3. Build your creative vision
With your main idea in hand, it’s time to flesh out a vision for your song.
You don’t need to have everything defined beforehand, but developing the general idea of your song will give you a framework for the rest of your creative process.
Here are some questions to ask yourself as you build out your vision for a song:
What mood will my song have?
Identifying a mood for your song will help you with all sorts of questions. Is it spirited, or melancholy? Should it be fast and aggressive? Or chill and groovy?
Define the mood and you’ll be able to make decisions faster.
What elements will my song include?
You can really narrow things down if you know what your song doesn’t need.
For example, does your song have singing or lyrics? If not, you can skip that part of the process entirely.
But if you know you need a great bassline to make it work, then it’s worth spending more time to figure it out.
In fact, many songwriters prefer to start with an element they know will be central to the rest of the song.
For some that’s the groove or the drums, for others it’s the vocal hook or chord progression.
Does my song have a topic?
Is your song about something? Do you speak to it directly in the lyrics? Or is it more of a general theme?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, try to focus on your topic as you write.
Some of the best songs tell a story!