# AI Wiki - Music - Songwriting ## Overview Songwriting is turning a small idea (a chord change, a riff, a melody, a line of words) into a finished song: sections, melody, lyrics and an ending. It's a craft with learnable parts, not a gift that arrives fully formed. Most writers work the same way: collect many small seeds, develop a few, finish some, and let the rest stay in the notebook. A beginner-intermediate player already knows enough to write. Five [[AI Wiki - Music - Guitar Open Chords|open chords]] in G, the [[AI Wiki - Music - Common Chord Progressions|common progressions]] and the verse–chorus form from [[AI Wiki - Music - Song Form and Structure]] are a complete toolkit. What's missing is usually the habit of starting and finishing, not theory. ## Starting points Songs start anywhere. Pick the door that suits the day: - **A chord progression.** Loop four chords, hum over them until a melody appears. Fast, but the result can sound generic; change one chord (a borrowed iv, a [[AI Wiki - Music - Secondary Dominants|secondary dominant]] from [[AI Wiki - Music - Reharmonization]]) to give it a fingerprint. - **A riff.** A short, repeated figure on the low strings or a picking pattern. Riffs drive [[AI Wiki - Music - Rock Music]] and [[AI Wiki - Music - Blues Music]] songs and often become the intro and the hook. - **A melody.** Sung into a phone on a walk, without an instrument. Melodies written away from the guitar escape your finger habits. - **A lyric hook or title.** A phrase worth singing ten times. Title-first writing is classic in [[AI Wiki - Music - Country Music]] and [[AI Wiki - Music - Pop Music|pop]]: the title becomes the chorus's first or last line, and every verse earns it. - **A groove.** A [[AI Wiki - Music - Strumming Patterns|strumming]] or [[AI Wiki - Music - Fingerpicking|fingerpicking]] pattern at a set tempo, then everything else on top. A starter palette in G, enough for hundreds of songs: ```chord G 320003 210003 --- C x32010 x32010 --- D xx0232 xx0132 --- Em 022000 023000 --- Am x02210 x02310 ``` A riff idea built only from the G major pentatonic (G A B D E), on the low strings: ```chords {title: A riff seed in G} {key: G} {start_of_tab} e|-------------------------| B|-------------------------| G|-------------------------| D|----------0--2--0--------| A|----0--2-----------2-----| E|-3--------------------3--| 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & {end_of_tab} ``` ## The hook A hook is the short idea that catches the listener's ear. Wikipedia notes it can be melodic (often a leap of an octave or more), rhythmic, a lyric line or title, a riff, or even a sound (a nonsense syllable, an instrument's timbre). Most songs have one main hook, placed in the chorus and repeated. Ask of every song draft: what is the one thing someone will hum on the way out? ## Choosing a form [[AI Wiki - Music - Song Form and Structure]] details the templates; for writing, the choice is practical: - **Verse–chorus**: the default for pop, rock and country. Verses tell the story, the chorus repeats the main idea and the title. - **Strophic (AAA)**: one section repeated with new words, the [[AI Wiki - Music - Folk Music]] ballad form. Easy to write, needs strong words. - **AABA**: two statements, a contrasting bridge, a return. Good for a single melodic idea. - **12-bar blues**: the form is fixed, so all the work goes into the lyric (AAB: a line, the line again, an answer). Contrast is what makes sections feel different. Change at least two of: the chord the section starts on, the melody's register, the rhythm of the words, the density of the accompaniment. A classic trick: start the verse on vi and the chorus on I or IV. ```chords {title: Verse–chorus sketch} {key: G} {time: 4/4} {start_of_verse} [Em]Coffee's going [C]cold beside the [G]window, [D] [Em]Morning light is [C]slow across the [G]floor [D] {end_of_verse} {start_of_chorus} [C]Play it a[G]gain, [D]one more [Em]time [C]Play it a[G]gain, [D]till it's [G]mine {end_of_chorus} ``` The verse lives on Em (darker, lower), the chorus starts on C and lands on G (brighter, resolved), and the chorus repeats its first line: that repetition is the hook. ## Writing melodies over chords The rules of [[AI Wiki - Music - Melody and Phrasing]] apply directly: - **[[AI Wiki - Music - Chord Tones and Improvisation|Chord tones]] on strong beats.** Land on the root, 3rd or 5th of the current chord on beats 1 and 3; use passing notes between. - **Start from the pentatonic.** The major pentatonic of the key has no half steps, so it rarely clashes with I, IV or V: a safe first draft (only a long 4th over V, G over D in G, rubs). Add the remaining two notes later for colour. - **Contrast registers.** Keep the verse in a lower, narrower range and lift the chorus higher; the chorus's highest note is often on the title. - **Use motifs.** Repeat a short rhythm with different pitches; sequence it up or down with the chords. - **Speak it first.** Say the line out loud in rhythm, then pitch the spoken rhythm. That's the shortest route to good prosody. ```keyboard scale: G major pentatonic range: G3-G5 labels: intervals ``` On guitar, the same notes are the major pentatonic boxes of [[AI Wiki - Music - Pentatonic Scale]]: noodle in box 1 over your loop until a phrase sticks, then sing it. ## Lyric basics ### Prosody Pat Pattison, who teaches lyric writing at Berklee, defines prosody as "the appropriate relationship between elements": everything in the song should support what's being said. The narrow, essential version: **stressed syllables fall on strong beats** and on prominent melody notes, so the sung line sounds like natural speech. "PLAY it aGAIN" works with stresses on beats 1 and 3; "play IT aGAIN" sounds wrong. Avoid long notes on unimportant syllables ("the", "a", "-ing"). Pattison extends the idea to structure: a section that should feel settled uses balanced lines (even line counts, matching lengths, rhymes that close); a section that should feel restless uses unbalanced ones (odd line counts, a line that runs long, a rhyme withheld). His Coursera course teaches judging stability through line lengths, the number of lines, stress patterns and the melody. ### Rhyme Perfect rhyme (time / mine) closes a line firmly and can sound predictable. Pattison's toolbox grades rhymes from strongest to weakest, roughly: perfect, family rhyme (similar consonants: cup / rub), additive and subtractive rhyme (an extra consonant: free / freed), assonance (same vowel only: time / ride) and consonance (same consonants, different vowels: love / move). Weaker rhymes free the words to say what you mean; strong rhymes give closure at the end of a chorus. ### Imagery "Show, don't tell." Lines that name feelings ("I'm so sad") are weaker than lines that put the listener in a place ("coffee's going cold beside the window"). Pattison's **object writing** exercise builds this: a short, timed free-writing session on one object or memory, using every sense, done daily. His version uses a ten-minute timer and adds the body's inner sensations and movement to the usual five senses. The raw material becomes verse lines. Verses carry details and story; the chorus carries the summary and the title. A useful check: each verse should change how the chorus reads. ## Capturing and developing song ideas Ideas are cheap and perishable; the [[AI Wiki - Music - Slide Guitar|bottleneck]] is finding them later. Treat song ideas like any other knowledge in a PKM system: - **Capture instantly.** A phone voice memo beats any notebook for melodies and riffs. Keith Richards wrote in his memoir *Life* that the "Satisfaction" riff came to him half asleep, recorded on a cassette player he kept by the bed. Record first, judge later. - **One note per seed.** In the vault, each idea gets its own note: the voice memo embedded, the date, key, [[AI Wiki - Music - Capo and Transposition|capo]], tempo, chords, and the line or riff that makes it interesting. Name it by its hook, not "idea 37". - **A lyric fragments note.** Collect good lines, titles and images as they come, from object writing, conversations and reading. Many songs are assembled from fragments written months apart. - **Status ladder.** Seed → sketch (a section exists) → draft (full form, placeholder words allowed) → finished → recorded. Review the sketches weekly, the way a PKM system reviews its inbox, and promote one idea a week. - **Charts in the note.** Write the song in a `chords` block (ChordPro, as above) inside the note: the chart renders, transposes and stays versioned with the lyrics. Record each milestone with the methods in [[AI Wiki - Music - Recording Yourself]] and link the takes from the note. - **Placeholder lyrics are fine.** Paul McCartney's working lyric for "Yesterday" was "Scrambled eggs". A draft with dummy words is a draft; an empty page isn't. Once a song is finished, it becomes a piece to play like any other: a piece note in the Music Practice plugin with a mastery level (Learning, Can play slowly, Can play at tempo…), so your own songs get spaced review and don't go Rusty. ## Finishing songs Most writers have far more starts than finishes. Finishing is its own skill: - **Set a container.** A deadline (a song a week), a word count, a length (three minutes). Song challenges such as FAWM (February Album Writing Month) work because the quota beats perfectionism. - **Finish ugly, then rewrite.** Get from start to end with weak lines, then fix the weakest line first. Rewriting is where most of the craft happens. - **Decide what the song is about**, in one sentence. If you can't, the lyric drifts. - **Play it for someone**, or record it. Problems you couldn't hear alone become obvious in a recording or in front of a listener ([[AI Wiki - Music - Playing with Others and Jamming]]). - **Then arrange it**: intro, outro, dynamics and instrument choices are a separate pass ([[AI Wiki - Music - Arranging Songs]], [[AI Wiki - Music - Home Recording Basics]]). ## Habits - **Write little and often**: ten minutes of object writing or chord noodling daily beats a weekly blank-page session. - **Copy to learn**: write a song using the exact form and progression of one you love, with a new melody and words. Every song you learn ([[AI Wiki - Music - Learning Songs Efficiently]]) is a model, and transcribing them ([[AI Wiki - Music - Transcription and Playing by Ear]]) shows how they work. - **Limit choices**: one key, three chords, one tempo. Constraints speed up decisions. - **Separate generating from judging**: capture without editing; edit on another day. ## Common mistakes - Waiting for inspiration instead of a routine. - Polishing the first verse forever and never writing the chorus. - Verse and chorus with the same chords, rhythm and range: no contrast. - Lyrics that name emotions instead of showing scenes. - Forced rhymes that bend the meaning or the stress of a word. - Losing ideas: unlabelled voice memos and scattered notebooks. ## Key Points - Start from any seed: progression, riff, melody, lyric hook or groove. - Every song needs a hook; the chorus usually carries it and the title. - Choose a form deliberately and make sections contrast in chords, register, rhythm and density. - Melodies: chord tones on strong beats, pentatonic first drafts, a higher chorus, motifs, speech rhythm. - Prosody: stressed syllables on strong beats; line structure can make a section feel stable or unstable. - Use the whole rhyme spectrum and concrete images; object writing trains both. - Capture every idea immediately, one note per seed, with a status ladder and a weekly review. - Finishing is a skill: deadlines, ugly first drafts, rewrite the weakest line. ## Open Questions - How do co-writing sessions split the work, and is it worth trying early? - Which song ideas deserve development: is there a reliable test beyond "I keep humming it"? - How much theory helps songwriting before it starts producing predictable songs? ## References - Pat Pattison, *Writing Better Lyrics*, 2nd ed. (Writer's Digest Books, 2009). - Wikipedia: Prosody (music). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosody_(music) - Wikipedia: Hook (music). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hook_(music) - Berklee Online: Lyric Writing: Tools and Strategies (Pat Pattison). https://online.berklee.edu/courses/lyric-writing-tools-and-strategies - Coursera / Berklee: Songwriting: Writing the Lyrics (Pat Pattison). https://www.coursera.org/learn/songwriting-lyrics - Keith Richards, *Life* (Little, Brown, 2010). ## Related - [[AI Wiki - Music - Song Form and Structure]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Melody and Phrasing]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Common Chord Progressions]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Reharmonization]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Pentatonic Scale]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Arranging Songs]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Home Recording Basics]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Recording Yourself]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Playing with Others and Jamming]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Learning Songs Efficiently]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Transcription and Playing by Ear]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Folk Music]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Country Music]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Metal Music]] - [[AI Wiki - Music - Riddims]]