Contrary to popular belief, songwriting business is not a joke and not an easy task. This is a business with the same concept as “invention”, “copyrights”, “trademark” and “ownership”. Professional songwriters think like that. Before you became a professional songwriter, you might spent a lot of time in your home; recording a lot of songs, writing lyrics that for you do not make a lot of importance.
Well, a lot of people can even complain why in the first place you have that hobby? The truth is that there are people in this world that are born to love music more than anyone else. This is where songwriters belong. For example, I completed an engineering job but I still love writing songs. Before; songwriting is a hobby but now it’s a profession.
Before I write songs for nothing, just to enjoy my pasttime and some original songs to try with my band. Its different now. I write songs for a living. I treat the songwriting process as strict as any other business processes. I am concern how my clients respond to my songs. I am concern about their reactions. I am concern about the overall quality of songs. I am concern about the marketability of my songs. Professional songwriters are very different from amateur songwriters because:
1.) Professional songwriters write songs with a purpose and a marketing objective. For example, why do you write that song in the first place? Professional songwriters answer it because they feel it has marketing potential to succeed within a young set of music consumers or old listeners or even a very specific set of audience.
For example, the songs that are performed by Justin Bieber are designed to reached a younger set of music consumers (e.g. teens) as compared to songs that are performed by Foo Fighters or Aerosmith. If you want to be a pro songwriter, start writing a song with a purpose and marketing objective in mind. Who’s your targeted audience?
2.) Professional songwriters never waste a good tune in mind. For example, if I happen to pickup a guitar and start strumming beats. I sometimes end up composing a great tune. I will immediately take a great opportunity of recording it. It is why I sometimes have a casette recorder nearly accessible to me so that I can record the tune or load up a demo in my DAW. The purpose is simple – not to forget that tune. No matter how good will be the tune, there is a strong tendency that you will forget it. You might heard stories of legendary songwriters composing the tune from their dream (while they are sleeping) and then woke up to record the tune in the cassette.
Guitar and paper during a songwriting process
3.) Professional songwriters pay strong emphasis on the song hook. This is the section of the song that is very hard to forget on the part of the listeners. This is the section of the song that stays on your head for so long. The most memorable part of the song. Writing a hook takes a lot of time and practice. Pro writers seems to spend the most time in writing a song in this part.
4.) Professional songwriters never rush to complete a good song. Even though you can compose the hook sections in as few as 30 minutes and write the lyrics up to an hour. It doesn’t mean its done. You still have to review it very carefully particularly on the weak and boring parts of the song. This is where you should spend time in improving the song. One of the great songs I wrote, I even spend entire month just working on it (recording and music production process not included).
5.) Professional songwriters pay strong attention to the meaning of the lyrics. It is ok to be poetic but if you are aiming to be a professional writer soon you should pay attention to the lyrics to make sure it will be easily understood. Having a clear and meaningful lyrics will have a strong impact on the song success because of its unique identifiable message.
6.) Professional songwriters are fully equipped with the basic songwriting tools. You can start writing songs with only a guitar, a paper and pen. But professional songwriters need more than that. For example, below are the important tools:
a.) Cassette recorder
b.) Recording software (for tracking and sampling tracks).
c.) A mixer, audio interface or DAW (for experimenting sample arrangements)- typically for those songwriters that are also recording producers.
studio
d.) Set of musical instruments not only guitar- because professional songwriters might start writing songs on strictly acoustic piano and other instruments not only guitar.
e.) A dedicated music room- where the songwriter can brainstorm all possible ideas about melodic arrangement, lyrics and other thoughts from other writers (if you have a co-writer).
f.) A software for organizing all the completed works, other legal documents.
7.) Professional songwriters know the importance of copyright application, being affiliated with songwriting organizations, public performance right organizations and the business aspect of songwriting. Being professional, you need to know all of these. It takes a lot of time to know the entire business process of songwriting. Bettter start now before it will be too late.
Content last updated on July 29, 2012