COMMON SONGWRITING MISTAKES AND HOW TO AVOID THEM

​Are your songs not getting results? Is that latest greatest song you’ve written not having the impact on your audience that you were so sure it would. Often the difference in a good song and one that moves the listener is a simple quick fix.
                                                                                                                                                                         
Keep your intro under 15 seconds. One of the most common mistakes in commercial songwriting is the long intro. As a rule, intros should be 15 seconds or less. You will only have the listeners valuable attention for a short time. It’s important to keep that attention and get to the meat of your song. 15 seconds gives you enough time to set the mood and groove of your song and wet the listeners appetite for more to come! Basically your first 30 seconds of your song is the time you have to attract listener’s attention and make sure they are going to sit there and listen to your song. Don’t waste much of this precious time on a long intro. 

​Point of view recheck. Do a quick pronoun check of your lyrics. If your verse is first person “You and I” then the rest of the song she not be ”She & He.”  This seems like a basic idea but I can't tell you how many times I’ve seen potentially great songs confused their listeners by mixing up pronouns. We've all done it and in most cases it’s a really quick fix, taking a few minutes to get it done but the result will be a “correct” song, living on this earth for good.
 
Add more “furniture” to your verse. While feelings are an important part to any song, it's important to set-up your song with enough details or what I’d call ”furniture”. As the songwriter we already know all the details of the story of our song and it’s easy to forget the listener has never heard our story. The listener needs to see as well as hear that story for the best emotional impact and it’s our job to pain all those details of the environment and atmosphere of the song for the listener. They are not inside our brain and they don’t know what is going on. We know and we are telling them. Then tell them properly!
 
The Verse Shuffle. Often by the time we get around to writing the 2nd verse of our song, we are much clearer on what our song is about. Look at your lyrics honestly. Is the 2nd verse better? More focused? No problem, just make that your new 1st verse! And see if you can salvage a couple lines from the 1st verse to start a brand new 2nd verse. This simple reshuffling can many times transform a good song into a great song.
 
At the end of the day songwriting at it’s best is a true art form. And while there are no hard and fast rules, these basic guidelines can will help your song have a greater impact on your audience.

Author

Hangi Tavakoli is our in-house established and professional music producer with 20 years of experience in songwriting, music production, mix and mastering. He has written and produced more than 5,000 published songs to-date, including some major hits in international scale.