(a random musical idea of mine)
It all starts with an idea.
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from being in Songcraft and trying my hand at writing songs for the last two over years, it is this: The best way to start writing a song is to first come up with a strong musical idea.
Yup, that’s how I personally approach writing songs – come up with the idea, then build from it.
I believe that at the end of the day, the song needs to be remembered by that one strong musical idea. (Or what others may call the “hook”. Or classical folk might refer to it as the “motif”.)
You don’t need to have many musical ideas in one song…just one will do.
The stronger the idea, the better the song.
A musical idea can be as simple as just a string of a few notes (e.g. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony motif), or it could be a very memorable melodic phrase (e.g. “She loves you, yeah yeah yeah!”), or even a particularly clever piece of lyric.
Basically it’s the first bit that people will remember the moment the song is being mentioned.
I’ve tried writing songs before which later turned out to be weak songs (trust me, I’ve had many), and after some thoughtful evaluation I realised that it is because they lacked that one strong musical idea.
I mean, the melody seemed to flow fine, and the harmonization and chord progressions seemed great, but somehow the song was just overall…weak.
And it’s because it had no character, no defining point.
No strong idea.
I dunno if this is a good analogy, but it’s like perhaps if you go on a speed dating exercise, and you meet dozens of new people, and they all seem fine and friendly and amiable and stuff…but at the end of the day if I asked you if you were particularly struck by anyone, you’d say “Well, the only one I remembered was the guy who started his own ice cream parlour. That really stood out for me.”
That’s why I personally think that the need for a strong musical idea in a song cannot be overemphasized.
