Hey guys! :) It’s Li Ying here. If you remember in a previous discussion, we AAM-ers thought it might be fun to write a song for David or perhaps about David. Inspiration for this came when Tracy posted the song It’s Not Goodbye from the Vietnamese Archies.
I am still a newbie at this songwriting business. I only started getting into it seriously 6 months ago after finishing college. But since then I have embarrassingly sent a set of my lyrics and some music written on manuscript paper to David in Chile. Urrgghh.. Thankfully I found out soon after (might have been from Kari) that David can’t read music notes. Pheww… but I hope he forgot that first letter, it was super awkward. *cringe*
Anyways, I was watching some videos on songwriting and I thought I might share them here. I mean, I’m not sure about you all, since I criticise David a lot about his songwriting, I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t learn more about it myself. Also, I thought we might like to learn about the craft which is essentially (supposedly) David’s main job description (I hope lah) as a musician.
So what goes on behind every song? Each person has their own method. Here’s a couple of vids I found on my favourite songwriting blog allaboutsongwriting.com which is run by an experienced songwriter, Corey Stewart. You can head over there and have a look around. His articles are really helpful. He’s also very happy to answer your questions so if you have any just leave a comment.
The method in the videos above is quite straightforward I think. The videos show you how to start writing from the lyrics. It’s a lot more systematic than how I do things: getting out of bed at 2 a.m. to write a word or a phrase down after suddenly thinking about it. 
Here’s another “how to write a song” video. This one’s from Marie Digby. She’s probably a more familiar name to us.
This time, her method is by writing the music first as opposed to writing the lyrics first. If I’m not mistaken this is what David usually does as well. His problem is in writing the words to go with it, which is why he hires other writers. I like Marie Digby’s video because she was actually coming up with the song on the spot so we can see how it actually is done instead of having it explained. Take that Taylor Swift!
Songwriting can be a great way to pass the time. It is also cathartic and purgatory for some people, well in other words it’s good for you in the way that chicken soup is. Or chocolate. :) Like what Marie said. So why not give it a go?
