7 Songwriting Tips with Sam Jump and sam Turner
With over 16 years of songwriting experience, Sam Jump of Jump and Turner shares 7 songwriting tips that he has found useful over his career.
I’ve been fairly actively songwriting for the last 16 years of my life and during that time I’ve had good days and bad days and everything in between. On good days I absolutely love what I’m doing and it’s a great way to spend a few hours, or the whole day blowing off steam. On bad days I used to wonder what on earth I’m doing and feel like I’m banging my head against a brick wall while staring at a blank piece of paper. And, there’s nothing worse than staring at a blank piece of paper for hours on end, criticising yourself, feeling like a loser and wondering if you’ve ‘lost the magic’ from the good session you had a couple of days ago. We’ve all been there and that feeling sucks!
So I’ve put together my top 7 songwriting tips, that help me write more songs, have better ideas and improve my songwriting overall. Let’s get stuck in.
Make Notes
Voice Recordings
Journaling & Free Writing
Look for themes in everything
Song Mapping
Get in a vibe
Mash all tips together
Make Notes
This list isn’t in any order of priority, but if it were, this one would be right up there. Make notes. Make notes of good ideas as and when you get them, in a book, on your phone - wherever. So you don’t forget them or lose them. I’ve got a couple of books full of one liners, two liners, verses, all sorts. The same on my phone. Then on those mystical and magical occasions a harmony is delivered to my mind, I flick through past me’s notes and try out some of the lines with the harmony and see if it inspires any new ideas for me. I’ve written loads of songs like this. I’ve been sent backing tracks, then had a melody idea and written the lyrics entirely from putting one liners and two liners together that ive noted at different times.
If you’re ever writing with anyone else as well, these collections of ideas can be such a great jumping off point to inspire conversation and begin songwriting. These notes will get you out of trouble and mean that you’re never starting off with a blank empty page waiting for the god of inspiration to strike you with a lightbulb moment.
Voice Recordings
To be fair, this is basically the same as the previous point. But again, so so useful! You probably have a smartphone, which probably has some kind of voice recording app - use it! Record inspiration as and when it hits and then use it later when you need to. You could be getting out of the shower, in the car, going for a walk (please note - all activities where you’re allowing your mind some freedom from binging on phone based distractions) when you have a fantastic melody or lyrical idea, record it! Don’t allow it to just float away. You can use it when you get home later and progress it or an entirely different day, month or year when you need it. But if you don’t record it, you’ll most probably forget it in it’s original form and it’ll be lost.
Journaling & Free Writing
These are really two separate activities with different benefits. But as I’m writing this in the context of songwriting I’m going to group them together.
Many people find journaling a great way to clear your mind of all the rubbish from the day and get a decent night’s sleep. Clearing your mind is great, because of instead of obsessing over something that happened or could happen, you allow yourself to do other things, like sleeping, or songwriting. Journaling is also good because once again you are documenting, and if you’re not only documenting things that happened but also the way they made you feel - you will end up with a pretty solid bank of material that someday you might look back through and be inspired to write a song about.
In my opinion, free writing has similar benefits, this is where you sit down, pick up a pen and just write whatever comes into your head. It might be a load of things you just need to get out of your head and down on paper that doesn’t really make sense together at all, it’s a stream of consciousness. I used to do this in the mornings to help me clear my head from worries I’ve been having through the night and start the day with a blank slate.
If you’re ever lacking inspiration to write a song I recommend giving free writing a go. Just follow your stream of consciousness for 5 - 10 minutes and write everything and anything you think. Once your timer has gone off, read back through what you have written to see if there’s any themes or patterns there that recur or great lines or anything that might inspire you to start writing a song. Free writing can also be a great way of fleshing out area’s you’re feeling a bit dry on. If you get stuck with 2nd verse syndrome, title the page the theme or just a word that describes what you’re trying to say, then freewrite around that theme. It’s a bit like non stop brainstorming, the non stop part helps because it means that you don’t censor yourself and get in your own way.
Look for themes in everything
Look for themes in other lyrics, books, newspapers, articles. This is a pretty generic one you’ve probably seen other people talk about. I’m fairly sure I’ve heard or been told about David Bowie famously chopping up newspaper headlines and smushing them all together to write songs before. - not really what I’m on about but why not try it. I mean looking out for themes, phrases etc that get ‘the little grey cells’ going. It really can be very effective. Although I think that instead of actively looking for things in a small window of time and being blind to them outside of that time period - try and just be generally more consistently mindful and note down (back to point 1) things when you see them. Again, you might use them straight away or they could help you out years down the line.
Song Mapping
This one isn’t about looking for inspiration at all, this one is about song structure. When I was younger I thought pop music was rubbish and I only really liked Jimi Hendrix and prog rock. I also thought naively, ignorantly, arrogantly - that rules didn’t matter, form didn’t matter and pop music was just talentless bubblegum trash. So when I tried to prove to myself that I could write a pop song I was humbled quite quickly when I realised I didn’t have the skill or knowledge to structure a song.
So I worked really hard on it, analysed A LOT of different songs, watched a lot of youtube videos and spoke to some fantastic songwriters who really helped me have a much better understanding of writing pop songs.
Song Mapping is one of the tips I picked up along the way. The idea is this: before you pick up your instrument(s), work out the theme of the song, work out what you’re going to write about. Once you’ve done that, map it like you’re planning a story, theme of the story, beginning, middle, end.
Once you’ve got that, you can take it further and start structuring your song. The theme of the song is probably going to be recurring and will most likely be the chorus, (I hate you / I love you etc). Then you have the verses, pre chorus (optional) middle 8 / bridge (optional / whatever you call it) and there are no real rules here, you can do as you please and have fun with it.
I won’t dwell too much on song structures or what should go where in this blog but will come back to it in the future with a different blog. But the point of Song Mapping is so that you don’t get stuck in the middle of the song and ditch it because you get writer’s block. If you’re anything like me I usually get stuck on verse 3 or 4 after the first chorus.
Get in a vibe
Pick up your instrument and find a nice chord pattern, open up a beat, slap on a backing track and just get into it. Start singing random oohs and scattng over it. See where it takes you. Songwriting aside, this is such a nice way to pass the time, just noodling away - surely it’s just good for you anyway to spend time doing this.
But once you’re ‘into it’ maybe it’s happy, maybe it’s sad, maybe it’s something else, just start fleshing it out with words and see where it takes you.
This is such a lovely way to spend time, but for me the least successful way to songwrite. But remember, if you don’t end up writing a song, no problem - maybe you’ll get some great melody or lyrical ideas for use later.
Mash all tips together
Do them all. There’s no rules to this, all these tips really help when you put them all together, maybe you got a great melody the other day in the car. Then today you sit down and do a bit of freewriting or journaling and then a line sticks out, you open up your voice recordings and yes! The melody and the line is a perfect fit. Success. Be free with it, have fun with it. May you use these tips as I do to limit the amount of self loathing experienced when inspiration stubbornly won’t strike.
If you have enjoyed these songwriting tips, be sure to check out the other articles we have featured on our blog.
