Composing a Song: Tips for Structuring Music

There are many different ways to construct a song, but for the most part, songwriters and artists follow one basic way that seems to be a universal procedure. When creating a song you need to gather instrumentals, write or gather lyrics, structure song, then create a scratch track.

You will need to gather instrumental, or music. This can be the first or second step, but is mostly the first step when working with hip-hop, or pop. Normally country, rock, and some R&B are recorded during vocal tracking. With this instrumental you can then build a song around the sound. Instrumentals can be acquired from composers, or producers. Most of the time you can get it for work-for-hire bases, or up front payment.

Writing lyrics is the most important part of the song process. That is why songwriters get 50%-60% ownership of songs without doing any other work besides writing the song. You can make lyric form a well-organized song by coming up with a subject. Once a subject is made you can form the rest of the song around that with or without an instrumental. The more subjects you have the easier to write. For instance, you have a main subject and from that you want to form three verses. You then come up with smaller subject for each verse about the main one. This keeps the organization and makes it less stressful. Lyrics can be brought from a songwriter for up front and royalty payments. Although you bye the song from them, they still own certain rights. It is rare to find established songwriters who will sell songs for 100% of the copyright.

Creating a scratch track is an easy part of the process. It doesn't take any extra effort to record. It is just for the artist to become familiar with the song, and for the producer to be able to hear any significant changes that they want to make in the song.

Then the engineer and producer of the full project structure the song. They put in where the background goes, where to put the breaks, or bridges. They also make the final edits. Most of the time the songs are edited in a major way. It is easier for them to do it than others because they have direct contact with the work in progress. When everything is done then you are able to record the song. Although, sometimes the song is still changed during recording. This is big in any genre that it is easy to change for the sake of the engineer.