Songwriting templates are pretty useful if you’re just starting out writing your own songs, if your grasp of music theory is a bit dodgy or you’re just lacking inspiration.
Problem is, they’re not easy to find, even if you’re willing to pay. Why not? Because anyone who has the talent to come up with a good chord progression and a good song structure is probably going to use them to write a song of their own, rather than make (probably) not very much money selling them on.
But there’s one option open to you: ‘borrow’ the chord progression and structure of an existing song - perhaps a famous one. Head over to a site like Chordie, pick a song, then play around with the chord progression to see what you can do with it. Try adding your own melody, rhythm and lyrics. You can also use the structure of the song (verses, choruses, bridges and so on) to give you a ready-made template for your own song.
Alternatively, you can mix and match chord progressions and structures between songs: use the chorus chord progression of Song A, the bridge and verse of Song B (making sure you’re playing them in the same key, of course) and the structure of Song C.
Wait - isn’t this stealing?
Not necessarily - it depends how you do it. Clearly if you start borrowing melodies and lyrics you’re probably infringing the original songwriter’s copyright, and if you went on to publish the song and make money out of it, you could get sued. If you’re just doing it to entertain yourself, your family and your friends, however, you can borrow more or less anything you like.
Borrowing chord progressions is much less likely to be a problem, unless they are very, very distinctive. Lots of songs by different bands share very similar chord progressions. Many progressions are so generic and so common that it would be impossible for anyone to sue you, claiming you’d ’stolen’ theirs - especially if you borrow different bits and pieces from different songs.
However, be careful about borrowing very richly textured, complex chord sequences - they can be easily identifiable and the original songwriter might be able to make a stronger claim that the sequence was an identifiable work he or she created, rather than a common, generic chord progression.
At the end of the day, if you’re planning to make money out of your song it’s your responsibility to make sure you’re not infringing anyone’s copyright. So if you’re planning to use this technique to write songs for commercial release, remember these two key tips:
- Only borrow simple, generic chord sequences and song structures
- Mix and match progressions and structures between songs
Some techniques
OK, now we’ve established the basics of what you can and can’t do, here are some handy tips to help you use all those freely available chord progressions and turn them in songwriting templates:
- Borrow from songs you don’t know. If you’re creating a songwriting template using chord progressions from a song you know well, you’re going to struggle to get the original song’s melody and rhythms out of your head as you work. Try to go for tunes you either don’t know very well, or - even better - don’t know at all.
- Play the chords through a few times to familiarise yourself with them. If you come across chords you’re not familiar with, use the tools at All Guitar Chords or Piano World to work out how to play them.
- Work out a melody as you begin to get an instinctive ‘feel’ for the chord progression/template you’re using - it’ll come after you’ve played through and fiddled around a dozen or so times.
- Make sure everything’s in the right key, especially if you’re mixing and matching verses, choruses and bridges from different song progressions to make up your template. Tools like Auto-Transposer can be really useful for doing this if your music theory is a bit rusty.
- If you’ve got a basic home recording setup, try recording the basics of your song template (chords, structure, maybe some basic backing rhythm on guitar or keyboard) and building up layers using a DAW like Garageband or Cubase. If you’re struggling for melodic inspiration, this should help you develop the kind of familiarity with the template structure you need to spark it.
- Remember you don’t need to use the whole of an existing song’s chord progression to create your templates. We’ve looked at songwriting using chord progression loops in an earlier post - you might find you can create something special using just three or four of your template song’s chords.
Anyway, give it a go. If you come up with any interesting songwriting templates as a result of reading this post, or you have any general questions about chord progressions for songwriting, add a comment and we’ll get right back to you!
