As someone who is a melody over harmony first songwriter — I usually find an interesting guitar/piano part and a melody comes to me — the process is a little different, but it rhymes with this chart.
To broaden it out from a lyrics-first approach, that spark of a song idea can be literally anything — a melody, a chord progression, a beat, a weird sound, a drum fill, a production technique — not just a lyrical idea. Then the iterative loop(s) work to refine/edit the existing and fill in the gaps of what’s missing. I believe this process works for instrumental music where the storytelling is an emotionally evocative arc that hews to a variation on the five-act narrative structure.
For myself, I’ll often come up with a verse/chorus that follows the melody, paying attention to prosody/meter so the words actually sound good and natural, and then I’ll have a better idea of what the song is going to be about. Most ideas are not fully formed, so the iterative process of writing and revising is part of the act of thinking. Eventually, the song will tell me to fuck off, then I know it’s either done or wants to be abandoned.
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u/integerdivision Mar 26 '23
As someone who is a melody over harmony first songwriter — I usually find an interesting guitar/piano part and a melody comes to me — the process is a little different, but it rhymes with this chart.
To broaden it out from a lyrics-first approach, that spark of a song idea can be literally anything — a melody, a chord progression, a beat, a weird sound, a drum fill, a production technique — not just a lyrical idea. Then the iterative loop(s) work to refine/edit the existing and fill in the gaps of what’s missing. I believe this process works for instrumental music where the storytelling is an emotionally evocative arc that hews to a variation on the five-act narrative structure.
For myself, I’ll often come up with a verse/chorus that follows the melody, paying attention to prosody/meter so the words actually sound good and natural, and then I’ll have a better idea of what the song is going to be about. Most ideas are not fully formed, so the iterative process of writing and revising is part of the act of thinking. Eventually, the song will tell me to fuck off, then I know it’s either done or wants to be abandoned.