Songwriting Nashville Style - Writing Song Titles

The first thing a songwriter should do is something called brainstorming. Brainstorming is the act of letting ideas flow through your brain until you come up with good ideas for your new song. Below you will find information about how to find good song ideas and also how to develop a great title.

Say you've decided you're going to write a song about dogs. Ask yourself how many different types of dogs are there? Will you write about all dogs or merely one particular breed? The first thing I'd do is a little research. Dogs is a big area so let's try to narrow it down and find something interesting that would make a good song and keep a listener's attention. Go to the library ir a search engine and research dogs. Fast forwarding let’s say you've decided to write a song about Collies. Remember Lassie. Everyone knows about Lassie, so collies would be a good idea for your song because everybody can identify with them. Because, remember we said you need an idea a lot of people can relate to,

Now that you have an idea, the next thing you want is a good title, one people will remember. If you don't have a good title, you don't have a song. You want a memorable song title, no matter whether it is a rock song title, a country song title or any other style song. A good song title makes the writing process so much easier. So how do you find a good title for your song?

First, write down all the main words from your idea. For our exercise that would be dog or dogs and collie. Also, find a good Thesaurus and look for other terms related to dog or Collie that you could use in the lyrics of your song, You want the lyrics to flow, the story to move along line by line and you want to use different words that all relate to the main idea. This is where a Thesaurus can be your best friend.

So our title could be “My Dog the Collie”, “Collies Are Great Pets” or “A Collie For Your Thoughts”. I Think the last one is great because it is a play on the old phrase, "A Penny For Your Thoughts", and brings some humor into the mix.

Let’s talk more about what you do after you get an idea for a new song. After I get an idea for a new song, I ask myself several questions. First, I ask myself if I think there is enough of a story to make a complete song, or should I let the idea be part of another song. If I answer yes to the first question, I then ask myself if there is a big enough audience for the finished product. You need to have a good idea who your audience is for the song you want to write. This will help you decide on a title for your song. So let's look at how to come up with a good title for your song. In this case we know there are millions of dog lovers out there and og those there are enough Collie lovers to give us a good audience for our song. This knowlwdge is very important because the bottom line is you want to make sure there are enough potential CD buyers out there.

Songs that only have a small audience are harder to get published by a music publisher. The audience is who buys the CD's, goes to the concerts and ultimately they are the people who pay the songwriter's salary. After all, it's all about making money and the money is the main motivator for professional songwriters, even the ones who do it because they love it. If they weren't making money, they couldn't keep writing songs.

On another note, sometimes "small audience" songs, do end up as an "album cut", a song that is on the CD but isn't a single. But still, the best rule for writing a new song, is to always swing for the fence, shoot for making all your songs hit songs.

After you have your idea and a good title, the next thing to do is to write a short summary of your story idea. This will guide you and keep you on track. Otherwise you might get side tracked and take the story somewhere you didn't intend for it to go as you try and think of lyrics and rhymes. Once you have a summary, you are ready to begin writing the lyrics and eventually the music for your new song.

With our title being, “A Collie For Your Thoughts” we know we've done well because everyone loves dogs and there are millions of collie lovers out there. So this title is going to appeal to many people. And the fact that it is a play on the old phrase, “A Penny For Your Thoughts”, brings humor to the mix which listeners will like. No matter what type of song you write or what the subject matter is, you always want to appeal to the emotional side of the listeners. You gotta make 'em laugh, cry, shout or get some reaction from them. You gotta touch them somewhere. Never forget that in your writing.