them focus on the lyrics by having a melody that's maybe one or two notes that they can really latch onto really easily. And then they can focus on lyrics. On the other hand, for chorus sections where there tends to be less storytelling going on, It's your opportunity to engage the listener with a really compelling melody, something that is unique, something that gets their attention. So, yeah, general rule of thumb is that if you have more words, you have less melody. So once you've written the first verse melody, what you're going to do is take off that loop that we put on earlier and allow yourself to sing into the next section. So sing the verse and just freely seeing into the pre-chorus or the chorus. And often you'll find that the first thing you come up with is the best idea because it just flows really naturally. So again, have your phone on record. Next video recording of these very first texts. Now, ideally, each section will sound totally different from the other sections. However, if you find that you've written two melodies that sound really similar, just sounds like the same section repeated. Then there are three main things that could be causing this. The first one is that the melodies could be in the same register. So generally, the verse is tend to be a bit lower and the chorus is a bit higher. Whereas if you have two sections which are just around the same sort of notes, they can sound a bit similar. The second one is that the phrasing could be very similar. Now freezing is quite hard idea to grasp at first, but it essentially means how long is it before There's a repetition in the rhythm. So it could be that every four beats the rhythm repeats. Every eight beats the rhythm repeats, and that would be your phrase length. So I'll give you an example here. For four beats, we could have a rhythm that goes. So here's your 4123. Got at that, but at data, data, data, data that, but at that, that's a four beat phrase. If we have another four beat phrase in the next section, it can sound quite similar, whereas you could go for a two beat phrase. So here's a two beat phrase. Want to, want to get at that data, that data. So that's going to sound very different. When you go from different sections, it could be eight beats, could be one beat. But providing it's different, that will provide the contrast that you're looking for. The third one is that the rhythms could be too similar. So think about the pace of each section. So for instance, in the verse you might be using quarter notes 1234. And in the next section, you speed it up to use eighth notes, 1.2 and 3.4. So start to think about each individual note length and how does it vary from section to section. Okay, so we're going to repeat the last step for each section of the song. So we started with the verse and we sang freely into the pre-chorus. In order to generate that melody. We're going to do the same thing with the pre-chorus into the chorus to generate that melody. And again, if it doesn't quite work, then think about those three things we just talked about. In order to find a melody that flows really naturally. Remember, we do have one lyric written already and that is the title lyric. Remember to include that when you are writing your melodies. Now there's two main places that you might want to think about putting your title. And they are at the start of the chorus and at the end of the course. And the reason being is that these are the power positions. These are the places where the listener pays the most attention. So placing your title in one of these positions is a really smart idea because it will allow the listener to remember the song title easier. And the reason we want that is so that they can tell their friends about it. They can go and buy the song, they can search for the song. So take advantage of these power positions by placing your title either the start or the end of the course. And finally, when you're writing your melodies, don't forget to refer back to your reference tracks. Think about what the melodic contour was like for the songs that you are listening to in your research stage. Okay, so here's my session. I've selected the verse and I've put a loop around it just so that I can focus on writing the melody and not worry about pressing Play and Pause all the time. So you don't need any fancy software to do this. You can download something called Audacity, which will do exactly the same thing. Or you can just press play and pause. You don't have to have a loop on it. It just helps me work a little bit quicker. So I'm going to play the vast and seeing some of the words which I had from the brainstorming session. But pad it out with humming and nonsense words and just see what comes out. I'm not going to hold back, I'm not going to critique myself. Let's just see what happens. So here we go. And got lost. Yeah. Mathy ground. No. Okay. Okay. So a couple of little things that I liked from that, the way that feet on the ground fit it in. And essentially got button that melody just from the word stars and just playing around with that. So I'm going to sing that again, but allow myself to sink into the pre-chorus this time. And hopefully, the first thing that I think for the pre-chorus will flow naturally from the verse. So let's give this a go and get my feet on the ground. Okay. I like that. I think that fluid pretty well. It's not cemented in, but as I come up with lyrics, that will just help establish what's really going on with the melody in terms of rhythm, in terms of which nodes go higher and lower, et cetera. So I'm gonna do the same thing from the pre-chorus into the chorus. And remember I have one, I have the title line for the course. So I'm going to try and fit that in. And again, thinking about my research, it tended to be that it was just one word in the car is just sort of extended out. So I'm going to try and hold that title word helium. And just sort of hold out for the duration of a couple of bars. So let's see what happens. That dad dad, he lie. Lie. Okay. I quite like that. I think is a little bit repetitive, so I might think about changing one of them up by like that. For now. I can come back and change the melody if I need to. I've got all that recorded on my phone. I'm not going to forget any of those ideas. I could do the whole process again if I wanted to, if I wasn't happy with what happened. But I quite like it. I think I can definitely work with that. And I've done up to the end of the chorus, meaning I can just repeat this verse pre-chorus chorus melodies for the next half of the song. Because this is a two-half song. After the second drop, there would be another verse, pre-chorus, chorus. If you have a bridge section, I would obviously go ahead and do your bridge section at this stage. But that is essentially it for writing the melodies. 10. Writing The Lyrics: The next step is to fill out the melody with lyrics. And we're going to use some of the words which we came up with in the brainstorming session in order to help us do that. Now we want to use them, but still maintain the idea of the story and the plot that we came up with earlier on. Now you might find that some of the words you used in order to guide the melody in the previous step. Actually sit in place really well. And if so, who wants to try and keep them there? But just find a more poetic way of saying whatever it was that we came up with in the plot. There are two main devices we can use in order to do this. The first one is the use of similes. Now similarly, when you say one thing is like something else, so you compare one thing to something else. So for instance, in the songwriting, your love is like helium. That's implying that they love, lifts your spirits. It raises you up. I could say this chair is like heaven. And that would imply that it's comforting to sit on. It's a nice chair. Instead of just saying it's a nice chair. You could say, this chair is like heaven, and it's just a bit bit more poetic. The second one is the use of metaphors. Metaphors are where you say something is something else. So it's not like something else, it actually is something else. So for instance, I could say love is helium. And this just adds a little bit more where it's a little bit heavier. But it's really a matter of preference between whether you use similes or metaphors. So what we're trying to do here is to take the original meaning from the plot and say it in a new unique way. For each section. However, we want to be careful not to overdo this because it tends to be that similes and metaphors introduce a lot of imagery and don't get me wrong. I love imagery. But at some point, the listener wants to know how you feel about it. That tends to be what the chorus is quite good for. So in the verse, you set off with these similes and metaphors in order to listener thinking about actual objects and things that they can imagine. But then allow them to associate that story with a feeling and deliver that feeling in the course. That tends to be the way that songs kind of pan out. Now, I would advise that you keep the writing at a fairly fast pace here, because it's really easy to get bogged down on finding the perfect line. And that just kills the creative process. It kills your floor. So what I'd recommend doing is using placeholders. So the first line that comes that says what you wanted to say. Just use that. It doesn't matter if it's not perfect, just use it. Move on to the next one. And you'll start to see the story unfold as you move through the song. Then you can go back and place some of these placeholders. It's also important to remember that the melody is not yet set in stone. So if you have the perfect lyric on the perfect line, and it just says exactly what you want it to say. Then think about reworking the melody instead of rewording that line, is generally never a good idea to count syllables and think, well, there, there are eight notes in this melody, so I need an eight syllable line is much easier to come up with your 910 syllable line and just add a few extra notes in the melody. That way you get to see what you actually wanted to say. Instead of rewording it and ending up sounding like yoda, instead of just in a normal conversation. Okay, so here is the outline of my song, which we looked at earlier. And it's just describing what we want to say in each section. And then also on the right here, we have the finished lyrics. And I just want to talk you through how I got from this, from this outline to the finished product. So starting with the verse, I wanted to describe how it felt before we met. I felt like I was stuck on the ground looking up, wishing that I was in love. So I like this idea of looking up. I thought that would allow me to continue describing what I'm seeing as I'm looking up. So I thought I was a good opener. And it just so happened that, that fit in with the melody as well. So that went into the first place. No problems. Diamond dust was another way of me saying stars. I thought it was a little bit more interesting. It fit with the melody better. And it also generated this internal rhymes or looking up a diamond dust, up and dust. It's not a perfect rhyme, but it has that same vowel sound which will continue into the next line. And the second verse is actually. So. Yeah, Both my feet on the ground, that was a line of came up with when I was writing the melody. I'm always struck with wonder lost. So there's that rhyme. Stroke is an 0 sound and lost. Another. Always struck with wanderlust, but gravity was holding me down and writing that last that last word as well. So that said what I wanted to say into the pre-chorus. I was describing the lifting sensation and how it was the first time we met. So I just literally started with That's how it was until that night in the summer. And just using some of the words which I had from the word banks are balloons that was obviously related to helium. Lifting the higher going up. All part of that word bank. And just making it fit in with the melody which I had. Okay, into the chorus. Again. We did this in the last video. So it was just one word. Essentially helium, you'll love is like helium and just dragging that out for the melody. However, I did change the third time around. I chose the melody there just to make it a bit more interesting. Because I felt like four times with the same melody was just a little bit monotonous. And your family, I added this last line to just add an element of doubt. Like there could be something going wrong. I don't want to let go. It's as though like the relationship might be coming to an end. She thought it was a little bit of an interesting twist to add on the end of the course there too. I wanted to say what it's like looking down at the city, at the rooftops now that I'm up there on Cloud9 kind of thing. So again, I was going to follow the first verse melodic structure and try and copy them rhymes if I can. Through the clouds and over mountain tops. There's Ryan Clough and Mao. With your hand in my hand. You'll love dropped me way up here, out of the atmosphere. Here, sphere and here. That's that rhyme. And then hand and gas. It's a loose rhyme, but it still has the same vowel sound. So again, these are words which were on my word bank, gas, atmosphere, or relating to helium. The title into the second pre-chorus. I wanted to describe the lifting sensation and how it gets better, how we get higher every day. So yeah, I was describing what it's like now that I'm up there, now that you've taken me that I'm looking down 1,000 mi, the bright city lights. These things that I can see a lot of imagery for the listener to actually get involved with the song. And yet this line still reaching new heights, like I've never known, that was getting better every day. We're still going up. Then into the chorus again. The chorus was the same as the first one. And as I read that through now from first verse, chorus, it offers, it makes sense lyrically. It's one huge metaphor for being in love and just being lifted up. My lyrics are finished. 11. Recording: So at this stage, you should have your top-line written and the next step is to actually record the top line. Now, my biggest piece of advice for recording is not to cut any corners. And the reason for this is because a lot of producers these days actually like to use the recording from the top line demo which you sent them. So wherever you send them ends up being used on the released record. So what you send them needs to be really good quality. It needs to be to a professional standard. So if you're a singer and you think, yes, I can sing this track, then by all means, go for it. But be realistic and be honest. Do you think it'll be better suited to a different singer? Could someone else perhaps a better way than you do? Could you get a better product at the end? And if so, then use that thing. I don't cut any corners. So there's quite a few steps which go into the recording process. I'm going to break them down here. And you can decide which ones you think you can do yourself, which ones you might want to delegate to someone else. The first step is something that we can all do, and it's simply finding the right singer for the song. So normally this will involve going onto social media websites, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, anywhere where sigma is, might be pushing their music to try and find a new audience. That's where you want to be listening to see if they're the right singer for your song. If you can't find anyone. There's also sites such as sound better and fiber, where seniors can go and create a page saying what services they provide, how much it costs, what they've done before, all that kind of stuff, all on one page. So that might be another option if you can't find anyone on social media. Once you have found the right person though, you want to start a conversation and start negotiating rates and what they provide and all that kinda stuff. So that's step one and that's finding the singer. The second step is to actually get the recording done. Now, my advice here is to find a singer who has access to their own recording facilities. Because if not, you're gonna be hiring out recording studio and the singer for every single top-line that you do. And it gets very expensive very quickly. So unless they can come into your home studio, then try and find a singer who has access to their own. You also need to let the vocalists know exactly what you want in terms of the tracks that you are asking for. So obviously you're going to want a lead vocal. But do you also want backing vocals, harmonies, ad libs, double tracks, all those kind of things. Again, my recommendation is you just get one lead vocal which is comped in tuned. And we're going to come on to what comping and tuning is in a second. But the reason that we only want one lead vocal is because for one, all those other things cost more money. And two, if we've got the lead vocal, we can send that to the producer. And they can come back and say, Yes, we like it or no, we don't like it. And then you've not wasted all that money. But if they do like it, often they will have inputs as to what kind of backing vocals they won't go in on. And then you can relay that information to the singer and get them back in their studio to record the backing vocals and harmonies and the ad libs and all that kind of stuff. The third step is to get the vocal comped and tuned. Now, obviously if the vocalist has done the company and the tuning, then you don't need to worry about this. But if they haven't, then what you should have received from them, instead of that one vocal, take the one lead vocal is after. You should get five to ten ticks of exactly the same thing of that lead vocal. And what this allows you to do is to compile the vertical. That's what comping is short for. Its way. Take all the best bits from all the different texts and you compile them into one long take, and that becomes your lead vocal. So that's comping. Then you need to tune that vocal. So even though you're taking the best bit is never going to be perfectly in tune. And tuning is often frowned upon as something that only singers who can't sing get done to their vocals. That's not true. It's just simply another part of the mixing process. Pretty much everyone has it done these days. And it just allows it to sit better in the mix in the final product. So yeah, that's comping and tuning that step three. The fourth step is actually mixing the backing track with the vocal file. Now this isn't particularly hard because there's only two tracks. So probably something that you could do yourself if you have access to a DAW and you're familiar with that kind of stuff. But my recommendation again is to ask the vocalist to do it because it's one less job for you. So if this is the case, you should be looking for three things from your vocalist. The first one is the mixed tracks. So the backing track and the vocals mixed together with all the effects on reverb delay, that kind of stuff. The second one. What we're going to call the wet vocal. So this is the vocal file with reverb and delay, but there's no backing track, so it's the vocals with effects, essentially. The third one is what we're going to call the driver. The driver is just the vocal file on its own. So there's no reverb delay, no effects or EQ is just the vocals. But crucially, it is comped and tuned. The producer is going to expect it to be competent tuned. So you're going to ask for the content tuned. Raw Dr. Vogel file. That's the file they're going to want. All these files should be sent as wife files are another lossless file format. Wife is the industry standard, so I'd asked for that. Don't ever let them get away with send you an MP3. That's not good enough quality. It needs to be a wife file for you to fold it to the producer. So that is the recording process. Now if there's any jobs there which the singer can't provide for you and that you can't do yourself, then they need to be outsourced to other people. And that's where websites like sound better and fiber are really handy because there's loads of people on there who will come vocals and tune vocals, mix vocals and all that kind of stuff. So take a look on there. If there are any jobs that you're unable to do in the recording process. Okay, so here is the finished track. I finally produced the second half, so that can get the vocals all done in one studio session. I'm not going to play you all of it. I'll just play you the first half so you can see how it turned out. But before I do, I just wanted to explain this comping thing a little bit better. Because I think if you've got a visual, it makes a bit more sense. So yeah, this is my lead vocal and this is currently comped. So you can see here all these lines coming down. That's where it's been chopped up. And you can see it says vocals one here. This literally the first word is taken from the first vocal tic, and then the next couple of words are taken from the second vocal tic. This bit from the fifth vocal tic, the third vocal tic, and so on. And you end up with this like Frankenstein vocal take with all the best bits if you like. And that's your comp to vocal. So that's what's going on there. There's a couple of different tracks. So we've got lead vocal, lead vocal to lead vocal three, just because they have different effects on when I came to mixing it. But yeah, you'd probably just have the one track, especially if you are receiving this from a vocalist. Anyway, let's have a listen. Diamond. But my feet on the ground. Always start with gravity were sold in detail. Onto that. With you made 100 lifting me. We went up like like slide. So yeah, that's that. The next step is to send it off. 12. Submitting: Okay, the final step is to actually submit the track to whichever opportunity it is that you want to pitch for. This could be to the producer to see if they like it and see if they will release it. It could be to a publishing house to see if they'll sign it, or synchronization company to see if they'll add it to their adverts. Whatever the opportunity is, there's a right and a wrong way of sending your track. So that's what we're going to look at in this video. Now the first thing we want to concern ourselves with is something called track metadata. Now track metadata is basically everything within an audio file that isn't the audio itself. So this is stuff like the track name, the album name, the artist's name, sometimes the lyrics, and even additional texts that you might want to add. So it's really important we have this stuff in place so that when you send it off, it's all there in one place for them to see. And not only that, if they lose the email or the cover letter, then they still know how to get in touch with you, who wrote it, what attracts cold and all that kind of stuff. So we're going to have a look at how to do that in iTunes. Okay, so I've got my track and at the minute it's just called helium dot wav. And there's no other information about who I am, what genre is, what BPM is, anything like that. So the very first thing I'm gonna do is right-click, Rename and include my own name. Now, if they lose the e-mail or if they lose anything else and they only have this track. At least they have my name and they can search back through those emails or search online to find out who it was that submitted this. Okay. Once you've done that, I would open it in iTunes and start to populate some of these other fields. It's really important that you include the other ones if you are submitting to things like music libraries, because their index their songs through things like the BPM and the genre. So I'm going to open it in iTunes. If you don't have iTunes, you can download it for free. You can just Google iTunes and I'm sure you'll find the download link three on PC and Mac. When you've got it open in iTunes, when it's playing at the top here, if you click on these three dots, you will see something called song info. So we're gonna go to that. And on the Details tab, we're going to start to populate all of these fields. So artists, some Dawson album, I'm just going to put my name again because it's a demo. Composer. I put my own name. Genre. It's pops on the gear. This is mainly for my own sort of categorizing the files and finding something that I've done in the past. So I like to put the year in the BPMN. That's an important one. This is at one to eight. And in the comments, I'm going to put my own e-mail address. So that'll be your e-mail at whatever.com. Then when you click okay, that will be saved into the file. So now all your track metadata is all there. And that information is there for anyone to access when they receive your file. Once we've got our track metadata sorted, the next step is to make sure we're submitting in the right file format. Again, this is really important because if you don't get this right, it just kinda looks like you haven't bothered. And it probably means you haven't got the track right if you can't get the file format right. So when we talk about file format, we're talking about, is it a WAV file, an mp3 file? Is it a link or a CD? They tend to be the main four. So if you're not sure what they're thereafter, you need to ask them, do you want to cd, Do you want and why file or whatever. But usually they'll tell you and yeah, it's very important that we get this right. So again, I'm going to show you how to do this in iTunes for the main different formats. Okay, so I'm back in iTunes and the first thing that I'm going to do is go to Edit in the top-left preferences. And then on the General tab, I'm going to come down to import settings. And I'm going to import using whichever encoder that they have asked for. So if they've asked for an mp3, I'm going to select an MP3 encoder. I'm going to okay that, okay. Then when I've got this track highlighted, whichever track I want to convert, I'm going to make sure it's in blue. Then go back up to the top-left file, convert and create MP3 version. So this will turn my wife and create a new version, which is an MP3. So I'm going to click on that. Then underneath you'll notice there's a new version here. If I right-click Show in Windows Explorer, I can find this on my computer and then attach that to emails and all that stuff. So that's what we do if we want to create an mp3. But what if we want to create a link to a track? What if we'd been asked to provide a link? Well, what we're gonna do for this is to use a service called Soundcloud. So if you go to soundcloud.com, which I have done here, you can create a free account and you can upload music in order to send links to people. It's kinda like the industry. Standard loads of people use it. So I'm gonna go to upward here. And then I'm just going to drag in that file that I created earlier. And it will start to upload this track. So I'm going to okay that what I would do is set this to private because a lot of people don't want the fact that other people might have heard it. So if you've got loads of followers on SoundCloud, it's almost like it's been released before, it's actually been sent to anyone. So I make sure that it's on private. And then if you want to, you can populate these fields. Again. It's not so important. You might want to put the lyrics in the description, stuff like that. But I'm just gonna save that for now. And then you'll see here there's a link so I can copy that and attach that to emails if they've asked for a link. Okay, finally, we need to compose some sort of cover letter or an e-mail which will introduce the track. Say who we are and say who it's for. So again, I'm gonna give you an example and a quick template of how we can do this. Okay, so here is the template I would use for sending an email to someone that have not met before, someone I don't know. So in the subject, I'm going to put songs for then the artist's name, whoever it is that is asking for songs. And then I'd put high whoever the email is going to make sure you know who is gonna receive this e-mail. Let's call this guy Alex. I'm writing in response to your ad on let's say it was on taxi. Taxi for song demos. I've included a link below to my track, which is called helium. For your consideration. Then I put the track name again, just to reinforce it, will put it in capitals this time and underline. Then the link is the link we generated from SoundCloud. I'm going to paste that in there. And at the minute is not clickable. You'll see it's got that blue hyperlink thing. So I'm going to highlight that. Come down here and click Insert Link. This will depend on your e-mail provider. But for Gmail, I can click on that. Then regards standoffs and and my number. So that's it. It doesn't work alone. It doesn't dig up the track and say this is going to be the best thing you've ever heard. It just says this is where you listen. And if they like it, they're going to get back in touch. Now before you hit send, just makes sure that you have spelled my name right. That's really important obviously. And secondly, just any typers. It just gives the impression that if you can't hype, right, what's the chances that you can actually write a decent song? So let's just make sure that everything is looking tidy and it comes across professional. And then you hit send and pull it out of your mind. Now the reason I say it's put it out of your mind is because nine times out of ten, you're not gonna get a response from them. And this can be really discouraging because you've spent all this time crafting this song and you sent it off, and you don't even get a reply to say yes or no. You kind of have to think from their point of view, there'll be getting hundreds of thousands of submissions for this opportunity. And if they not only have to listen to everything, but they have to get back to everyone as well. Then it's going to take a lot of time. So it's kind of an unwritten rule in the music industry. If someone doesn't get back to you, then it's a no. Having said that, sending a follow-up e-mail is absolutely fine. But only send one. And you want to send this about a week after your first email. And it just wants to say something like, Hi, I wondered if you had a chance to listen to that track yet. No worries if not, but I just love to hear your thoughts and send that off. And all it is is a reminder because the first one, it might have slipped through their nets. But if you don't get anything back then don't send another one. Now hopefully by following this course and with enough time and enough practice, you will start to hear something back. But it is kind of a numbers game. So as I said before, nine times out of ten, you don't hear anything. You're waiting for that one in ten when they get back and say, yes, we really liked the song, we want to cut it. Or yes, we like this, but we just want to tweak that. Or even something like it's not quite right for us now, but maybe we'll have an artist in the future who will do it. And you start to develop a relationship with them. You'll find once you've got that email back, It's so much easier because the doors that open, you can send an email saying, are there any other opportunities? How about if I change it like this? And it just gets a lot easier once you've got something back from them. It's also important to remember if you don't get the cut. If you don't hear anything back, you still own the track that you wrote. You still own the melody and the lyrics. So yes, the backing track belongs to whoever produce that. But if you swap that out and get another producer to produce something else, or you produce it yourself. And it's different enough from the original backing track, then you've got a whole track there and it's all yours to submit for different opportunities or to release yourself. You still own the top line and no one can take that away from you without signing it. Okay, that concludes our top line and costs. I hope you found value in these videos. If you have them, please consider leaving a review. If you have any questions, then get in touch with me. My email address is some song one, I want that UK. That's it. Happy top lining. And thank you for being a part of this course.