My personal best writing process is, roughly:

1. some kind of simple instrumental theme - a riff, or a cool soundscape idea, or a group of chords that sound great together. written on guitar, piano, organ or synth.
2. chords
3. lyrics - writing them keeping the song in the back of my mind and how the phrases will land rhythmically, and usually that presents melody ideas automatically
4. final adjustments to melody
x. Things like song form, arrangement, production, etc. seem to be things that are interconnected with all of these steps. I start working on them whenever it feels natural during the process of creating a rough demo, constantly editing them, and they are also the last things I edit before the song is done.

This approach is my personal fastest/most natural workflow and it's great for pop, rock, folk, indie, hip hop, experimental - the stuff that I do. I'm sure it would work great for blues, r&b, soul as well.

I don't have to do much going back and changing things and most of my songs that I like naturally take on this form. I think literally ALL of the songs on my soundcloud have been written roughly this same way. I am currently experimenting with new approaches for my second album but nothing released yet.

Starting with lyrics is harder but can lead you down a WAY different creative path. Usually songs started with lyrics will tell more of a story or be more emotional, and the music and melody you add under them will have to be shaped to conform to that emotion. The result is a bit more traditional than contemporary - it tends to lead me to more of a jazz or musical theatre influence. But I'm newer to this approach so how I'm describing it could be personal to me.

Another approach is, a lot of people start with a drum groove and a bassline. If you are interested in genres where the groove is extremely important - funk, dance, techno, top 40 etc. or conversely styles where complex rhythms are important: prog, fusion, hardcore, metal, then this is a good idea. But IME in both cases it tends to dumb down the harmonic and melodic ideas you think of to add on top - you're less likely to come up with beautiful pretty chords and melodies that fit this rhythm, it will be more simple and catchy.

As for writing one-lines, try this
1. if it seems catchy enough to be a hook, then add a few lines to form a chorus
2. if it seems more like it's about to tell a story, then add lots of lines to form a verse or several verses

My biggest tip for expanding on lyrics would be to keep yourself constantly writing as much as you can, really write a lot, sort of like a free write...do it all the time without even the intent of writing a song. Just write random shit and think like a lyricist. Pretend you had a writing teacher just said "write for 10 minutes, do not erase, do not pick up your pencil." It's really like working a muscle, your strength at coming up with great lyrical ideas will grow naturally over time and use, but the most important thing to work is the creative momentum side that writes a lot of things that may seem awkward at first and take out the judge and perfectionist in your head. Everybody is already great at judging lyrics as good or bad just from listening to so much music, so don't worry about that all until after you've written somewhere between a paragraph and several pages of words. Then you can go back and read and look for your favorite phrases and mark them and more ideas will come from there.

When you get really good you can actually sit down with the intent to write a song or even a ramble kind of thing and write it all in order and make very few edits, but it personally took me about a year to get to that level, and I still often let my creative side go wild and write some awful lyrics just to keep the momentum going. I also like to scramble and mix lines from different writing sessions and all kinds of crazy stuff.

Songwriting is not completely individual - well I'm biased because I'm currently taking songwriting classes in college, but I do notice a lot of the same things work for many people when they are done correctly. The individual side of it is just discovering which tools work best for the sound you want and even which "rules" you want to break! But learning the tools and how they have historically been used, can be made a rather objective study and helpful to ground your songwriting so that you really know what you're doing at any time and it's not all ruled by a matter of chance.

If you want you can add me and on skype (owenkorzec) I'll gladly give you a songwriting lesson sometime.

quentin said

Owen,

If you have some time, i would definitely enjoy some songwriting tips. I have started just recently, and as i don't know musical language, its just me and my guitar, and trying to write songs that i can play alone.
While i have a lot of cool riffs, i am a bit stuck when it comes to have an entire song. Basically, i have many cool "chunks", but never the idea of a whole song. I end up with a collection of chords that do not really fit together, and i end up "filling songs with missing chords" so that i can finish them.
I dunno if this things happened to you, but its quite frustrating...

To expand musically into forming an entire song it helps to listen to your favorite music and study its song structure and what causes the changes in sections.

For instance I have learned from listening to my favorite songs incessantly that there are some patterns that make them my favorite:
1. I like songs that build in dynamic slowly from start to finish, but have a dip in volume about 2/3rds of the way in where the building of intensity restarts
2. I like songs with long intense outros, often repetitive (I just realized that repetition thing now as I'm typing this actually - thing is, knowing your artistic preferences can take years to figure out, but the good news is that much of the start of it is already subconscious)
3. I like dense production - meaning chords with a lot of diatonic tensions, lots of instruments stacked on top of each other, etc. - this creates a very full, saturated, euphoric sound I like in the most intense moments

You also want to think about all the variables that are available to change help inspire a change of section, here is a VERY ABRIDGED list:
-chord length
-chord order
-add/remove chords
-add/remove instruments
-higher or lower vocal range
-major or minor key
-change of key
-phrase length
-rhythmic acceleration or deceleration within the phrase (slower longer notes vs. shorter and faster)
-time signature change

You also want to think about what should stay constant, that you may not expect would be. For instance an extremely common thing in top 40 music nowadays is the chord progression doesn't even change at all in the chorus compared to the verse, only the melody/lyrics/arrangement.

etc. etc. and if you start really picking your favorite songs and analyzing how they make these changes it's going to help a ton to guide you toward expanding on your own ideas in a way that makes the song better.

Some other notes:
It's easier to expand on one idea than to try to combine multiple separate ideas together, but the latter does have its time and place and works. It is just a more uncomfortable process to go through as a writer - trying to match ideas rather than expand on one.

Try not to throw random chords together - what makes chord progressions great is how the chords lead into each other and where they happen. That's a lot more important than how cool are the chords they contain when isolated. So think of it more in terms of searching for the next chord that fits the emotion you want.

Make sure you have a solid verse and chorus written before you move on to writing a bridge. The bridge will typically take the listener to somewhere very different, almost sounding like a different song, but not always. Sometimes just throwing in a solo over the verse or chorus progression will be enough.

Hope that helps

quentin said

Yep, it helps

Thanks for taking the time to write a detailled answer.
I think what you have, besides your writing skills, is a clear vision of what you like in songs, and not solely in terms of genre, but more in terms of song structure. Its intersting.
Perhaps i should spend some time meditating on what i like in songs and start paying more attention to the structures and dynamics (ie why do i like these song particularly).

For instance, i understand now that what was bothering me with my former band were our too repetitive song structures.

I will have a more in depth listening of my favorite songs. Because for the moment, i feel a bit like swimming between genres and ideas.

By the way I'm not saying you should necessarily focus on listening for song structure. Just find your favorite songs, maybe throw together a nice long playlist (but don't feel restricted to it, listen to whatever you want at the time) - listen like hell, don't think of this as work think of this as just enjoyment, therapy, obsession...put it on while exercising and there's your daily high, that's what I do. I also listen on the train or any boring moments you can fill with music and just listen. And instead of just thinking "omg this song is so good...this song is so good...this song is so good" over and over (which is a mentality you will naturally get bored of if you listen enough!), maybe imagine covering it...take note of your favorite moments. It could be a high note. Or a violin solo. Or a certain acid-post-rock sub-genre you dig. Or the fact that 5 minutes length feels just right. Who knows, but just start collecting ideas of that create a vision. Also when you inevitably hear shitty songs throughout your day playing in public places or wherever, think of what you hate about them.

But then here's the catch, when you write, don't even think about ANY of this stuff! It's exactly like performing a song and throwing out technique in favor of emotion.

If you do enough analysis of your favorite songs (and a tad of analysis of the stuff you don't like - what you want to avoid) on the side, even passively, when creative inspiration comes, every musical decision you make will subconsciously be colored through the vision of what you like that you have established in your mind and that is what you will give you momentum and steer you through the writing process.

Don't think of it as find a perfect formula, just think of it like putting together a playground of stuff you like...just like Phil says surround yourself with good people, surrounded yourself with good music...it will rub off on you. But you have to really think like a songwriter as you listen. Just as you may be used to thinking like a singer as you listen to singers. It's a type of analysis we naturally do when we love anything, but it only happen if you're listening without distractions, so listening with an ipod on a commute or while exercising are the best times I've found to get that focused listening despite a life too busy to just lay down in a dark room and listen to a vinyl for an hour LOL