You Don’t Play an Instrument? No Problem
Let’s say you haven’t been playing an instrument for a long time. You have no idea what chords go together in what key, or maybe you don’t play any type of musical instrument. Then what do you do?
Well let’s talk about not playing any instrument first. There have been many successful songwriters who aren’t musicians. Obviously there are the lyricists of the world without whom many of the songs ever written would not exist today, people like Bernie Taupin, Hal David, and E.Y. Harburg. What each of these lyricists did was find a melody writer to work with. You might want to consider it. In every class I’ve taught on songwriting, there are always quite a few aspiring songwriters who say the toughest thing for them is writing lyrics. Most would love to link up with a great lyricist. So I know they’re out there.
But let’s say you’d rather not or cannot work with a musician for whatever reason. Maybe you don’t know any, or you have mobility problems, whatever. Let’s say that although you don’t play an instrument you can still create melodies acapella. Well that’s fine. I’ve had quite a few acapella melody songwriters in my class and consider it a legitimate way to write song melodies. A friend of mine, Lisa Aschman, is a Nashville based songwriter who has had her songs covered by numerous artitsts and writes solely acapella. She teaches workshops to folks who also write melodies acapella. As if that wasn’t enough, she’s a published author of songwriting books! You can check her out at www.songwritingideas.com. My point is that even if you don’t play an instrument, you can still find a way to be a songwriter.
Hooks
Hooks are simply those parts of the song that stick in a person’s head. They are not a song component unto themselves but rather reside in a component. They’re usually found in the Chorus but can be found anywhere within a song and they’re usually the title of the song. For the purpose of this class there are basically two types of hooks: lyrical hooks and melodic hooks.
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Jim Bruno's Songwriting Class 