Discovering Your Successful Songwriting Process John Chisum Module 11: The Hit Song Equation WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHERE YOU ARE AND PRO SONGWRITERS? WHAT IS IT THEY KNOW THAT LETS THEM CRANK OUT HIT AFTER HIT? Hi everybody, John Chisum with you again to continue our journey into The Successful Christian Songwriting Course. And if you really want to know the answer to those two questions, here it is: Pro songwriters know that songs are more assembled than “written.” © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. Professional songwriters aren’t depending on the whims of inspiration or the occasional great idea to float through their heads to make them feel like writing. They understand that writing is a lot more like construction, like building a house, than what we think of as being inspired by God in a flash of lightning to write out lyrics in four minutes that will change the world…. Not saying that doesn’t happen from time to time, but it seems to happen for the people who already know how to write and are already writing at a pretty high level. Then there’s the rest of us, right?! I’ve watched it happen time and again when working with our NCS Boot Camp songwriters. They come into Boot Camp having written pretty much like you might be, writing from your intuition and what you think songwriting is…. © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. If you watched the last lesson, most aspiring songwriters are writing on the far left of The Song Continuum I shared…. Writing more devotionally than commercially. Now, that’s perfectly fine unless you want to write commercially. The difficulty for aspiring writers is understanding the differences between just writing about God or writing what they’re feeling about God and a truly commercial-grade song that can compete at radio or find its way into people’s hearts around the world. Commercial songs are well-crafted songs. The higher the craft, the more effective the song. Think about your favorite Blake Shelton song or your favorite pop song that the whole world seems to be in love with… These songs have certain characteristics that make them so highly contagious, immediately memorable and sticky. Every common characteristic in hit songs recorded by artists like Taylor Swift or Blake Shelton or Beyonce or name someone you love who is a © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. mega-hit artist are crafted, constructed, built line by line, word by word, even syllable by syllable to stick in your head. The writers are thinking at a higher level than the rest of us. It’s not that they’re all so much more talented - - they’re often just more skilled. They’ve learned their craft so well that they don’t waste a syllable, even. They know our Hit Song Equation and use it over and over, refusing to write mediocre songs. Let’s look at our equation again and begin to break it down into its individual components over the next few lessons. Great Idea/Hook + Great Lyric + Great Melody = A Great Song Regardless of how the song hits you, pro songwriters aren’t writing strictly from their emotions or from a spiritual experience, at least not often. © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. Pro songwriters understand the CRAFT of writing and use every tool they have to ASSEMBLE great songs. The first mistake you might be making is thinking you should sit down and write a whole song at once, especially if you’re not starting with a great idea or hook. Yes, some writers start with a melody idea or snippet, and hit songs can certainly start this way, especially in the pop song world where 80% are love songs and the subject matter is pretty much pre-determined. But Christian songwriting is generally more message-driven and every pro writer I know and work with begins with an IDEA, a hook, or at least the essence of what they want to say in a song long before the first note is written. They don’t just sit down and EMOTE a song all over the place. They aren’t locked in to the need to feel anything as they work. © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. They and I certainly believe we’re already inspired before we start because we live inspired instead of waiting for it, but the whole song process is more about working than emoting. We know we’re focusing our creativity on writing something more useful than our fleeting emotions or cathartic expressions. Here’s what we do... We start with the best IDEA/HOOK we can find and usually fashion a chorus first. Not always, but almost always, we start with some of the prewriting exercises we discussed in an earlier lesson, even if that prewriting takes only a few minutes, then begin by talking out what a great CHORUS could be with this idea. It’s not difficult to imagine Matt Redman and Jonas Myrin starting 10,000 Reasons with the phrase, “Bless the Lord, o my soul” and building the verses out from that wonderful chorus. © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. We’ll talk later about sticking to the OBI, or the One Big Idea, throughout your lyric, but beginning with the chorus solidifies the OBI so you can construct the rest of the lyric around it. It’s also not unusual for us to write the entire lyric with just a simple working melody in our heads before the real music is written. So “chunking it down” into sections makes it easier to work with. Mirroring the line length and syllable count in the second verse is crucial, as well, so pay attention to it as you’re working. And it’s almost never a good idea to write differing choruses - you should repeat your chorus and not make it different each time except under very special circumstances. Listeners need to have the repetition as the chorus repeats instead of having to remember something different each time. In the end, though, it’s impossible to over emphasize that the one big idea of your song is what’s most important because... Killer ideas are KING. © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. Your song is only as good as your idea, so you’ve got to make them great BEFORE you start writing the song instead of just hoping you’re going to back into a great idea. Not saying it can’t happen, but... Hit songwriters know that it’s as much about where you START as where you end up. Think about people like Dianne Warren with cuts by some of the biggest pop stars in the world, iconic writers like Elton John… or on the Christian side think about people like Bill & Gloria Gaither, Chris Tomlin, Matt Maher, Paul Baloche, and countless other songwriters here in Nashville whose names you won’t recognize but who keep the country, pop, and Christian artists flowing with hit songs… One of the most common reasons songwriters don’t get anywhere is that they just sit down with an empty head and start writing, and…. © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. Great writers spend more time looking for great ideas than they even have to spend writing them…. They already KNOW how to write…. Now the question is “Where’s the next big idea coming from?!” Let’s break this equation down and dig a little into each one with some examples to help you grasp what I’m talking about. How to Find Great Ideas Where do great ideas come from? Before we answer that, keep in mind that great ideas rarely happen from sitting down at your laptop or instrument just HOPING they’ll happen. HOPE IS NOT A STRATEGY. © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters. Reprint only by written permission. All Rights Reserved. Keep hoping for great ideas, for sure, but not just when you’re ready to write - - keep the antennae up and keep good notes every day - - you’ve got to keep yourself in an awareness of ideas flying around you. Great song ideas are flying all around you every single day. They happen in conversations, in books, in magazines, in commercials, in sermons, in the Word, all over the internet - - - literally millions of great song ideas are swirling around us. The question isn’t so much where they come from but ​are you listening for them? ​Is your radar up and ready to receive great ideas? I mentioned in an earlier module about Bill Gaither commenting once that he “just wasn’t listening that day” that someone else wrote an amazing song and he didn’t, as if the idea are floating around in the atmosphere for anyone to grab. © All materials are the sole properties of John Chisum and Nashville Christian Songwriters.