"Ba bam, baladi ba dum!"

You sing along to your favourite songs that play on the radio every day. But do you ever ponder how they were made and the gruelling process singers and songwriters have to go through to write them? Today I will be explaining the steps behind writing a song, and maybe you could go write your own hit singles!

The first step to writing a song is to come up with a chorus melody for your instrument of choice. This is the catchy part that you listen to on replay. Once you have this created, you start to work on your song structure. The song structure is how the song is built; you could start with a chorus first, or you could start with a verse. It's your choice; don't worry! There are many different song structures, and they are often used to convey different emotions, such as excitement and nostalgia. They often represent different styles of music.

After you finish creating your song structure, you should write the music for the verses. This part is relatively easy because the verses tend to be slower and more repetitive. Once you have all of your music written down, you can begin to develop vocal melodies. These are the notes and tunes that the singer will be singing. When those are created, you are free to devise the best part of the song, which is... You guessed it!

THE LYRICS!

Singers and songwriters will often add a bridge, which is a part of the song that changes the melody a little bit and is often towards the end. You don’t have to write a bridge if you don't want to. In fact, a lot of popular songs don’t include bridges. The intro and outro are the last pieces of the song to be written. These are what introduce you to the song, which may be instrumental or vocal. The outro is what you hear as the song is finishing. This can include the chorus playing while fading out, another instrumental bout, or another verse that leads until the very end of the song.

Once you have all of that completed, you can record your song in a studio! This part is the most enjoyable, in my opinion. After the song is recorded, you start to make small adjustments as you see fit. Eventually, you will have your perfect mix of the song, and you can finally release it to the public!

Sometimes, when a popular singer releases a song, people automatically think that they wrote it all by themselves. This isn’t the case for most songs, though! There are typically a couple of songwriters working on the song that don’t get as much recognition as they deserve. So next time you listen to a song, check out who wrote it, because they did amazing!!! I hope you loved learning about how to write a song. Who knows, maybe you want to write your own? Go ahead and enjoy the process!

Written by Autumn Aschinger
Edited by Hazel Antler
Proofread by Lily