Elmore Leonard’s Advice to Songwriters

When I hear great fiction writers talk about their craft, I’m often struck by how easily these insights can be applied to songwriting.  We can learn a lot about our own craft by stepping outside and looking at it from another angle. For example, the late, great novelist Elmore Leonard said this in an interview with WritersDigest:

A writer has to read. Read all the time. Decide who you like then study that author’s style. Take the author’s book or story and break it down to see how he put it together. 

If you apply this to songwriting you get:

A songwriter has to listen. Listen all the time. Decide who you like then study that songwriter’s style. Take the songwriter’s songs break them down to see how they’re put together.

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Put Yourself in a Music Supervisor’s Shoes

Want to sharpen your pitching skills to Film & TV opportunities and get more forwards? Here’s the best exercise I’ve ever found for strengthening your Film & TV songwriting and pitches: Do what a music supervisor does.  Find songs that underscore the emotion, energy, or atmosphere in a scene and test them against the picture!

At the end of this post, I’ll give you some resources for contacting music supervisors and pitching your songs. But before you do that, make sure you have what they’re looking for. Don’t burn a contact because you didn’t do your research.  If you’ll spend a couple of afternoons following these instructions, I promise your pitches will be closer to the mark and your film and TV songwriting will be stronger.

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Songwriting: Making Myths

I heard a great line a while ago. Sean Ono Lennon was being interviewed. He was asked the inevitable question that every songwriter is asked: Are your songs autobiographical? His answer has stayed with me as a reminder of what songs really are. He said… “Songs are myths about things that have happened to you.”

I can´t think of a better way to put it. We all write about our lives, our feelings, the things that happen to us. But the idea of myth-making is what´s important here.

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How Do You Write Lyrics to a Melody?

Q: I have a melody and I want to put lyrics to it but I’m not sure how to do that. Is there a trick to this?

A: There are lots of ways to write songs. Some people write the melody or chords first, then add lyrics. Paul McCartney famously wrote the melody and chords to “Yesterday” before he had the lyrics. He went around singing the phrase “scrambled eggs” pr “ham and eggs” (depending on who’s telling the story) until he came up with the lyric “yesterday.” 

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VIDEO: Secrets of Hit Songwriting – “Stronger” by Kelly Clarkson

“Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” is a major hit song that’s a master class in songwriting for the Pop charts. Learn today’s hottest song structure for radio hits, plus ideas on how to write a great Pop lyric and build emotional energy into your melody. I’ll take you through this song step-by-step and show you simple exercises that will get you writing like the pro’s do!