Things I do for [love] songwriting

A little list of my personal unconscious rituals that actually improved my songwriting

May 21, 2025

Note from Riri: I’d love to read about your favourite exercises to improve songwriting skills. Please share them in the comment section!

Leave a comment

In a world where it’s no longer sufficient to write good songs and instead you must be your own producer, mixing engineer, marketer, filmmaker, visual artist, storyteller, influencer, plumber, cook and nanny it’s pretty much impossible to be good enough. If you’re not really great at any one of the things above, it feels like a reason to be slightly - or not so slightly - ashamed of yourself.

My personal history with music making is long, complicated and still in progress. Now that I’m starting my own solo project I’m constantly stumbling upon things that seem like they should have been obvious to me all along: how to wire guitar pedals? How are guitar solos written and played? How to properly design synth sounds instead of using presets? How to run MIDI through a synth? How to modify sound presets with effects?

I spent quite some time in the last five years working with collaborators who could fill every gap in my knowledge of music production and everything that comes after. With that, all that was required of me was the actual songwriting. It is different now that I’m trying to produce my first ever solo record. The songwriting is still immensely important but so is everything else - everything I have no idea about.

In a situation like this I find myself very lucky to have a few little rituals that I’ve unconsciously adapted to hone and sharpen my songwriting skills. These are the things that help me stumble upon new ideas, develop them more easily and keep my mind fresh and alert with respect to songwriting when I’m too overwhelmed to consciously work on new songs.

They are things that don’t really take any extra time other than the time you’re already spending reading, listening to music or even just talking to anyone, including yourself (especially yourself!).

These rituals are also not something that will yield immediate results. Think of them rather as a passive learning tool, something you just do in the passing for a long period of time only to one day suddenly realise just how much better you’ve become.

Let’s get right to it then, shall we?

NUMBER 1. WRITE DOWN YOUR FAVOURITE MOMENTS FROM SONGS

For this, I have a separate notebook. It’s titled quite plainly: “Tricks I like”.

Essentially, when I find a song with a particularly interesting structure, manner of singing, production, delivery - what have you - I take out the notebook, write down the name of the song and the artist and describe in detail what exactly caught my attention.

It’s usually something really short and simple, like:

“Ur Mum” by Wet Leg - “Up, up, up, up…” + the scream at the end has theatrical vibes

Or:

“Dancing Queen” by ABBA - song starts with second half of the chorus but plays through the chords of the first part prior to that, as an intro

I usually write down things that are less specific and more conceptual. Some of these tricks stay in my head for months on end and if that is the case - they often end up in my own songs one way or another.

NUMBER 2. TRY TO MIMIC THE WAY YOUR FAVOURITE SONGS ARE SUNG

It’s great to have your own style of singing, no question about that. But once you’ve written some ten-twenty-thirty songs, you’ll inevitably notice that you gravitate towards not only the same cadences and melody contours but also the same rhythmic delivery and the same manner of singing. It is entirely possible to get bored of your own singing tendencies and this is where it has really helped me to mimic other musicians’ vocal delivery.

This is something you can easily do while listening to your favourite Fleetwood Mac or Bee Gees song. Try that Stevie Nicks rasp, try those breathy falsetto notes, notice how those melodies are built, where are the syncopations, where does the melody go?

That way, when you go back to your own songwriting, these things will mix with your own tendencies and result into something you never expected of yourself.

NUMBER 3. SING HARMONIES

Apart from mimicking other singers’ delivery I also find it really useful - if not even more useful - to sing a harmony to whatever is the main melody of the song. You can try to sing along to the actual back vocals if there are any or come up with your own harmony.

This is an exercise that might be wildly difficult at the beginning but one that’s really worth it. Essentially, in doing that, you come up with alternative melodies that might not have been used before and that you could repurpose for your own songs (not something I’ve personally done but I imagine it’s a possibility). But more importantly it makes you way more fluent in recognising what works together harmonically which in turn will make writing both top-lines and harmonies super easy, barely an inconvenience.

At this point I do this automatically every time I listen to music, give or take. In these moments I remember the fragment from a Paul McCartney biography where George Harrison was reminiscing about how Paul would come up with harmonies for every song he heard and not even bother to sing the original melody.

Be like Paul, work that melody muscle!

NUMBER 4. TRY TO SING EVERY SENTENCE THAT HAS A RHYTHM

Whenever I talk to somebody - and especially to myself - I stop if I feel like the sentence I’ve just said has a certain musical / poetic rhythm.

Let’s take a phrase like: “I don’t know what to do if the store is closed”. Immediately after saying it I hear the following in my head: “la-LA la-LA la-LA la-la LA-la-LA”. That’s something I can sing! And that’s also something that can inform the melody I will sing over it. I’m almost sure that the first three “la-LA”-s are gonna be sung over the same two notes and that the melody will go up towards the end of the phrase. But that’s me - maybe you can make a ballad out of it!

Not to mention even, that such mundane phrases more than often start the whole lyrics for an actual song. Now I’m not sure I’d write something about going to a store but it’s just an extra outlandish example that I came up specifically for laughs. It’s amazing how often we say something that is mundane on the surface but could be turned into a metaphor you’d never come up with on purpose.

Oh, by the way, it works as well if not better with things other people say. I have a whole collection of phrases uttered by unsuspecting friends and enemies alike that some day might become a song.

NUMBER 5. READ AND UNDERLINE

This last one is as straightforward as it gets. I am a big fan of reading physical books and doing that with a mechanical pencil in hand. Whenever I stumble across a turn of phrase, a metaphor or a thought I find interesting, I underline it and maybe write a comment on the margins. Sometimes reading a certain thought sends me on a tangent and opens up a mental seam, a portal to a different dimension of sorts through which more thoughts seep into my head. For those cases I also like to have a notebook (or at least the Notes App) near me at all times.

English not being my native language, it’s impossible to underestimate how much reading in English has shaped my lyrics. But even if you’re writing in your first language, it is just impossible to generate new ideas without taking in new ideas. So, I guess, apart from the whole underlining business, this point has just turned into an ad for reading as such.

Reading is cool!

Anyways, with these five tips for a quiet but certain improvement of your songwriting I’ve essentially bestowed you with a good bit of my most prrrecious knowledge.

Use it wisely and happy songwriting!

Love, Riri