How to write music… even if you think you can’t – For easy beginner guitar players to write their first song

NOTE: Read to the end to find out how to easily write music

 

 

Picture this… you finally decide that today is the day you’re going to try and write some music of your own. You grab your guitar, sit down to write and then…

… nothing.

Your mind goes blank, and you start to second guessing every idea that comes to mind because it’s not ‘good enough’.

This is usually what happens for many people (including professional songwriters) when they sit down to write music of their own.

It’s obvious that we need a way to get the ball rolling. So we have to dig into what I call… The Musical Toolbox.

For everything you do on the guitar, you carry around tools with you to make your job of learning guitar easier (just like a builder). Right now, you might be struggling because you’re trying to put up a shelf with no tools to do so… that would be pretty tricky right?

Here’s a great tool to get your started. It’s the idea of using pre-set groups of chords that sound good together, we call these ‘keys’ in music (there’s much more to keys but this is all you need to know for now).

An example of one of the keys is called the ‘Key of C Major’. The group of chords are C Dm Em F G Am Bdim (the last one sounds pretty horrible so lets avoid that).

Ignoring ‘Bdim’, do the following:

1. Choose 4 chords at random from the list above
2. Play them
3. Listen and decide want you like and don’t like
4. Edit the chords until you’re happy

 

Once you’ve done that, the only thing left is to add some rhythm (e.g. finger picking, strumming etc..) to make it sound like music.

If you are struggling to make them sound good, try using one of the structures I’ve provided you below:

There are some common patterns in music. They are:

1. C __ __ G
2. C __ __ F
3. Am __ __ Dm
4. Am __ __ Em

 

You can fill in the blanks with the other chords from above.

And make sure you use chords that you know how to play, so that’s easy for you to play through them.

If you are struggling with the technique of getting the songs to sound good, then get in touch with a guitar teacher to help you with the guitar playing side of things.

However, if you find the right guitar teacher, they should also be able to help you with creativity and songwriting too.

That’s what we do at Guitar Tuition East London in London, England. We help students, even from the very beginning to build up their confidence and creativity, so that they can learn to play a variety of songs and really enjoy the process too. As a beginner guitar player, it can be daunting learning the guitar. So we try to make it as much as possible.