A valid question needs a valid answer. Can songwriting be taught online? Or is it one of those things that you need a personal touch for? How can you trust people? All are very good questions.
Songwriting can be learned online and successfully too. It’s easier to learn songwriting online than singing because the concepts are tied more to understanding principles rather than techniques to execute in a particular manner.
Let’s dive deeper into how and why songwriting is actually preferred to be taught online.
Why Online?
I am just going to add this article here but online courses save you time, and money and provide convenience.
You can read it in-depth in the link provided but let’s continue on!
Easier Taught than Other Things
I said earlier that songwriting makes more sense to learn online. Why?
Because to get better at songwriting you need to execute or practice writing along the principles taught in an online course. So, mastering the principles is easier to learn and even teach online as the execution of them is equal to knowing the principles.
In other words, if you know the principle, applying it is not a big deal. However, contrasting it with singing and knowing how to sing is one thing, which I think is still important. But, executing it will not result in a good melody. There is a gap between you knowing how to sing and actually being able to sing.
That gap is practice. Once you put in the hours of practice, the gap is bridged and you are able to do what you know. However, in songwriting, the gap itself is knowledge. Once possessed it is yours to execute.
Principles
In order to start writing better lyrics, you will need to understand the principles. Principles don’t really care what medium is used. The absorption of such principles requires you to understand them properly rather than execute them perfectly (in the beginning).
It is paramount that you understand what the principles of songwriting are grounded on. It is these principles you will rely on more than once and internalizing the principles of songwriting is going to help you a ton as I believe that principles are universal to a huge extent.
Principles are universal to all genres, you are going to try to use the same principles in almost all genres and in different languages. Let that sink in, that’s why.
Execution
Executing what you’ve learned is going to be a lot more about hit-and-miss at first. You learn the principles taught in the course and then you execute them and expect to do better than you did before.
Of course, practicing such skills matters as well but the execution of principles of songwriting and the techniques used are the ones you need to know and you should focus more on exercising these new principles you’ve learned as perfectly as you can.
Eventually, after you’ve done it for a few songs, you’d realize that some of the principles are coming naturally to you and that’s what we want. Your first song isn’t going to be perfect. So, your only option is to keep on moving forward until you start to see results.
Practice?
I recommend practicing 10/10 times.
However, for songwriting, I would suggest you execute it in your songs and keep moving on. Try to make the next song better than the one before it. Never redo a song. That’s my recommended approach.
However, if you’re hardcore, write a song a day and never revisit it.
The idea behind is simple, in the beginning, you are going to benefit tremendously from writing a song a day. It is also going to instill a sense of finishing a song and won’t allow you to let a song sit on the shelves for eternity.
The issue with that is that you get really good at making a verse or a chorus and then you call it quits and you never end up finishing at all. Never develop this habit, try to strive to finish what you start. That is the only way to make sure you’ll get good at not just writing songs but actually finishing them.
The End Goal
Songwriting is amazing. It’s a really versatile skill as you can end up writing songs for other people as well. I’ve written another article explaining why singers need to learn songwriting. But, the end goal of writing isn’t just to write any songs.
The end goal of learning songwriting is to write your own songs.
That is precisely why you want to learn it in the first place as well. I want to take a few sentences and just give you a little boost of motivation to go ahead and start learning songwriting for yourself.
It’s the ultimate expression of what you’re going through and you should definitely have the ability to pen down what you are trying to convey through not just the words you’re writing down but the melody and rhythm they carry with them.
It’s everything, isn’t it? Adding words with notes to a flow of time. It’s truly a beautiful skill to master and even though it can be broken down into principles that you must learn it doesn’t take the essence of originality away from it.
It’s something mechanical that creates something organic? Kind of.
It’s more like learning how to talk by understanding the alphabet and how sentences are made. But, isn’t that how we end up phrasing our sentences so effortlessly? We execute the skill of forming sentences very effortlessly. Same with music. It’ll happen.
Just keep understanding and keep executing the principles.
Where to Learn Songwriting From?
So, coming to this section.
There are a lot of books written on this topic. As much as I would like to be the reason you go learn something I can’t at the moment tell you of a decent course online that will get you what you want. But books? Just Amazon them and get yourself the kindle version (which you can read on any device).
However, if you’re looking for a course that will teach you how to sing, then you should check this page out.
All the best in all your endeavors!