Why Songwriting is Hard - 7 Reasons Explained

Each song is unique, so there can never be a cast iron reliable method for writing one. This means every song involves an element of trial an error which is time comsuming. There are also several skills we need to learn because songs are a jumble of fast moving parts and it's easy to write one that doesn't work.

Songwriting Might be Hard Because :

1. Songs are a Complex Jumble of Moving Parts.

2. You Don't Play an Instrument.

3. Words and Music Don't Always Fit Together.

4. You Need to Know Some Music Theory.

5. Lyric Writing is Not as Easy as You'd Think.

6. You Need to Identify and Express Emotions Easily.

7. Writers Block Can Affect Anybody.

1. Songs Are a Complex Jumble of Fast Moving Parts

To make it easier, especially when it's your first few songs, it's important to appreciate how complicated songs can be. They sound easy when you're listening to them, but that's because you're very skilled at listening to them. You've been doing it since you were in the womb.

So cut yourself some slack and expect to make a messy noise most of the time. If you spend time with other musicians, especially good ones, you'll immediately notice they have a great sense of humour. Especially when it comes to failure. That's because they fail a lot.

Just look at how many elements there are in an average song, remember too that it's constantly moving and everything has to happen in a certain order when your listening mind expects it.

Story, words, rhyme, repetition, melody, rhythm, tempo, dynamic, harmony, instrumentation, genre, performance, crescendo, structure, hooks, metaphor, message, character, emotion, attitude, vulnerability, empathy, context.

That's 25 ingredients, all of which will mess with your mojo at some time or other. If you want to know more, I have another great article about all these elements. It shows you how important each is and you can find it in the link below.

25 Song Ingredients

So try to develop a healthy attitude to failure and the problems you encounter. You could, for example, rely on self belief, or stubbornness, or determination, or tenacity, or curiosity, or resolve to just keep trying because you can't think of anything else to do with your time. Secondly, see the creative process for what it is: and it is simply this.

Trying ideas.

If an idea is a load of rubbish, try another, then another, then another, and yet another, try each one while constantly deciding which of these will work. Without experience you're going to find each decision excruciatingly difficult, but it gets easier.

There's no magic wand and a blinding flash of inspiration rarely happens, and it never happens if you don't keep trying things which fail. Eventually, two ideas will slam together and 'wham,' you'll know it's right and your creative lights will come on. Now that is the best feeling in the world.

Sometimes you have accept that an idea's not working and it would be best to put the idea on the shelf. Some of the best songs you'll ever write will be those you gave up on but didn't throw away. You'll get two or three old ideas that didn't work, you'll stitch them together and suddenly you've got a gem.

Once you accept that the path to completion is simply a succession of mistakes and failures, then the whole process becomes pleasurable.

There may be dozens of failures and having not made them before, you're going to have to learn through trial and error. But stick with it. Writing a song is one of the most challenging but rewarding things you will ever do.

2. You Don't Play an Instrument ?

You'll struggle to be a good songwriter without playing a few chords on an instrument of some kind. Granted, you might be a poet or rapper or lyricist or librettist, but a songwriter needs a melody a harmony and a groove.

If you're only going to specialise in words you will need a musician to work with. There's nothing inferior in this approach, in fact it has many advantages such as, a) the input of another person, b) the specialisation of tasks, c) a resulting higher skill level in each role.

Some of the best songs ever written have come from teamwork and classical composers wouldn't dream of writing the words for an opera, they'd just write the music.

If you're good at working with other people and can hit it off with the other guy, teamwork is a much better option than struggling to learn an instrument and becoming frustrated and giving up.

The reason being, it takes a long time to learn an instrument, and it takes even longer to get good at it. The better your playing and the more instruments you play, the richer and more interesting your songs will be.

The things is, the music you put in your song is just as important as the words and the story. Often, it is more important because it's energy pushes along the message in the words.

And having a sub-conscience grasp upon rhythm, melody and chord progressions gives you an intrinsic feel for what's going to work and what isn't. It helps you to quickly assess music that will push your meaning home, and throw out music that won't.

Being able to play also means you can try out ideas immediately. Something which sounds brilliant in your mind might sound like garbage when you come to play it.

The opposite is also true. A load of nonsense words can be turned into something remarkable by the most unexpected happy accident at the piano or on guitar. So If you had to learn an instrument, which would you choose ?

Piano or keyboard should be your first choice because it has a massive pitch range, can play both bass and melodic accompaniment. In learning it, you'll learn to read music and get a really good feel for any type of music under the sun. It's disadvantages are that it's tougher to learn, isn't easily portable and it doesn't usually do ear splitting solo's like a guitar or violin or saxophone etc.

Guitar is the next choice. It's more portable, easier to learn and provides enough support for any genre. Ideally, you should learn both guitar and piano.

Ukulele, banjo, mandolin, bouzouki, tenor guitar. These are some of many instruments which have fewer strings or string sets than a standard six string. They're usually easier to play than a six string but may be limited in range or key. They're all plenty good enough to write songs with though, don't overlook them.

Harp and dulcimer are other polyphonic instruments which you could write songs with. Especially if your after that folky or medieval sound. I've seen it done and they do sound fantastic, but these are getting into the specialist genres.

Bass, cello, loads of musicians write lots of good songs to a bass line, it can be done quite easily if that's your thing.

Anything else you can hit press or caress with you fingers will work, just bare in mind that instruments with strong personalities such as violins will overpower your voice.

As for flute, recorder, oboe and the like. Well what do you think ?

My choice = 1st piano, 2nd guitar, preferably both.

3. Words and Music Don't Always Fit Together

Because a song is a complicated jumble of noise, it's very easy to make a complicated jumble of noise which doesn't sound like a song. Songwriters do it all the time. When this happens you should have a good laugh, then cut everything away so that you're just left with words and rhythm.

Record your rhythm so you can keep repeating you words over it. Then decide if the words are fitting the rhythm, if they're not, you simply decide which you have to change.

It's usually easier to change words but much more brave and interesting if you like having odd sounding lyrical phrases which run past the end of musical phrases. Once you have the song sounding a bit like a poem to a groovy rhythm, can start to add instruments again.

Many experienced musicians make a total hash of blending lyrics with music, don't be one of them. Always remember that your vocal is the most important part of the song. But it will lose it's power if it's partnered with a busy or loud instrument.

Give your voice space, harmonise and keep the rhythm but don't allow anything to compete with the vocal. Use instruments whose pitch and tonality is nowhere near your vocal so that the listener's ear can separate them.

It's far better to have a minimalist accompaniment than noise in your song. So the one thing you must never do is put busy or exciting music over your voice because it will simply overpower it.

Keep it simple, use long slow boring chords which simply embellish the rhythm. And make sure any lively accompaniment is out of the way of your voice with any clever music at the end of a phrase or verse.

4. You Need to Know Some Music Theory

Music theory is the elephant in the room, the skeleton in the cupboard and the pooper that spoils every songwriter's party over and over.

Unfortunately, music can't live without it and despite most people being able to survive just fine neither knowing nor caring how many tones there are in an octave, a song writer needs a basic grasp of the relationship between keys, chords and the notes they're made from.

Otherwise you'll make your life difficult by spending time experimenting with ideas that will never work.

For example, in any particular chord sequence there are only certain melodic notes that fit well. There are some that you can 'get away with,' and some which will sound awful. You can learn all these quite rapidly by just messing around on a piano for an hour or two, but that's only a tiny part of theory.

Music Theory covers rhythm, tempo, structure, harmony, melody, key relationships such as 'the circle of fifths' and a hat full of other things that have nothing to do with simply reading dots of music on a stave.

Also, when the time comes to working with other 'proper' musicians, you don't want them looking down at you because you don't understand how to change a chord from major to minor.

Some people love music theory and take to it very easily, others really struggle because it appears to make no sense nor have any relationship with music at all. This may in fact be true because the parts of the brain which respond to music are different than the ones which marvel at chord relationships.

The thing to remember is that theory is just a formal way of putting into words something which can't easily be put into words. It's also a kind of cobble-up as it evolved over centuries into an agreed system common to many languages which would fit our western culture.

If you go outside that culture the rules are different because aural and social expectations are different.

If you're instinctively good at music, you can manage with surprising little theory but again, the more you know, the better.

5. Lyric Writing is Not as Easy as You'd Think.

Lyrics are often writer's number one frustration. If you're a good musician but can't string a sentence together it can be particularly vexing. Especially, when some spotty teenager with three chords and a pretty face kills an audience with a song about their pet rabbit.

The thing to remember is that your words don't have to be brilliantly eloquent. It's true, they tell the story, but they don't have to spell out every detail, every emotion and you don't need that many.

String together twelve short phrases which use verbs and sensory imaging and you probably have something. At least enough to describe a scene which has the possibility for emotional conflict.

Your listener's mind will fill in the gaps so your words don't even have to be all that joined up or coherent. They merely need to be connected by the context of what you're playing. The power is then in the way they're presented and that's the job of the music.

Here are four nuggets of wisdom if you lack of confidence in your writing skills.

1) study a poetry course, buy a thesaurus and do some mind mapping or brainstorming exercises. Nothing quite beats getting an enormous piece of paper and writing down every word that pops into you head.

2) You could team up with a lyricist. There are are lots of good writers who would love to have their work put to music.

3) Grab a bunch of out-of-copyright poetry works, pick some poems you like and put music to them. There are literally thousands of brilliant poems dying to re-invigorated.

4) Don't try to write an entire story, use two or three word phrases to set the scene, that's all you need.

5) Don't try to write a whole song about how you feel, write about little the details which led to how you feel and put the strong emotions in chorus or refrain.

6. You Need to Identify and Express Emotions Easily.

Sometimes you'll have strong emotions bubbling away but feel lost for words.

Although this feels very frustrating, from a creative perspective, it's actually a good place to be. If your head is bursting with ideas, don't worry if you feel overwhelmed. You're just juggling a lot of emotional voices which all want to be heard.

The trick is to thin em out a bit. Some voices won't fit because, as will be clear once you've finished, they should be in a different song. Even the one's which do fit will be a complete pain. They'll argue and fight and undermine each other's position.

They'll get stroppy and disappear. In fact, if you can get all your ingredients to sit together for three minutes, then that's quite an achievement.

If you're still very close to a burning issue which is really eating you up, you are going to struggle. Especially while you're in the process of re-living it over and over. But, writing a song can be the best form of therapy you'll ever have.

Think about it, going over and over how you feel about something and examining every detail, that's what a therapist would do.

The first thing to do is to get plenty of paper, I'd advise against using a phone or small screen because you need to be able to see connections between ideas. The trick is to write everything down, no matter how silly or inconsequential.

Use different sheets for different ideas and stick all your sheets of paper on a large wall or board or on the back of a door.

You can write single words, phrases, entire monologues of several hundred words or draw pictures or stick photos on there. A really key way to help yourself is to get an emotion wheel and use that to find a word or two which sums up your volcano of angst.

Once you're fed up with adding to your wall step back and look at it. This is the most important task.

Look at it without judging yourself and take your time. I promise you'll be amazed how connections leap out at you. This is the art of the songwriter, connecting emotions with noise.

As you may have guessed, you'll only need a fraction of what you sketch out, and the stupid ideas are usually the ones which make it through. So, don't be afraid of your stupid ideas.

7. Writer's Block Can Affect Anybody.

There are dozens of reasons why writers get stuck and dozens of identifiable issues. Every single one can be overcome by, a) the writer becoming totally absorbed with their art and if possible, b) imagining or experiencing feedback, C) Making writing a habit.

Without feedback motivation dries up and the whole process is rendered pointless. Think about it, could you write a symphony if they were the last person alive ?

As we're creating art, we always have the audience in the back of our minds, even when the audience is a pseudo version of ourselves. We may not even notice them but they're always there, judging and commenting and applauding and supporting.

It stands to reason then that if we become too self critical or expect too much there is no room for freedom to explore. And when we fail to surprise ourselves by churning out the same drab dirges our self motivation disappears.

On the other hand, if we continually ignore the expected, say what we mean without fear of judgement, then ironically, we're judged more approvingly. Especially by ourselves. And this becomes the basis of a healthy relationship with our creativity.

We must engage fully with the process of creating for its own sake. We must feel the emotional conflicts we're portraying and live the lives of the people we're writing about. We must care deeply about them to point that nothing else matters.

Then, once we become absorbed in our creativity, there can be no room for writer's block because our mind has no doubts, no fears, no limits, just curiosity. Clearly, it helps if we believe our work will be well liked, anticipated and well received by others. But we won't even get to write it if we can't immerse ourselves completely naked and without reservation.

Words of Encouragement

Writing a song is harder than it looks – some skills are needed, but with determination, you can get by with surprisingly few; providing you keep experimenting.

Don't worry if can't imagine where to start, start with what you have. Don't worry if you're overwhelmed because it seems too complicated, keep it simple. Don't worry if you think you have no imagination or you're struggling to find the direction of the song or you have a great a great hook but can't think of where to go with it.

I can assure you that You'll will get fidgety. OR you'll get a text message. Or you'll lose faith in your ability. Or you'll fear wasting your time by achieving nothing and becoming frustrated.

There are hundreds of internal and external distractions which all amount to you losing heart, losing interest and concluding 'oh what's the point'. I'll tell you this, there may be no point, but a complete song will come if you care about what you've got to say. So say it, and say it as loudly as you can with as much conviction as you can.

A Brief Summary

• Writing a song is hard because a song is a complicated thing.

• The more technical skills you have - the easier it will become.

• However, learning to express your emotions is an important one.

• The easiest way to start is with a rhythm, then add melody, then add emotion.

• Distractions will always come and go, it's easier if you care about what you're doing.

• Lack of inspiration is usually an indication you don't care, caring makes it easy.

• Don't worry about feeling overwhelmed, laugh at your failures, keep it simple and carry on.