This is part 9 of responding to your feedback to my question of what your number one biggest songwriting struggle is. We're trying to take our time and answer these as best I can in the moment, so that's why it's stretched to so long. Hopefully these are helpful whether you are someone who asked about this or had the struggle or not because it does seem like a lot of times a lot of the struggles are very very similar. So chances are even if you didn't give any feedback on this or weren't on the email list to get this question, chances are you struggle with some of these things too. So let's talk about your biggest songwriting struggles.
Hello friend, welcome to another episode of the Songwriting Theory podcast. I'm your host as always, Joseph Adala, honored that you would take some time out of your busy day to talk songwriting with me. If you haven't already, be sure to grab my free six step lyric writing checklist because there's a lot of questions about lyrics that keeps coming up and I believe we're talking about lyrics and some of today's specific struggles. So be sure to check that out. It's a good way to actually systematize your lyric writing in a way that you're not just sitting there thinking, "Improvise brilliant poetry," because that's asking ourselves just too much of ourselves. It's just a very very difficult thing to do. Humans don't naturally think poetically, so breaking it up into baby steps is a great way to go. That's a songwritingtheory.com slash lyric checklist. So our first question today is, "Hello Joseph, I have lots of music that I feel I have to let out to the world. I've recorded many of them as a solo artist and some in groups that I am a member of. However, there's more than these two channels can accommodate. How do I position slash advertise myself in a way people would know that I can be their songwriter?" So there is a lot to this question, but for the first one when you say there's more than these two channels can accommodate, when you say two channels do you mean the metaphorical channels of solo artists and then other groups? Do you mean two YouTube channels? Literally, you have your solo channel and other ones. I'm not entirely sure what that part means, but let's assume that you're just talking about that you have these two creative channels. The stuff you write for yourself and then the stuff that is for groups that you're a member of, which even that sounds like that's more than two channels, but we'll assume that all those groups are so similar that it's two channels because you say it's two channels. So I'll take you out your word. "How do I position slash advertise myself in a way people would know I can be their songwriter?" So the real answer to this is I'm not the right person to ask as I have never ever been particularly interested in other people doing my songs because if I'm being honest the only way I would ever do that is if I wrote a bunch of songs and all the cast offs that I didn't even think were worth recording would be the only ones I would ever let somebody else have. That's just for me it's like I don't know the amount of people who have written amazing books and then Hollywood gets their hands on it and completely ruins it. I'm told for example that Aragon is a called, forgive me if I got it wrong, but I'm told by basically everyone those books are amazing and maybe they are maybe they aren't. It's a long time ago that I heard everybody say that but then also everybody universally agrees the movie is awful to the point that like I think a lot of people are never going to give the book a chance because the movie's awful and you know for the longest time I think Dune was in that similar scenario where like the movie was so awful that I don't know if it really hurt Dune the book's legacy but now there's actually a really good Dune movie so I think that's reversing but and I know it's not exactly the same but it kind of is right as soon as you're an artist you you you know your blood sweat and tears and your life experiences maybe all bled into this song and then to see I don't know just to take it to the extreme Beyonce make it into some song that would be described as a bop would just kill me like I just that would be the worst like where it's like that's not at all what this song was and you just totally changed it produced it in a wildly different way than I would um I'm too possessive to ever want to do that it's just something I'm not interested in unless it's something that like this is a song I don't even care about so sure you can have it um so really I'm not the right person to ask but I think I think the real answer is probably connections right or or to use one of those services that are out there that are are basically you can put up your songs on a like a certain database which is where people will look for songs and then you could get a call from some random agent be like hey we want to use your song blah blah blah I think those those the answers right the internet is a wonderful place if you live somewhere like Nashville then I assume networking as much as the word networking makes me sad on the inside nothing about networking is something that I would ever be interested in like the amount of things that I would turn down if I had to do networking to do it is is very high not because I don't like people but because it feels very artificial to me networking the idea of like I'm gonna get into a group of people and the only reason I'm getting to know people is for an ulterior motive like I just I can't do that I can't it's just soul-crushing to me but that's probably the answer but again I'm not the right person to ask but that's my that's my best best stab at the answer for the two channels thing though uh I don't know if this is exactly what you're getting at but I do think there is a lot of value in having different I call them acts a cts acts for some reason that's hard to to say in a way that you can tell I'm not saying acts the body spray um I think I think there's a power to that in that it allows you to give in to some of your different tastes without seeming like an artist with no identity whatsoever
right because on a practical standpoint people do kind of have an expectation that you as an artist is kind of not a single thing but if you if your album like the first song is a country song and the next one is a rap song and not like rap country or country country rap whatever they call that but like straight up rap like straight from the east side or something I don't know rap lingo it's I shouldn't even try um but and then your third track is like straight up a Britney era pop song and then the next one after that sounds like Bob Dylan it's a Bob Dylan cover that's just confusing and weird for everybody involved right um how would you even be a fan of that are like most people are not going to like they're going to like one of those four songs at best guaranteed
but I think there's something powerful to having like different acts that you're specifically writing for even if those acts are just two different things you're doing for me for instance like right now I'm literally finishing vocals for my solo act and then my rock band act which is at this point fake um it's it's meant to be a continuation of what my band in college would have been but it it's fake in the sense that like it's literally just me now so like really both acts are just me but one is like breaking Benjamin star set ish like post grunge stuff and the other one is singer songwriter that is like I don't know five for fighting but with more guitars and less falsetto and more belting and it's more than that but like if I were to be like super reductionist about more or less the sound I go for um I think there's a power to that because it stretches you to the songwriter the way I write those different songs is radically different right there are some songs too that I have right now that are sitting in a sort of nebulous space where like is it really a Joseph single like my own artist kind of stuff or is this like a third pop act type thing
um I don't know I just I think it stretches you as a songwriter and it's it's fun and it's a great creative avenue right because there are some days that I just don't feel like working on sort of the singer songwriter side of what I do and I just love the like tie distortion harder rock side of what I do and then there are days I feel the opposite right I'm kind of like breaking measurements for 20 year olds and I'm in my 30s now I don't actually agree with that right but there are some days that maybe I feel like I'm getting too old for this rock stuff uh again I don't overall agree with that but there are just some days I might feel some version of that way and it's nice to work on the other stuff so I don't know if that touches at all on what you're talking about with the two channels and that but for what it's worth I do think it's a good exercise to write for different acts even if the acts are completely made up in your head where you're like okay if I were to write this song for like a pop artist even though I don't do pop I think that's a fun exercise um and it helps for songwriting and it's just a good way to kind of get outside of your box and have some fun reinvigorate you creatively just great in all possible ways I feel like so yeah that's the answer to all of that including the first half of the answer which again I'm not the right person to ask so probably goes don't just go off of what I say go ask somebody else who knows better so how to next one how to escape from old-fashioned lyrics without degrading the content and this is a really interesting one this this is worth a whole episode in and of itself if I'm being honest most of these are frankly um now admittedly if you were here the first thing I would ask you is what do you mean by that because old-fashioned lyrics what I imagine and what you mean might not be the same thing so I'll try to answer with like two different versions that I think you could mean by old-fashioned lyrics
um so so let's go version one when you say old-fashioned lyrics you literally just mean
not using like current lingo and not trying to target like the latest pop trend I assume this is not what you mean but I just want to cover this one first in which case good keep it up like don't worry about the latest trend um I think there's a big mistake in general that artists and songwriters make is they chase what is happening right now which is terrible in many ways one is artistically is it really genuine to just pursue what the latest thing is on the radio I would argue no uh which is not to say that you can't be like huh let me try to write a song that's kind of similar what's that that's fine but like if your whole if your whole goal is I want to just pursue what everybody else is doing is that what an artist says or is that what a you know a business person says and there's nothing wrong with business I'm very pro business but I think that like the thought process of a business-minded person and as art-minded person is different even though and even though I love both and I have both for sure I have businesses I I mean I have both right but I try to separate the two because there are some areas where the art brain is going to help you and there's some areas where the business brain is going to help you and to me the business side is where the art goes to die I think it's just like you can say in a nutshell that there's a degree to which that's what's killing Hollywood right now also the fact that they they suck at both which is the crazy thing so that's why it's so bad right now but
so don't chase the latest and greatest in giant quotation marks thing I assume that's not what you mean though I assume what you mean is using words and wordings that have very much fallen out of fashion such as say something like thou right be thou my vision that's that's lingo that not really any modern song would necessarily use and for that I think it depends if it fits with the song go for it right if you're writing something that sounds old-fashioned and it feels like it would fit why is there anything wrong with that like beyond just what does old-fashioned lyrics mean unless it's something that really feels like you are trying to be something you're not I think it's probably fine if it fits with the song if it fits with you as an artist go for it I certainly don't think that old-fashioned lyrics would ever degrade the content if anything I would think the opposite where trying to be trying to be modern would degrade the content something that I think sometimes your average artist struggles with that I I think I think is a problem personally is a lot of times people are searching for commercial success now or just success however you define it now where art is something that usually is timeless and frankly almost all the greatest artists of most kinds of art are mostly appreciated after they're gone and I'm not saying that none of us like we shouldn't want to be relevant now instead or we shouldn't want people to listen or me I'm not saying that but I just think it's very it's a very short-lived thing to chase after the now chase after what what what is good what's going to be timeless what's going to be something that makes your song still hold up a hundred years from now if the old-fashioned lyrics are something that really feels like it's dated and not timeless then maybe don't use it but if it feels timeless I don't know who cares it fits right so I guess the short answer is I wouldn't worry about it just ask is this is this genuine to the song that I'm writing is this genuine to me as an artist and if it is I wouldn't worry about um I wouldn't worry about whatever it is that makes you think old-fashioned lyrics just that old-fashioned is even a thing again outside of like thou and that that is admittedly old-fashioned although I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that unless it's trying to be something you're not and it feels forced I think this could go back to the cringe test if you read your own lyrics and you cringe because you're like I'm just like trying to sound like old English then maybe don't do it if you don't cringe and it feels right with what it's going for I wouldn't change it and then as a final thing on this I just realized I might have misread this if you feel that escaping or getting away from old-fashioned lyrics would degrade the content don't don't just anytime you think it's going to degrade the content that's almost definitely a thing just don't don't do that don't do that whatever it is if it's going to degrade it don't do it if it's some arbitrary rule that you're following some advice from anybody some idiot on youtube like me or anybody else don't do it if you feel like it's going to degrade it don't do it next one although I can easily come up with phrases and have good theory knowledge to develop them just like in your example above I get stuck with how to write more sections to complete a song that fits well together and flows from one to another convincingly so far I've only attempted to write instrumental pieces so combining melodies with words is something I could do with more pointers at thanks okay so for the first one
song sections that fit well the first you say you have good theory knowledge I'm going to take you out your word but for other people maybe who don't who are going to resonate with this question or with the struggle I guess first thing is that your song sections your whole song should be in one key there are exceptions to this right you might have a like a bridge going to a relative minor is common some songs do shift to a different key in the chorus or a lot of songs especially in a certain era like the 70s it seems like every song had a single key change at the end for the final chorus to give it rise there are always exceptions but for the most part make sure that you're writing your whole song in one key and if you're not make sure you're doing it intentionally not just like oh I didn't even realize that my my verses were in C major and my choruses went to G major and it just felt disjointed but I didn't know why well why it was because you didn't pay attention to the fact the key just drifted to a different key which again if done intentionally can can be or even unintentionally it can end up working out but usually that's something that you would want to do intentionally not something that you would fall into because most of the time if you just accidentally do that it's not going to work out very well so that's one thing another thing is keeping the same tempo this is a mistake that I made that I could rant about and complain about myself for the next 20 minutes but about half of the album that I the first album I ever did uh under the band name Highland with my college band more than half of the songs aren't even available for people to listen to right now partially because I'm so angry at the horrible horrible decision I made and my guitarist to his credit I was like dude are you sure you want to do this and I did not listen to him because I was an idiot um but there are tempo changes between song sections and they're terrible they're awful
unless there's a really good reason don't have tempo changes it goes to the same thing as key changes right yes there are exceptions yes it can be done well but probably only if it's intentionally and also in this case I'm going to say probably it sucks don't do it uh there are always exceptions but probably sucks don't do it and if you do it shouldn't be significant right a song it's probably not that most songs are just one tempo the whole time
some are going to have slight tempo changes right like a rock song that really wants to amp up the energy might sneak in like a four beats per minute change between the verse and the chorus which is basically imperceptible but it's one of those things that just like you don't know why but it somehow felt feels even more energetic and really it's that slight tempo change maybe something like that but um anyway so if you start with those two ground rules right same key same tempo throughout the song that goes a long way the next thing is just paying attention to the connecting pieces between your song sections I think too many times we just like write a verse with you know with this chord progressionist melody and then we separately write a chorus
but we should always spend time with okay let's look at the end of our verse the final chord or the final several chords of our verse where the melody ends up with our verse and then figure out from there where where is a natural flow to go next almost like we're continuing to write the verse but we're knowing this is transitioning into the chorus but the the chord progression of your verse or the final part of your verse absolutely should affect the beginning of your chorus or vice versa right you might rework the end of your verse to fit better with the chorus that you wrote
so so just as a maybe silly example if if your chorus um let's say we're in C major so your chord progression is one five four we'll say so that'll be a C major a G major and then an F major so that's where your verse ends a lot of times it having a chorus start on that same chord will probably seem underwhelming can it work yes is it done a lot yeah it is but but a lot of times that probably is going to sound like underwhelming it's just stayed on the same chord but from that F major chord opening up your chorus back to the one chord might be something that makes sense or the four going to the five at the beginning of your chorus might be something that really makes sense um but just putting some time into not just like oh i wrote my verse and now i'm writing my chorus like okay but think about the end of the verse into the chorus think about the end of the verse into the your pre-chorus if you have one the end of your pre-chorus and your chorus think about all the connecting pieces right the end of your chorus to the beginning of your bridge
um specifically with the melody well really with all parts lyrics probably goes without saying but lyrics but also chord right the chord transition is one that that is not underwhelming and makes sense and then the uh melody also right being intentional about that
which can look so many different ways right it depends on the song what what feels right for the song what's right for your voice what is right for um just your preferences your style right so so for instance maybe you like a song that kind of slowly goes up in range so you have a verse you're singing you know around here and then in the pre-chorus you're singing around here and then you get up to here for the chorus which really isn't a big of difference right that was the fifth from the verse all the way but it's sort of gradual or maybe you prefer you know the verses and then the chorus goes
you know what i mean like just oh big difference big leap uh so again should be right for the song right for you for what you personally like uh for the most part the song is more important but we also have preferences right i tend to like the choruses that just explode which historically has led to me writing fewer pre-choruses than maybe your average person would write just because a lot of times pre-choruses end up being a stepping stone to the chorus and a lot of times i really don't want that um so that's going to be partially taste uh for the i've only attempted to write instrumental pieces so combining melodies with words is something i could do with more pointers at um the first thing on this is listen to a lot of songs and pay attention to it this is one of those where like the more you pay attention to music the easier this is going to become it's kind of like i think it's brandon sanderson i know i reference him a lot but he he's one of the few authors that actually talks about you know how to be an author he teaches and he does uh that's pretty that's pretty rare right jr martin or whatever his name is like he's not teaching people book writing right he can't even finish his book right jk rolling isn't out there teaching people how to write a book right she's just uh writing new stuff for movies or whatever um so so anyway he i think i think there's something he says if not there's something that basically all authors say which is like if you don't like reading books you have no business writing books and he probably doesn't word it that way he's too nice of a guy but that's basically the that's basically the sentiment right you you got to read a lot of books to kind of learn about the tendencies the things that work well the things that don't if you've never really read a book before then how would you how would you even begin to have the audacity to write one and i think with songs as songwriters we need to make a switch most people listen to music but most people listen to music fairly passively and non-analytically i think they just kind of let a song roll over them and they think that makes me feel good or it doesn't make me feel good and that's about the end of their relationship this is this is like you know everybody who tells me some version of oh lyrics don't matter because nobody notices when i put all this effort into the lyrics and nobody even notices look i get it with with your average if we want to use the term normie right your average non-songwriting person they don't pay attention to lyrics a lot of times there are exceptions to this right there are people that aren't even musicians and they still care about the craft of songwriting and they admire a good songwriter and good songwriting and they do pay attention to lyrics there are plenty of those people too there just aren't as many of them but but but this is going to be true for all art forms right there's tons of people that went and saw i don't know the barbie movie i thought oh that was good right but it's like what on what planet um so and this happens right the you know i don't want to throw out any other movie under the bus right now because
we'll leave that alone but something i would add to this is this for some reason has become an unpopular thing i feel like to talk about or to but yet it should be obvious for some reason it's become this weird twisted virtue signal for people to be like i like all music or all music is equally valid and great blah blah blah and i just i find something to admire in all music and it's all just like okay i'm sorry but as a songwriter shouldn't you have standards you know what i mean like basically people are bragging about i have no standards it's like somebody being like
i was going to compare it to food but maybe for food this some value in having no standards just in the degree that like it makes you a pleasurable person for somebody to serve dinner too because you're not going to be that person who like isn't polite and doesn't eat the food and nobody likes that person uh but that's different right because that's a relational element that songwriting really doesn't have songwriting is not uh you know somebody serves their song to you at their dinner table when they have you over to eat that's not the center it's a little different but who do you want to write who do you want to write the next movie that you know if you care about a franchise right if you care about star wars or mcu or some new lord of the rings project or you know halo show or whatever franchise you might care about or just a movie or book in general or maybe you have a story in your head and if you could commission somebody to write a book for you would you want the person that's like oh i like every book or i like every movie every movie's amazing or do you want the person who maybe is you know not super affable and not but is like oh yeah most movies are i think kind of crap and like there's just a low standard that's out there and there's a lot of hackneyed writing that is just really cringe and some of the dialogue is like wow a professional who has paid dollars wrote that not ironically who do you want to write your book obviously the person who's not like oh i just like everything everything's amazing no that's dumb like that's not it you're allowed to have that or a human being is allowed to be that person right but that's not the person i don't want somebody building my car or fixing my car who thinks oh all cars are great every no no i want you to have a strict standard about there's one right way to make sure the engine is running not like oh well different engines are different and this one will is gonna you know it's gonna give you a hard time so no no when you want like who do you want building we could go on forever
it might be less pleasant to talk to the person who has standards but when it comes to making music uh i i just think this whole like i'm a musician or i'm a songwriter shtick of oh so i have to like love all songs and pretend like they're all created equal is ridiculous and counterproductive because you want to be picky so that you can be picky with your own songs and have standards for yourself if you like every song then when you write your own song you're just gonna no matter how garbage it is you're like i love it anyway that's not what you want right you want to instead be maybe closer to the tortured artist who is like this line i know isn't working i cringe at this line therefore i'm going to fix it not just oh everything's perfect and amazing all the time and i'm not saying you're this person right excuse the impassioned rant it's just one of those things i'm like sick and tired of because it's always like a weird virtue signal and also everybody who says that is a complete liar nobody likes all music okay so like first of all stop lying second of all like it's not it's not virtuous of you to have no standards because it's the same thing right if you like all food that means you have no food standards at all if you like all cars then you just have no car stand there's nothing to talk about that it also makes people less interesting which is the last part of it but that part is fine but as an artist i think it's that's not a virtue that's if anything a bad thing you should have standards and i think it's helpful as a songwriter if anything to be overly picky that doesn't mean you need to share that with everybody you don't have to be somebody like me who's more than happy to say look i think this song that's wildly popular is garbage it's like it's that or rick beato who's more than happy to you know throw the latest top ten under the bus most of the time appropriately so um the idea that that's anyway i think it would help you with the melody writing if you listen to a lot of songs and you try to be more picky and maybe you already are a picky person and great um i'm just warning you against the the thing that is very common which is that whole everything's great and perfect and every single piece of music is equally wonderful and blah blah blah blah um and then on the more popular and then on the more practical side
the first thing i would pay attention to is matching emphases and so for instance if we have
right just made that up but what are the emphasized parts [Music]
the emphases parts are that right emphasized emphasized you can maybe argue emphasized emphasized not emphasized emphasized or you could argue sort of a pickup note not emphasized emphasized not emphasized emphasized those are probably the only two you could argue this second note is almost certainly or this third note is almost certainly not emphasized, although you maybe could adjust it to be. But even that, it's kind of a passing note, right? The tendency is first notes are kind of de facto emphasized, last notes are usually de facto emphasized, and then often the highest note or the lowest note, those usually are de facto emphasized, but go by your ear, right? The emphases of the notes that are naturally occurring there should match with the emphases naturally occurring in words. So for instance, if this were like, "I go to school," like, that's a silly line that obviously should be in probably zero songs. But just as a silly example, "to" is a nothing word, right? I go to school. The naturally emphasized things are "go" in school, which fits with... but if we had an emphasized word in that this part here, that would just not fit, right? Because it's not emphasized in the melody. So make sure that those two things fit. I think that's like 90 something percent of the battle. And then the last part of the battle is just what I... the rant from before, which is basically, "Look, standards are good. I couldn't disagree more with the, like, I don't know, borderline hippie sentiment of everything's great and perfect and amazing, and I like all music and that's somehow a virtue that I have no standards at all." And by the way, is that even me being unfair? Literally by definition, having no standards is someone who basically treats everything like it's equal, right? If you say that somebody has no standard, if your friend... if you think, "Oh, my friend has no standards when it comes to men, women, whatever," what you mean by that is they think they're all great. Even the guy who's a total jerk, he's borderline abusive, he's on certain substances, like just the worst guy, and she still thinks, "Oh no, he's great." That's what we call "no standards," right? That's... that is what that is. And the idea that that's somehow a virtue when it comes to music is just ridiculous. It's not. It's not a virtue. It's not a virtue for anything to have no standards. And again, when you're creating music, if anything, that's gonna be destructive, right? Because now you have no standards. Presumably, if you have no standards for other music, you have no standards for your own. It's kind of like at work, right? Or even a coach. When you think of the best coaches, the best coaches aren't the ones that are like, "Oh, everything's fine. Oh yeah, that's how you shoot. Totally fine." No, the best coaches are the ones that are like, "No, this is the way to do it," and they're tough on you, and they don't give you a freaking participation trophy, even though your team just got walloped seven to nothing in its soccer. So, you know, pretty embarrassing. Those aren't the coaches that you remember fondly years later that helped you grow better later. I mean, my best piano teachers were the ones that I was fearful. I was fearful to go to her house without having practiced enough because I knew she would know and I could feel it. And that made me practice more. That made me better in a way that a super nice teacher who's like, "Oh no, everything's fine." No, you want somebody, whether it's a teacher or somebody who is making something, you want somebody with standards. So, be that for yourself.
I don't know why I went back to that rant. I guess because it's something that I feel like has been a long time coming. It's been like simmering in the back of my head, and I feel very strongly about it in case you can't tell. But yeah. So, because those ones went long, hopefully this was helpful. I think we, it looks like we have maybe one podcast left of this, possibly two, depending on how long it takes to go through some of these. But again, hopefully this is helpful. If you want help with lyrics, more help with lyrics than I can possibly give in this medium, be sure to check out my free six step lyric writing checklist. Song of the Theory dot com slash lyric checklist goes from A to Z of writing lyrics and six baby steps. Makes it way easier than just looking at a blank sheet of paper and asking ourselves, "Improvise brilliant poetry," which is asking too much of ourselves, unless you're incredibly talented. And even if you are, it still is like, well, if you can make it easier on yourself, wouldn't you want to? So even if you are way more talented and amazing than the rest of us, I still think it would be something that would be helpful. So be sure to check that out. Thank you all for watching, for listening. I appreciate every single one of you. Glad that you've been here for the bonus episodes. Hope you like the bonus episodes, and I will talk to you in the next one.
