Once you reach a certain level of proficiency at guitar playing, it is natural to want to take the next step and begin writing your own music. While many people jump right in and let their enthusiasm carry them, it can also be incredibly helpful to have some general guidance and advice to help save time and make sure you don’t burn yourself out through frustration. This article seeks to do just that as I will be providing my overall outline of my own composition process, something that took me many years to develop. In explaining how I personally write a song on guitar, I hope to start you off on the right path in your journey into songwriting.

There are 4 stages that I keep in mind when writing music:

1. Concept
2. Feeling
3. Imagination
4. Construction

At first glance these may seem like 4 arbitrary terms grouped together, but in this context there are very specific meanings to each of them.

Concept

Concept refers to the overall idea or theme that a project/band/artist is trying to express. When you are starting out it is okay to not really know what you are trying to express as an artist, but eventually you will need to discover this for yourself. You will need to take stock of all of the music you have listened to and figure out what elements truly speak to your creative energies. This stage might be the hardest to master. Discovering a new or fresh sound is very difficult in today’s absolute flood of immediately accessible music. As a beginner, you could try to simply pick a genre you really enjoy and attempt to write a song that deliberately falls within the parameters of that genre.

Feeling

Feeling, or as I like to call it “feeling tone” is the specific vibe of whatever song you are trying to write. It is very helpful to have this more or less decided before you actually sit down to write a song on guitar. Know what the tempo of your song will be. How long will it be? What will the overall harmonic language be? You don’t need exactly defined answers to these questions yet but having some idea is going to give you a much clearer idea and focus of what you are actually trying to achieve with your song.

Imagination

Imagination is the ability to “hear” new music in your head. While some people like to randomly jam on the guitar and wait until they eventually play something cool, I find that the songs that I heard in my head before the actual writing turn out sounding a lot better. You really only need to hear a very strong initial idea in order to get the ball rolling. Once you know what your feeling tone for the song will be, see if you can imagine what a song that perfectly expresses that feeling tone would sound like. It may sound like a song that already exists, but a strong idea is a strong idea and you can use the rest of the song to differentiate your creation from the pre-existing one.

Construction

Construction is the actual transcribing of the music that you are hearing in your head. This is the stage where knowing some music theory can really help. Knowing what certain chords sound like can help you quickly know the harmony you hear and how to transcribe it precisely. I have written music using both notation software like Guitar Pro and recording riffs straight into my computer. Either way is fine, the main point is to capture your musical ideas in some way that can be returned to later. Being comfortable with scale degrees can also help in transcribing melodies that you hear. However, don’t let limited knowledge of music theory intimidate you from writing anything. If you are able to hear music fairly clearly in your head, then you should be able to more or less record those ideas in some manner when you sit down to write a song on guitar. As you write more and more, you will be able to increase your fluency and transcribe the music in your head with greater precision and accuracy.

Once you have a strong idea transcribed or recorded, that should hopefully be the spark that naturally leads to another idea. Keep trying to chain these moments of inspiration together while keeping the song’s feeling tone at the forefront of your mind. You want a piece of music that is cohesive but dynamic. The goal is to have every element seem to fit in its place while still having surprising moments of drama over the course of the song. It can be a delicate balance and it is only through experience that you can really attain the instinct to maintain it.

Rest

This isn’t so much of an actual stage as it is advice on how to manage your creativity. Often things will be going very smoothly until you reach a point in the song where it is not clear what the next move is. If you run out of steam or get stuck, take a break and do something else. I find that going for a walk or exercising is the best way to reset my mind and get the creativity flowing again. Perhaps the physical activity allows the mind to relax and wander. This can lead to new connections being formed and greater inspiration. Often a new musical idea will pop into my head while I’m walking around outside or lifting. When this happens, I will record an audio clip of me humming the idea into my phone immediately.

Every piece of music I’ve written has taken a different amount of time to complete, but typically I will take a few days to a week to complete one 3-5 minute song that has repeating sections. Don’t try to force it and write an entire song all in one sitting just because you want to have a finished project. Creativity moves at its own pace and it’s better to take some breaks during the process to ruminate on how the work is progressing and see if there are any fresh ideas floating around in the ether for this particular piece.   

 

This is the process that I have followed for the majority of my experience in songwriting and composition, and I’ve found it to be very effective. Feel free to modify things to suit your personal situation, as every artist has a slightly different method they use to write a song on guitar.