Favorite Song Writing Techniques

Morrissey of The Smiths was great at making songs in a major key sound melancholic. It was partly because of his voice and partly because his melodies tended to jump back and forth between the major 3rd and the 5th of the scale a lot - which is in itself a minor interval. 
 
I use multiple time signatures a lot. My projects are often a real mess because of it. Aside from electronic music I've always had a deep interest in folk music, particularly British singers like Bert Jansch, and because of that my ears are very attuned to the idea of letting lyrical content dictate bar lengths. Folk singers will often shorten or lengthen bars to fit the lyrics they're singing, so you might get a song in 4/4 which has the occasional bars of 3/4 or 5/4 in order to accommodate a lyric which wouldn't otherwise fit. Although most of my music is instrumental, I have picked up a lot of that rhythmic style over the years. 

My techniques has yet to be codified as it continually fails.

For platform and location independence I use Simplenote - a quick text-only note pad which comes as an Android app and also browser-based for PC/laptop. It updates across the platforms reliably. I also use HiQ mp3 recorder app on the phone for quick access to recording ideas off guitar (or banjo) or keyboard (I don't do lyrics). I also use the Box app (and web-browser based) (in fact I also use BT cloud Google cloud and Dropbox, but tend to gravitate to Box for no real reason).
 
For text notes of tunes I tend to use my own coded way of numbers, e.g.
 
[key Cmaj,swing]  .5 / 61 16 1. 21 / 4. 32 32 3. / 21...  
- this of course is an approximation of Help Me Rhonda. I would like to point out that I didn't actually compose that particular melody. 
 
jdf

I like to make weird chord progressions work through melody.  Radiohead does that really well.  Although when I try, it seems to turn out not nearly as weird as I intended. 
 
I wish I had a technique.  Really..sometimes it's sitting around playing the acoustic and whisper singing...sometimes I'm on the drum set and a riff comes to me...sometimes it's a pure DAW experience where I track ideas and then play along with other instruments as if it was a band jam...
 
most stuff comes from inside my head, with no instrument around, driving around or at work...then I fear forgetting it, so my phone has about 20 short audio files of me mouthing guitar music with senseless lyrics in between breaths...hope no one hears that, would be embarassing..

I like what Herb and Bit said for sure ....
 
One thing I like to do as far as inspiration goes is to sit down and just play my guitar wile listening to the overtones and possible melodic voices that are already contained within the chords voices itself ...
 
Using a C major chord for example , C E G ...most peoples ears are trained enough to hear the C as the root , the E as the Major third and the G as the fifth ...
 
IMHO , here's where it can get interesting with a little musical game  I like to play ...
For starters I may take the C E or the G  building blocks of a C major triad and build a  chord making those notes the major or the minor third of a chord , the fifth of a chord  Major , minor 7 th ect ...or the root of a chord ...major , minor , 7 th ect ect ...
That alone can open up a lot of new doors even if my chosen target tonality was to stay true to the sound of C major ...
The C as a root we all know how it sounds, The C as a minor third in relationship to an A note can imply  a minor third sound the sound of A minor the 6 th degree of the diatonic tonality of C Major
The C as a major third can imply an A b major chord , the C as a b 7th in relationship to D can make and become a D7 chord ..
The C as a major 7 th tone in relationship to D b  can become and imply a Db major 7 th chord ....
 
For the sake of what I'm suggesting if you were able to grab your instrument and play a C triad C E G and then play any number of the possible variations I have just mentioned as chords , you would hear very easily a number of very popular chord progressions you have heard a 1000 times before ..
 
Why not try it , play a C chord first , then build a chord I have mentioned using the above concept , then play  the C chord again ...Your ears will know I'm speaking the Truth ...
 
for the sake of brevity I will leave it at that for now ...
When  one is so inclined , and if they took the time to do the same with the E, and G notes as I mentioned as what I did with the C note , they would soon discover that they would have and hold the key to unlocking thousands of new possibility's well within their musical grasp 
It can do a lot deeper than that of course ...as deep as you want to go ....
IMHO , this is a good place to start ,
 
all the best,
 
Kenny

Here's a quick example of the kind of wackiness I come up with using the Melodyne technique described above. It still needs a lot of work (especially with the velocities, which are often all over the place after a Melodyne conversion). This is just output to a quick patch I made with Rounds. Pretty crazy huh? You end up with some very odd rhythms as well. This was just some crazy MIDI I had lying around from a Melodyne conversion from god knows where...I can't even remember. I think it was me playing guitar through loads of delays and stuff. I have loads of raw MIDI material lying around like this that I convert and then set aside, recently I picked this one and chipped away at it and sculpted something which kind of makes Melodic sense in a wacky sort of Zappa-esque kind of way....maybe not your cup of tea, but the point is that this is something I would have never come up with using conventional writing techniques....
 
https://soundcloud.com/sharke-1/record-6-2459

My iPhone voice memo recorder is full of me singing bits of lyrics, little melodies and stuff that pop into my head.  I sort through that every once in a while and find the good nuggets.

iPhone voice recorder because I commute to work every day. If I don't capture the idea, it's gone.
I also have a template setup for a vocal mic, piano, acoustic or electric guitar. 
I will start messing around with nothing in mind until something interests me.
I have lots of takes that were not played to a metronome.
I put the date in the song title and go back to listen at times.
At this point, I have more ideas waiting to become songs than not.
 
Once I get a new song idea started, I will start building the chords to a basic drum track. I will sing melody over it but without any meaningful lyrics. In fact, I will substitute actual words with guttural sounds - anything to just be a placeholder.
 
Then, as the song takes shape, I will start writing lyrics to the melody. Lyrics take the longest for me. I might work on them for weeks/months. Not in a hurry so it doesn't matter. 
Once that is all done, I start working on the arrangement of all the parts. That takes less time because I am not that good on guitar and I tend to except my playing too quickly. I have found great use of Melodyne to help me with the gross imperfections of some of my work. 
 
When all of that is done, I start mixing. That can take weeks and weeks. I am never happy with the first batch of them. My studio, headphones, iPhone, and car all tell me something different. It is all a compromise at this point. At this point, I don't have anyone to answer too but my fellow forum songwriters and myself. There was a time in my life where it all really mattered with publishing deals, album deals, filmscoring, etc. Those were the days when you did not have the opportunity of working on something over and over again for months at a time. Then, when you recorded, you had to commit to tape and move on again. Now, I have all this technology to help me. I don't take any of it for granted. 
 

I had a Technics turntable once.
 
I later wished I had another one and microphone.
 

Interesting chat on it all.....yeah Kenny....imagine what we ain't heard from Prince yet....supposedly a load locked up in that vault...
 I got loads of ideas on phones(sim cards) 'n MC7 now ...some taking shape as songs though only a few that are almost to completion.   Time is fleeting in these busy summer months....much to do this fall to catch up....but I get my pick'n moments as I can and trying to keep the "songs" moving along ....  ;o)

eph221

Mesh

Midiboy
 
 
What are some of your favorite song writing techniques? 

Beer

Mesh this isn't a good idea.  That used to be my strategery as well.  

Yeah, best to move up to better drugs. 

Pitter patter Pitter patter....bam bam bam......
....shower jamz ....or in the rain   ....always rockin   ;o) 
 Seriously though my best lyric moments are when I first wake up very early....before I even want/need to .... ideas based on first thoughts as I come outta the am dream phase of sleep...and if I don't jot it (on phone)down...no way I would remember it .  Now it's just puttin them sucka's to the right tunes  ... ;o)
 
 

I like writing songs even tho I don't play any instrument very well.

I have RealGuitar  play one of its basic picking patterns to a 4 measure chord sequence.
I have another track for the melody part, usually a steel guitar. I insert notes in PRV view (with the mouse) until something interesting happens and build on that.
After a whole lot of evolving changes (including the RealGuitar pattern) I can come up with a pretty good song, IMO.

It's all MIDI tho, not that there's anything wrong with that. Lately I've been learning how to play the melody line on a real electric guitar which enables much better articulations.