Contemporary Songwriting Techniques
Contemporary Songwriting Techniques
Contemporary Songwriting Techniques
John Kelleher is
by John Kelleher
Head of Music at
Baylis Court Arts
College, a Musical
Futures Champion
Teacher and a mem-
ber of TeachTalk:
Introduction
Music.
Contemporary Songwriting Techniques (Unit 34) from the BTEC Level 3 in music is a brilliant unit for drawing
out the creativity of your pupils whilst also encouraging them to broaden their musical horizons. The grading
criteria essentially encourages students to research a variety of musical styles, write their own songs in a range
of styles and then put their work together in a portfolio.
The requirement for a portfolio of songs is a big jump from the expectations of GCSE music, where students
only have to compose two pieces of music in as many years. As a result, students need to generate a lot more
material than they are used to and may need more support from their teacher, in an environment where they
feel safe to share their ideas and receive honest feedback. Achieving this can be an important step along the
way to developing the skill of selecting and rejecting material that will result in a portfolio featuring songs of a
consistent standard rather than the (far easier to achieve) portfolio of one great song and a few fillers.
In my school, we
deliver three BTEC The ideas below are intended to help you create such an environment and provide pupils with a practical ap-
units a year. Two proach to generating lots of material quickly. I usually deliver this unit over two terms with two lessons a week
units are delivered
dedicated to it.
over one term with
three lessons a
week. The third unit
runs alongside them
and takes two terms
with two lessons a Silencing the internal critic
week. This gives us
some time for resub- We all know what it’s like to want to create something but be paralysed by an internal voice saying ‘Really? You
missions and allows
for one of the units
think that’s good enough? Try again.’ The only time that the critic seems to disappear for long enough to get
to be explored in a something done is when a deadline is looming over our heads, resulting in frenetic working until something is
little more detail. produced that may or may not be our best work.
With songwriting, this can be even more of a problem: music can be so personal and we are frightened that
others might somehow see into our souls. The internal critic suddenly ups the game and becomes and internal
censor whispering ‘Do you really want people to know that’s how you feel?’
Each song needs
to be recorded with
a sensible filename
and saved in a safe
A song every week
place. Students
will need access
to these record- To get students used to producing and sharing material regularly, I like to create a weekly concert during les-
ings later in the unit son time where everyone has to perform a new song they’ve written. Notice that I require everyone to do this
(see ‘Refinement’).
Mobile apps such and, yes, that includes the teacher. No excuses are accepted and the vocal has to be live (backing tracks are
as SoundCloud or okay). I spread this out over an entire term and it leaves students with roughly a dozen songs to choose from
AudioBoo are great – more than enough to build a portfolio.
for this purpose.
Week Style
1 Freestyle
2 Freestyle
3 Christmas Song
4 Freestyle
5 Urban Music (must include a rap)
6 Freestyle
7 32 Bar
8 Freestyle
9 Blues
10 Freestyle
11 Charity Song
12 Freestyle
Commissions
Throwing in the commissions doesn’t just help to ensure your pupils have a chance of hitting Grading Criteria
34.4PMD, it also allows you to tackle 34.1PMD. In order to write songs in these styles, students will need to be
familiar with them. This gives you the opportunity to deliver workshops centred around specific songwriters
and analysing their songs. Exploring Christmas songs could give you the opportunity to look at Bob Geldof,
Urban Music could look at N-Dubz and 32 Bar would be a great chance to look at Cole Porter. A good com-
mission will give pupils the following information:
Deadline - stating the date when the song must be performed
Scenario - a vocational scenario for the composition of this song
Suggested listening - artists and songs that embody the songwriting style
Musical features - some key musical features that are typical of the style
Resources - reminders of the material covered in your workshops
This combination of commissions and strict, weekly deadlines will ensure that all of your students have some-
thing that can be handed in as a portfolio.
Encouraging the creation of this diary entry when the writing process starts for each song will allow students
to have a secure understanding of the style that they are working in and give them useful notes for the final
presentation of their work. It is especially helpful during the ‘free’ style songs as each pupil is likely to be writ-
ing in their own choice of style, thus creating a lot of student-generated resources that everyone can benefit
from later on.
The portfolio
Presentation
The final portfolio will, effectively, inform how you assess the entire unit and the format chosen for its pre-
sentation can really help to embed the whole unit within a vocational context. I like to encourage students to
submit their work in a form that actually gives them a useful launchpad if they ever choose to seek a career
in songwriting. Creating a profile page on ReverbNation, SoundCloud or BandCamp is a great way of doing
this as is creating a website using a free website builder such as Weebly or Google Sites. It can also provide
students with a real sense of satisfaction knowing that they have created a space for their own musical identity.
My personal preference is to create a website (due to the flexibility that it provides) but any site allowing you to
present both audio and text will suffice.
This portfolio should pull together a selection of the students’ best work from both their songwriting and their
diary entries. I tell students to select their five best songs and take the diary entries that correspond to each
style. Their website should then be laid out in the following manner:
Website
Home page Song 1 Song 2 Song 3 Song 4 Song 5
Biography Audio player with Audio player with Audio player with Audio player with Audio player with
song song song song song
Lyrics Lyrics Lyrics Lyrics Lyrics
Audio player with Chord Chord Chord Chord Chord
all five songs progression progression progression progression progression
Diary entry Diary entry Diary entry Diary entry Diary entry
This is a really handy layout for the assessor and internal verifier because each song is clearly presented on its
own page, with a breakdown of lyrics and chord progression so that you can quickly spot any particularly cre-
ative moments. Having the diary entry on each song page also highlights the style that the students was work-
ing in, which helps the assessor to be confident that the work was completed in a range of styles and genres.
Similar results can The home page also serves a handy purpose. The ‘biography’ is really just to put the task into a vocational
be created with context but by having all five songs in one place, you can click through each one and get a feel for the bigger
other profile based
picture of the work.
services. Depend-
ing on your school’s
social media policy, As mentioned above, this layout is really practical but there’s nothing stopping you from using profile based
FaceBook’s Pages
services such as SoundCloud, ReverbNation or BandCamp. Here is an example of a pupil who has presented
service would allow
for a very effective her work using ReverbNation. Using an external blogging service, she’s been able to present her diary entries
portfolio submission. within the page while ReverbNation’s lyrics feature has also been used to good effect.
The music
Of course, it is unlikely that all five songs will be of a high enough standard from the first draft and this is where
the refinement process comes in. During the weekly concerts, you and the students should keep a ‘friendly
feedback’ sheet. Mine just uses four cells in a table:
Music Lyrics
I loved your...
I wish your...
Each student then has a collection of action points for all of their songs, which gives them a basis on which to
start refining their work for inclusion in the final portfolio. It is also a nice AfL strategy, allowing you to chart out
generic areas of development for each pupil in order to improve their songwriting and is far more useful than
applying the holistic grading criteria of distinction, merit or pass to individual pieces of work. Combine this ap-
proach with one-on-one tutorials with the teacher and the students should have all they need to develop their
song to the appropriate standard.
Vocational context
Every BTEC assignment needs a vocational context and this, to me, is the real strength of the qualification. It is
tempting to tie this unit into a scenario where the candidate is a member of a band but I feel that the real spirit
of the unit is in recognising the value of songwriting in itself, rather than as part of a performing career. As a
result, I use the following vocational context:
Your work as a songwriter has attracted the attention of a local agent and she would like to promote
your work to publishing companies. In order to do this, you have been asked to create a professional
looking portfolio with demo recordings and blog entries about your songwriting.
Your agent has asked you to create an online portfolio that can be a website (perhaps using Weebly)
or a profile based service (perhaps using ReverbNation) to create your portfolio, which should host
five songs that you have recorded and a blog entry for each.
You need to upload at least five songs where you have composed the lyrics and melodies yourself.
For each song, you need a blog entry that looks at the techniques used by successful songwriters in
similar styles and genres. Your agent is particularly keen to see that you can write in a range of styles,
so this should be a priority when selecting your five songs.
Anyone who has written an assignment for BTEC will know that Edexcel loves task lists so pupils have a clear
understanding of one way to meet the grading criteria. Following the outline I’ve given above should ensure
that everyone in your class can meet the needs of the unit but it certainly doesn’t hurt to break it down for them.
I use this table in my assignment brief:
Task List
1 Compose the lyrics and melody for at least five songs 34.2PMD
34.3PMD
5 Write a blog entry for each song that describes, explains and analyses 34.1PMD
how different songwriters construct songs.
Ensure that each blog entry looks at a different style.
6 Publish your website and write the URL on your assignment submission N/A
form
Many of the songs in the charts at the moment just take four chords and repeat them again and again. The dif-
ferent sections are created by changing the melody that is used on top of the chord progression. This can be
a good way in for students who are struggling to make a start with a song - it seems easier to deal with writing
one chord progression than writing three (verse, chorus, middle 8).
Sometimes, however, it can become tricky to write the second melody and this is where some simple tricks
can help to boost productivity.
Change the inversion of the chords
Change the rhythmic feel of the chords
Double or half the harmonic pace of the chords
Aim to write a call and response melody
Another way of very quickly writing the chord progression for a song is to try the four chord trick. Limit students
to using chords I, IV, V and vi and get them to put these chords into a four bar progression starting on the tonic.
I IV vi V
To create a new section, simply swap the position of chords I and vi.
vi IV I V
Then you just have to decide which chord progression will be your verse and which will be your chorus.
For every ten songs that get written in my classroom, I can be pretty certain that eight of them will have a mono-
tone (or near enough) melody for one of the sections. The trick is to help students find a method of creating
variety in that melody and I always like to talk about the ‘money note’. In other words, the note that would make
people want to actually buy that record. The easiest way to create a ‘money note’ is to just pick one word from
the lyrics and sing it dramatically higher than the rest (think Genesis and I Can’t Dance).
Quite often, changing this one note will lead to the student wanting to make other small changes that lead to a
much more interestingly shaped melody.
Descending bass
Students who can’t play piano or guitar can find songwriting more difficult but that doesn’t have to be the case.
Writing a simple bass riff and composing a melody on top of that is a perfectly legitimate way to write a song.
Often, the easiest bass lines to write are descending bass patters. Get your students to learn how to play The
Rhythm of Life, Wad in the Water, For No One or Feeling Good. Then give them the task of writing their own
descending bass, encouraging them to focus on rhythm so as to give the riff a more distinctive feel rather than
being a clone of one of the songs they’ve already learnt.
Lyric palettes
A lyric palette is really just a mind map that links your title to other ideas that stem from it. Allow students to
freely come up with as many associations as they can and to then draw associations to those associations!
Very quickly, they will have drawn up a lyric palette to give them a starting point each time they run out of ideas.
Chord palettes
By the time students are in Year 12, many of them will be capable of identifying chords within a key and con-
structing the triads of those chords. That said, there’s a considerable number of candidates who will not be
confident in this process and it can really help them out to have a simple process to figure out the basic chords
in their chosen key. I call these chord palettes and facilitate it using a simple handout that looks something
like this...
E F# G# A B C# D#
F G A Bb C D E
F# G# A# B C# D# E#
G A B C D E F#
Ab Bb C Db Eb F G
A B C# D E F# G#
Bb C D Eb F G A
B C# D# E F# G# A#
This table identifies all of the notes in a major key to facilitate in the chord construction exercise that follows.
Chord construction
I ii iii IV V vi vii
Chord name
Root
3rd
5th
Students use the table above to help them construct chords in the key that they have chosen. They start by
writing in the chord names of the key that they have chosen and do this by referring to the major scale table
and using the upper/lower case roman numerals to identify if chords are major or minor. The fact that chord
seven is diminished is just something that they have to learn here (although there’s nothing to stop you from
putting this on your handout). The first step of filling in the table would look something like this
I ii iii IV V vi vii
Root
3rd
5th
I ii iii IV V vi vii
Root A
3rd C#
5th E
I ii iii IV V vi vii
Root A B
3rd C# D
5th E F#
I ii iii IV V vi vii
Root A B C#
3rd C# D E
5th E F# G#
I ii iii IV V vi vii
Root A B C# D
3rd C# D E F#
5th E F# G# A
I ii iii IV V vi vii
Root A B C# D E
3rd C# D E F# G#
5th E F# G# A B
I ii iii IV V vi vii
Root A B C# D E F#
3rd C# D E F# G# A
5th E F# G# A B C#
I ii iii IV V vi vii
Root A B C# D E F# G#
3rd C# D E F# G# A B
5th E F# G# A B C# D
This also provides an opportunity to speak to pupils about inversions. It’s worth highlighting the following:
Constructing chords I, ii and iii involves looking at them in root inversion
Constructing chords IV and V involves looking at them in first inversion
Constructing chords vi and vii involves looking at them in second inversion
Looking at chord construction in this way can really help pupils to understand why chords are formed the way
they are and get their heads around the use of inversions to simplify playing on keyboard instruments.
A lot of lyrics will try to play on the double entendre of the words or phrases that they contain and, so, you find
yourself with lyrics that are, effectively, puns. A simple line like ‘I act so cool that I look real hot’ is easily cre-
ated by playing on the double entendre of two words that happen to have opposite meanings in one of their
interpretations. Getting students to list a series of opposites and try to create lyrics based on that list is a quick
way of promoting some wordplay.