How to write a song, even if you are a no-talent, tone-deaf, jerk-off

Let's do this:

Materials needed: You, Paper, Pencil, Recording device (Computer, voice recorder, tape recorder)

Materials not needed: Excuses, Your B.S , Distractions, The opinions of others, YOUR opinion!
So you want to write a song?

You can ask as many people as you want how to do this and you'll get as many different answers, they will all be BS.

Why? Because there is no "How" There is only "Do" I am writing to you today to take you from the passive to the active, from the how to the do, whether you like it or not. I can't tell you how to run away from me, I can only fart loud enough that you'll want to be gone by the time the smell hits.
Consider this writing to be my bathroom bullhorn after a good dinner at Taco Bell.

It may be a good time to list my credentials in this field: I licensed my first original song at 17 to Highlander the TV series and still make backend royalties off it to this day. I was signed to a major label deal (It was a well know rock stars vanity imprint, actually) at 21 and toured major areas opening for other acts, after being dropped from that deal due to a "backstage incident" I was signed to a well know indy, A year or two later I was in Los Angeles and Signed by Dreamworks records to another major label deal, after that went down in flames, I was signed to the well know UK division of Cargo records and a french Vinyl boutique label. Just two years ago I was signed by the major indy label Metropolis records and could boast labelmates like Mindless Self Indulgence, Bauhaus and Gary Newman, Oh and I forgot, before that I was signed by Dexter Holland of the Offspring to his Vanity label NITRO records, throughout all this I began to focus on composing for TV and today I have music in more reality shows than I can mention, including Top Chef, Real Housewives, Bargain Hunters, Who do you think you are?, Under the dome (Stephen King mini-serries) and countless others.

I am telling you this because it's important that if you are going to take direction from someone, that they have gone somewhere you want to go, as one of the proud and few that has made his living by the songs and music he writes, I don't mind telling you. If I'm one step further down the road you want to travel, then do yourself a favor, shut up sand listen to how I got there.

Now that I've qualified myself, let's return to the task at hand.

Here is a basic formula for song creation: The most important ingredient is this: YOU MUST BE WILLING TO WRITE A BAD SONG

Writing complete songs and letting them flow out of you even if they are squirting up like so much foul diarrhea, build your FLOW muscle. You are mining a path through your soul for creative ideas to ooze through at will.. Every time you decline to judge the piece of art you are vomiting up you make it that much easier for a better one to come along after it.

 I see it like this: creative ideas are like vampires, they only go where they are invited and if you judge demean and abandon songs just as quickly as you start them, then the ideas are not going to feel welcome and they are going to flow elsewhere. But by forcing yourself to write quickly and often, to squeeze horrible songs out of every corner of your being, you are calling out to the good ones "Free room and board!" songs are like freeloading musicians, trust me, they will come. But you must FINISH the songs, you must WRITE THEM DOWN ON PAPER (for some reason this works better than computer or phone text) and you must RECORD A DEMO so that song exists in the physical world, not just in your imagination. Write a song every day! No matter how bad, make it second nature. Assuming you have no idea where to start, I will give you a process to use until you discover your own.

1. Think of an idea that gets you excited, this can be something like sex, a good movie you saw, your mom anything but it must get YOU off. I don't care what songs on the radio are about or what you heard good songs were supposed to be about, YOU follow YOUR muse.

 Now that you have an idea you have a song, because that's what songs are. There are no words music melodies that mean jack on their own. A song has no division between these parts because they all serve one purpose: To communicate that idea you were excited about. No idea? No song

It's called Prosody and it is the most important thing in songwriting, look it up

2. Take a sheet of paper and write your idea on it. Then below that do 5 minutes of free writing on the concept/story of your choice

3. Look back over your writing and find a phrase or two that you like, read them out in a rhythmic fashion,

4. Now think of rhymes for the end syllable of a phrase, pick a rhyming word that fits with the idea go back over your writing to find material to fill out the rhyming phrase. You should now at the very least, have a couplet.

5. Taking what you have, go back over your material and in light of what you have just written, name the song, it's not hard, just do it.

6. Now you have a title and a phrase, sing it, if the concept is dark then use a dark sounding melody, a happy one likewise, reading over the rest of your freewriting, freestyle melodically and lyrically for a while recording yourself as you do.

7. Go back over what you have sang and pick the catchyest melody, fill in the lyrics and be strict about bottom lining your concept with them. This is your chorus.

8. Turning back to your first couplet use it's cadence and free writing to fill out two verses worth of melody and lyric. tell the story of the song in the verse and drive the point home in the chorus.

9. Now after the second chorus, think about a vacation, a" what if?" in opposition to your main idea, conceptualize it as "what would have happened if what I'm singing about didn't?"  Free write and melodically improvise while recording, go back and chose your best parts while filling in the lyrics, you now have your bridge.

10. build from your "Vacation" back to your chorus which will be stronger for your having created such deep contrast in the bridge.

11. For your doubling of the end chorus, do some improv on your second rep, this will be your outro.

12. You have now written a song! Not lyrics, not music but a SONG! Congratulations! Perhaps it sucks? I expect it does, but that is excellent news, you are paving the way for great ones to follow. The important thing when in this process is DON'T STOP and DON'T GET STUCK! There is no "I'll come back to this later" BS you write a song in ONE SITTING, you can make changes later, but when you sit to write you come back with a finished song no matter how bad.

Don't ever get stuck because you can't think of anything good, better to move forward with a bad idea then to get stuck looking for a good one. This is NO EXCUSES NO B.S! You come back with a complete song or don't come back at all.!

I have given you the keys to the kingdom, now the only question is:

Did my fart smell bad enough that you must turn the key and escape through the gates?

I hope it did,

God Bless the cousin of the beast

Dee Lux "DX7"