I believe I have posted this song in my earlier posts, but today I would like to share how my thoughts while writing this song or any song in particular. First, this is just my way of writing, and I don't claim that it's the best way or there's only one way to write songs.
Second, I would never dare to even put my advice as weighty as songwriters like Ryan Tedder, Taylor Swift or Katy Perry. Their words and thoughts on songwriting carries more weight than mine as they have written more songs with millions and millions listen and they themselves are Grammys winners!
But I do consider myself a songwriter (you should too).
Yes, I'm still learning but I do have a little bit more experience now,
as I have put out my works for people to listen
and I do have songs that are occasionally sung by others through out different times.
Songwriting, I honestly think anyone can write songs. Maybe that may be a naive assumption.
Okay then, I'll rephrase what I said:
I believe there's more people who shoulda and coulda write songs if they knew it's already within them.
Songwriting, I know we are very careful with plagiarism and some of us may be prone to write songs that sound very similar to other popular songs. (See the case of Mariah Carey's Thank God I Found You)
A good example songs that are very similar would be the chorus between these two songs:
I find the chorus of Joyce Chu's Simple Love is very similar to TF Boys' Manual of Youth
Stealing ideas or good coincidence? We'll never know. Don't worry, keep writing THAT song of yours.
But I find these two songs to be very nice Pop songs to listen to.
My point is that: there's no such thing as an original idea,
a great idea is always an improved copy of an idea that is already there.
Yes, it may look much different, it is often an inspiration of something that already exist.
So is writing a song.
I wrote the song, Billion Stars in 2014.
It may have been the highest viewership that I ever got from the songs that I've written. Around 6,7k views so far. Though I wouldn't consider myself a "pro" in songwriter, because I'm not, I guess I'm just a little bit more thick skin in showing my work when it comes to songwriting.
Back then, I started out wanted to write a slow song.
That's all. And the ideas grow as I try to learn from experiment with ideas
and as I attentively to songs that are already in world.
Here is my earlier version of the draft of the song. I know, I sound bad in singing. If I can do it, you can too and you could probably write even better songs.
I know right? It sound so typical right?
In my mind, I wanted to write a ballad for the church music scene.
I was thinking about a kinda of pre-chorus that is mouthful, I look to Relient K's Who I Am Hates Who I've Been and Chinese pentatonic scales as my reference.
But in my mind I also didn't want a typical pop ballad, I wanted some R&B elements like Jay Chou's love songs. So I referred to songs by Jay Chou and Boy II Men for ideas, especially to get the special drum beats.
So that is my rough idea of the kind of sound I wanted to be in my composition, I don't wanna copy, I wanna "steal" from those reference.
Here's a tip on being "original", try stealing from more sources instead of just one genre or one song. Try mixing and matching ideas, even if it sounds weird, don't disregard as bad or as a stupid idea at the early stage.
And here you go, my final product, after getting a local producer in Kota Kinabalu to produce it the same year!
It cost us less than rm1k to produce this one song.
