The Everything Songwriting Book: All You Need to Create and Market Hit Songs

by C. J. Watson

Overview

Simple techniques for creating catchy lyrics and memorable melodies!

Nearly everyone can hum the melody or remember the words to a hit song. Clever word play, catchy melodies, and thoughtful imagery can create an impression that lasts long after a song has ended.

The Everything Songwriting Book provides amateurs and seasoned professionals alike all they need to create, perform, and sell hit songs. Learn how to develop an idea, formulate a rhyme scheme, incorporate unique phrasing, and follow through to the final note. Professional songwriter and consultant C.J. Watson packs this book with clever tips and tricks for overcoming writer's block, creating a "hook," and recording and selling a song to a recording company or performer.

This user-friendly guide also shows how to:

• Tap into the common elements of hit songs
• Incorporate instruments into songwriting
• Understand music theory
• Spot songwriting trends and write for a specific market
• Produce a song
• Know essential copyright law and other legal basics
• Get compositions into the right hands

Complete with expert advice and practical pointers, The Everything Songwriting Book is sure to guide and inspire burgeoning songwriters at any level.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440522659
Publisher:	Adams Media
Publication date:	09/01/2003
Series:	Everything
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

C.J. Watson is part owner of www.tunesmith.net, the #3 Internet songwriter's forum in the world. He recently put together their first songwriting seminar, which drew songwriters from across the United States and Canada. Mr. Watson's songs have been recorded by such artists as Mustang Sally, James Otto, Pat Webb, and Jason Whitehorn.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

History of Songwriting

To thoroughly understand the history of songwriting, it's necessary to understand the history of music. Factors like cultural change and the invention of new instruments or technologies can influence the way in which songs are written. Still, anytime a new kind of music comes around, composers or songwriters are mostly responsible. So, the history of music is the history of songwriting and vice versa.

Origins of music

No one knows where the first song came from. Did Neolithic man sing around the first campfire? Did Adam croon a tune to Eve in the Garden of Eden? We may never know. Some musicologists believe that rhythmic chanting, possibly with percussive accompaniment from weapons, may have been the first form of song. Prehistoric Rap? Well, sort of… maybe. The frustrating thing is that the means of recording or writing down music didn't come along until long after music was invented. At some point, ancient people discovered that blowing across a hollow tube, like an animal bone or reed, produced a pleasing tone and that a string under tension (like a hunting bow) sounded pretty cool. The rest, as they say, is history. Artifacts believed to be 20,000-year-old musical instruments have been uncovered at an archeological site in the Ukraine. The instruments were fashioned from wooly mammoth bones (you won't find those at your local music store!) Among the earliest known instruments are prehistoric flutes and drums and a 5,000-year-old predecessor of the harp.

The First Song, the First Songwriter

Most songs and songwriters of the pre-renaissance world have been forever obscured by time. Even after the development of writing and musical notation, songs were mostly passed down from one generation to the next by rote and modified to suit the changing needs of the listener without reference or regard to the original songwriter. We have no idea where the first song originated, who wrote it, what instrument was used, if there were lyrics, or what culture fostered it's conception. What we can be sure of is that the first song was written by someone … the first songwriter. He or she probably had no idea of the importance or what was occurring, only that something wonderful was happening. That feeling is one common not only to ancient and modern songwriters but also professionals and the amateurs, Rock stars, Classical composers, Music Row hitmakers and all the other lucky souls who write songs for fun or profit.

Tribal Music

The first music probably happened in a tribal setting. Early tribes used drums and horns to communicate across long distances. By setting music in the context of a language and encouraging the development of a musical vocabulary, this practical use did much to hasten the early development of music. Ancient people also used music for religious rites, festivals and as a form of oral history

Roman writers, Cicero among them, were perhaps the first to leave a written record of the use of music for purely entertainment or artistic purposes. Ancient Roman manuscripts give us the first known descriptions of events where music was made simply for the sake of making music, separate from worship, educational, work-related, or ceremonial uses.

Worksongs, Chanties, Marching Songs

One of the earliest song forms, 'Worksongs' are sung to relieve the boredom of repetitive labor and provide a rhythm to keep a work crew in synch. One of the basic forms of Worksong is the field song or field holler. Field songs were sung by farmers, serfs, and slaves while tending crops.
Another Worksong variant, the 'Chanty' is a song sung by sailors aboard a ship. To prepare a large vessel to sail, steer, drop anchor for the night or make the ship safe from an oncoming storm, requires large crews of people to work together in precise coordination. The sea chanty provides a rhythm to keep things running smoothly at times when a mistake could mean disaster for the whole crew.
Marching songs from yet another subgenre of Worksongs. By establishing a beat, marching songs help people walk as an organized group. This helps the group to move more quickly and at a uniform speed. By setting a pace, marching songs allow for precise timing in processions and parades. One of the most famous marching songs is undoubtedly Yankee Doodle, a marching song sung by American soldiers during the Revolutionary War.
Worksongs are usually written by the ordinary working people who use them, mostly amateur songwriters with no musical training. From these humble beginnings have sprung a wealth of past and present musical forms: Worksongs influenced most later musical forms. Today, historians find Worksongs to a rich resource of information about the people and times from which they originate. In many cultures, Worksongs are still a part of everyday life.

Ancient Music

Knowledge on ancient music is fragmentary and information on ancient songwriters even more so. Some ideas, like flutes and harps, seem to have developed independently in different parts of the world. Others, like Pythagoras's discovery of the mathematical relationships of musical intervals, appear to have originated in one place and spread from there. The picture we have of musical history is still changing, as new information is unearthed and old information reexamined in light of new facts and theories. The little we do know suggests that creators of music in the ancient world were often highly regarded, at times revered and, in some cases, possibly even paid.
Perhaps the earliest known polyphonic music (music with different notes being played at the same time) is on a set of clay tablets found in Syria and believed to be almost 3,500 years old. The tablets contain lyrics and music for a song, including accompaniment, melody, harmony structure, and even tuning instructions for the ancient harp used to accompany the singers. Until the discovery of these tablets, most historians believed that all music composed before about 400 A.D. was monophonic (having only one melodic line with no harmony or counterpoint).

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: History of Songwriting
Chapter 2: Getting Started
Chapter 3: Thinking Like a Songwriter
Chapter 4: Elements of a Lyric
Chapter 5: Elements of a Melody
Chapter 6: Parts of a Song
Chapter 7: Song Structure
Chapter 8: Troubleshooting Solutions
Chapter 9: Playing an Instrument
Chapter 10: A Songwriters Crash Course in Music Theory
Chapter 11: Entering The Big Leagues
Chapter 12: Writing for the Commercial Market
Chapter 13: Recording Your Songs
Chapter 14: Arranging/Producing
Chapter 15: Co-Writing
Chapter 16: Getting Heard
Chapter 17: Legal Basics
Chapter 18: Getting Paid: Performing Rights Organizations
Chapter 19: Moving to a Music Hub
Chapter 20: Careers in Songwriting
Chapter 21: Being Your Own Publisher
Chapter 22: Songwriter's FAQ
Appendix A: Seeking Professional Help
Appendix B: Glossary of Songwriting Terms