Write a response or reply or continuation of a popular song. An “answer song” doesn’t work as well if the listener doesn’t know the original. But when it works it’s a tribute to the original song. The “reply song” is hardly a new idea. Everybody knows “Space Oddity,” the 1969 David Bowie classic about an […]
Write a song about faith Interpret the word as you will. Go ahead and get all churchy. Maybe you see love as faith in a partner, or courage as faith in yourself. Maybe you’ll write about an absence of faith. With infinite ways to perceive faith, this assignment might present an opportunity to venture beyond […]
Write a song about murder It doesn’t necessarily have to be confessional and could be written from the perspective of the doer, the do-ee, the weapon, a witness, a news consumer or a songwriter who just got a killer songwriting assignment. Songs about murder go back as far as the linkage of words and music. […]
Write a character-driven song It’s not about the vibe or the production, not about the musicianship or even the story line. Character-driven songs take a deep dive into the central character’s personality. It’s not what happens, it’s how he or she reacts to what happens. A good character song can describe an actual person, but […]
Write a song in the voice of another performer On an audio clip aired sometimes on The Beatles Channel (Sirius satellite radio), Paul McCartney remembers fooling around with a melody and trying to play and sing like Ray Charles. The result was “The Long and Winding Road.” He wrote, played and sang like Little Richard […]
Key changes for dramatic effect Last time we did this assignment I noticed that several members had inserted the key change without taking full advantage of its capability. Nothing wrong with that — a key change can help to hold the listener’s interest in the song, and in many famous songs that’s enough. But what […]
Bass lines for songwriters — write a bass line into a song Giving a song a bottom end isn’t just the responsibility of the bass player. Songwriters can improve the structural stability of their songs, and their catchiness, by writing in a bass line as the song is being crafted. The bass line is the […]
Write a song with a false ending. Why start stopping and start up again? A song that seems about to resolve but unexpectedly rebounds recaptures the audience’s attention. Just as they’re about to start clapping, or expect the next track to begin, the song returns with a familiar musical phrase and the brain eagerly reconnects. […]
Monthly Assignment March 5, 2019 Rework a popular song in your own style. Monthly Assignment March 5, 2019 Rework a popular song in your own style. What? Play a cover at a meeting of songwriters? Last couple of times we did this, members found that the way they reinvented other writers’ songs revealed much about […]
For Feb. 5 Write a song with a lyrical intro that does not repeat in the song. This type of intro isn’t a chord progression or the first words of the first verse. A lyrical intro sets the tone of what’s to come with lines that generally feel almost separate from the song, usually ending […]
