Writing Songs and Making Songwriting a Career

The main question is – which comes first, words or music? Well, this depends on the person who writes the music, the composer. He might obtain his inspiration from words already written, or he might have written a melody which requires words.

 

Many talented songwriters are able to write both words and music, so that the finished song becomes theirs and theirs alone. And, of course, the people who make the most money are those who not only write the song, but sing and perform it as well.

 

But generally speaking a song is the result of a collaboration between two people, the lyricist and the composer, although, in some instances three, four, or five songwriters may be involved. And very often the songwriters will sit down for a songwriting session and work on the song until it is completed.

 

But in my part of the world there are almost no popular songwriters, so after writing some lyrics I had to look around elsewhere for someone to work with. By using the many useful music websites on the internet I was eventually able to find composers interested in collaborating with me, and in assorted countries such as the UK, Germany, Holland, Spain, Canada, Australia and so on.

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The fact is that in this modern age it doesn’t really matter where you are – both words and music can be transferred from one place to another in seconds – the only thing missing is the personal face to face contact. However, it is most important that there is somebody to sing the song when finished – I have had problems when neither I nor the composer had the voice or ability to do this – so that both sides get an idea of what the finished song will sound like.

 

And then there are composers who are inspired to write music for which they have no words. So this they send on to me, I  write the lyrics and send them back, the composer sings them to the melody and the song is complete.

 

So far all this work has been a labour of love – no money has changed hands. The song has been a creative effort by two people with time and thought the only investment. But the next step is when money comes into play – the cost of the demo recording – because to promote a song to publishers or any other interested party, a professional demo is required. Depending on which service is used, this may cost anything in the region of $100 – 750, this expense being shared between the songwriters.

 

Now, with the demo recording in hand the real work begins – promoting the song. There are countless ways in which this can be done, but it all takes time, and money, and there is no guarantee of success, So the budding songwriter must learn to be patient – top hits don’t happen overnight – and, if unsuccessful, to keep trying. He must keep writing for the more songs he has in circulation the higher the chance that one will be selected for publishing – and if one song is published then others will surely follow.