Jim Bruno's Songwriting Class

Writing Lyrics and/or Melody – The Process

First of all, as mentioned earlier in this course, there are numerous ways to approach this thing called Songwriting. 

Here’s how Bruce Cockburn starts the process as told to Paul Zollo in his book, “Songwriters on Songwriting”

Paul Zollo, “…do you approach a song with a concept in mind? With that song, did you decide beforehand that you want to deal with that theme, where did that happen after this song began to flow?”

Bruce Cockburn, “I almost never say I want to write a song about anything in particular. Almost the only exception to that which really comes to mind is “If a Tree Falls” where I actually remember hearing a radio program on the subject of the destruction of the South Asian rain forest. The particular information and the way it was coming at me triggered something I thought, I have to make a song out of this.

But most of the time, if I get that kind of sense, it’s just barely on the edges of consciousness. There’s a lurking intent back in the back of my mind somewhere. But it’s not a deliberate plan to sit down and write a song about a given subject. The imagery starts to come or the motivation starts to well up in that produces an image or a verse or some statement of something that can be built upon. And if that energy is really intense at that moment, it will be built upon right away. The whole song will start to come out in a few minutes. At least a set of lyrics which can then be edited down into a new song. Other times it takes longer. You’ll get an idea and the idea will have to sit on the page of the notebook for weeks, maybe, before I think of something to go with it.”

And here’s what Keith Richards had to say in his autobiography ‘Life’…

“It’s like you’ve been taken for a blind ride. I might have a riff, an idea, a chord sequence, but I’ve no idea what to sing over it. I’m not agonizing for days with poems and shit. And what I find fascinating about it is that when you’re up there on the microphone and say, OK, let’s go, something comes out that you wouldn’t have dreamt of. Then within a millisecond you’ve got to come up with something else that adds to what you’ve just said. It’s kind of jousting with yourself. And suddenly you’ve got something going and there’s a framework to work with. You’re going to screw up a lot of times doing it that way. You’ve just got to put it on the mike and see how far it can go before you run out of steam.”

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