HELLO SONGWRITERS

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The world is seeing a new dawn of music appreciation, and boy… am I glad that I am here to see it at it’s inception.

Let’s start from the top shall we?

There is… or rather there was this classical myth some believed that if you didn’t know how to sing you couldn’t possibly know jack about song writing, well… that’s a lie you really do not need to have the best voice in the world to know how to make words come alive with music. Having a good voice is a plus for you because you get to control some of the dynamics of the song you eventually write, but it doesn’t mean you need to have the best of voices.

Personally I have written well over 100 songs – many of which, you haven’t heard and most of which are sitting pretty on my YouTube page, some of which have been recorded by my band or sung by my choir and finally 5 of which are available on all music platforms, iTunes and all… here is a fun fact… my voice isn’t one of the prettiest you have heard and it hasn’t stopped me from writing hits yet.

Poets and Song writers

There’s very grey line here that leaves a lot of people touchy, but guess what? I’m about to touch irk some of them right about now…lol.
So we have our Shakespeares and a lot of the modern poets and we have the writers like Ryan Tedder and a million other established writers in the world today. Are they really different? Or are they the same? One thing is for sure, they are both writers and both may apply rhyme patterns in their writing or choose to use free verses. Ok lemme break that down a little:

I’ll let your love shine
Then I’ll make you mine
Notice how the two lines end with two words that rhyme? That’s an A A rhyme pattern, if the two lines didn’t rhyme, it could be seen as an A B pattern and probably the next few lines will follow the same pattern and will stay that way till the end of the write-up. When the entire lines of verses or stanzas have no matching words to end then all through the entire body of the piece, then it can be called a free verse
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MY POINT? Very simple, this two lines can either be two lines found in a song or a poem… so what makes one a poet and the other a song writer? The poet has only the words, the feeling and emotions it portrays on paper and possibly the voice of the reader and/or actor to convey his meaning whilst the songwriter has all of these plus his music to cement his words and meaning in the hearts of its consumers.

Personally, I feel one individual can do both seeing as how I am a published poet and also an internationally recognized songwriter. Try as much as possible not to limit the potentials of your writing prowess. There is no law that says you cannot do both nor is there a law that says you must. I started writing songs long before I discovered that poetry was also one of my strong suits, so I devoted time to harness that talent too. Right now I’ll write you a poem and sing you my song and you will still keep loving me for whichever of the two hits you first.

Musical Knowledge

As a songwriter it’s painful to write a song and just leave it at the mercy of a vocalist and producer who might never realize the full potential of the song and therefore will interpret the song as they see fit, simply because you lacked the basic musical know-how to translate your ideas to them. Now I know there are instances where it’s out of your hands to dictate that because you were simply paid to write words and disappear, but when you are fully involved in the production of the song, knowing when to tell the vocalist to use a few dynamics and telling the producer what chords you prefer can be a game changer for you.