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HandoutHandout 1: What to Bring
Handout 1: What to Bring
You don't need much for this. That's kind of the point — a song is words and a few chords, and most of what you need you probably already own. Here's the list, cheap version and nicer version, so you can pick what fits.
The Non-Negotiables
A notebook. Paper, not your phone. Something small enough to keep in your truck or your bag. You will get a line at a stoplight or standing in line at Macey's and if you don't write it down it's gone. I've lost more good lines than I care to admit. Don't be me.
A pen that works. Sounds dumb to put on a list. Bring two anyway.
Something to make sound on. Guitar, ukulele, piano if you've got access to one, or nothing at all — some of you are going to write words first and figure out the tune later, and that's fine. If you've got an instrument sitting in a closet somewhere unused, this is the class to drag it back out for.
Budget Tier
- Notebook from the dollar aisle. Doesn't need to be nice. Mine's got a coffee ring on it.
- Any guitar you already own, even a cheap one, even one that's a little out of tune. We'll fix that first night.
- A capo if you have one. If you don't, don't buy one yet — see below.
- Your phone, for recording yourself. Voice memo app is plenty. I didn't record myself for years and when I finally did I found out I'd been rushing every chorus I ever wrote. Would've saved myself some trouble.
Nice-to-Have Tier
- A proper capo, if you find you're using your guitar a lot and want to play in different keys without new chord shapes. Not required. Just handy.
- A cheap set of headphones, if you're recording yourself at home and don't want the whole house hearing you work out a bad verse. There will be bad verses. That's normal.
- A three-ring binder or folder to keep pages from class together, instead of loose sheets floating around your truck.
- Extra strings, if your guitar's older and you want backup. Our air out here is dry and hard on instruments same as it is on your skin and your garden. Strings go dead faster than you'd think at this elevation.
What You Don't Need
You do not need to know music theory. I don't have it myself — never learned what key or mode anything's in, and it hasn't stopped me writing a song yet. You don't need a fancy guitar. You don't need recording software. You don't need fifteen chords. Three will do you fine for most of what we're making in this room.
Shopping Notes
If you're buying a notebook or a cheap capo, any general store will have what you need — nothing here requires a special trip. If you want a real instrument and don't have one, check around before buying new; a lot of families up here have a guitar in a closet nobody's touched since middle school. Ask around before you spend money. Somebody's aunt has one.
Bring what you've got the first night. We'll sort out the rest as we go. 🙏
HandoutHandout 2: Cheat Sheet — Songwriting Core Techniques
Handout 2: Cheat Sheet — Songwriting Core Techniques
Print this, fold it, keep it in your notebook. This is everything I'd tell you if I only had five minutes. Most weeks I only have five minutes.
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The Three Chords You Actually Need
Most songs that lasted longer than their writer ran on three chords. Learn the fancy stuff later, if you want. Or don't. In the key of G, that's:
- G — home base. Where you start, where you land.
- C — the lift. Moves you somewhere.
- D — the pull back. Wants to resolve to G.
That's it. G-C-D-G will get you through more songs than you'd think. If it sounds too plain, that's fine. I like it plain. That's just me.
Song Shape (the basic one)
- Verse — tell us something specific. A place, a person, a Tuesday.
- Chorus — say the one thing the whole song is about. Same words every time.
- Verse 2 — move the story forward. Don't repeat verse 1 with different scenery.
- Chorus — again.
- Stop.
You don't need a bridge. Bridges are for later, if the song's asking for one. Most aren't.
The Cutting Rule
Whatever you've got, it's probably twice as long as it needs to be. My first finished song had eleven verses about my father's tractor. Jill's whole review was "that's a lot of tractor." I cut it to three. It got better every time I cut it.
Say the thing. Then stop. Nobody has ever complained a song was too short.
Write What You Know
Not what sounds like a song. If you write about heartbreak you never had, people can tell, even if they can't say how. If you write about the thing your grandmother used to hum while she did laundry, that's real, and real lasts longer than clever.
Keep the Wrong Finger
If you land on a chord by accident and it sounds good, keep it. Don't go find out what you were "supposed" to play. I wrote a whole song around a chord I liked and later found out from a kid at church that I'd just put a finger in the wrong spot on a plain G. The finger stayed. The song's fine.
Don't sand every rough edge off. Rough and honest beats smooth and empty.
The Notebook
Keep one in your truck, your bag, wherever. Lines come at stoplights and in the shower and they do not come back on their own. Half of what you write down will make no sense later. Write it anyway. A scrap you can't use today is often the whole point of next month's song.
On Melody
I'll be honest, this is the part I still struggle with. Words come easy to me. Chords I can find by ear. A tune that actually sticks in somebody's head — that one's harder, and I don't have a trick for it beyond keeping it simple. Ambitious melodies get away from me. So I write plain ones. Nothing wrong with plain.
Quick Checklist Before You Call It Done
- Does the chorus say the actual point of the song?
- Could you cut a verse and lose nothing?
- Is there a line in here you didn't earn — something that sounds good but isn't true?
- Did you keep anything "wrong" that's actually working?
That's the whole cheat sheet. Same as canning — you follow the steps, you don't waste anything, and at the end you've got something that lasts. 🌞
WorksheetHandout 3: Song-in-Progress Checklist
Handout 3: Song-in-Progress Checklist
Print this out. Fill it in while you write, not after. It won't make the song good by itself, but it'll keep you from fooling yourself about what's actually on the page. 🙏
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Before you write a word
- [ ] I know what this song is actually about (one sentence, not a mood): _________________________________
- [ ] It's something I know firsthand, not something that just sounds like a song
- [ ] I've picked three chords. Which three: ______ ______ ______
If you can't fill in that first line, stop and figure it out before you go further. A song about nothing in particular usually sounds like it.
While you're writing
- [ ] Verse 1 says the thing plainly
- [ ] I haven't used a word I wouldn't say out loud to a person (no "yearning," no "eternal" — say what you mean)
- [ ] Chorus repeats the main idea, doesn't introduce a new one
- [ ] I counted my verses. How many: _____
If it's more than four, ask yourself honestly whether verse 5 and 6 are saying something new or just saying it again slower. Mine went to eleven once. Nobody needed eleven.
The cut pass
Do this after you've got a full draft, not before.
- [ ] I read it out loud, all the way through
- [ ] I found the line that's just there for a rhyme and doesn't mean anything — circle it
- [ ] I found the verse that repeats an earlier verse in different words — circle it
- [ ] I cut at least one whole line I liked the sound of but didn't need
That last one's the hard one. You'll want to keep it because it sounds nice. Cut it anyway if it's not doing work.
The wrong-finger check
- [ ] Is there a chord or a line that came out "wrong" but you kind of like it?
- [ ] Did you keep it, or did you fix it because you felt like you had to?
No wrong answer here, but be honest with yourself about which one it was. Some of the best stuff in my own songs started as a mistake I didn't bother correcting.
Timing
- [ ] I played it into my phone and listened back
- [ ] I checked whether I rush the chorus (most people do — I did for years and nobody told me)
Last line before you call it done
- [ ] The ending actually ends. It doesn't just stop because I ran out of ideas.
- [ ] If I read only the first and last line, does it feel like the song went somewhere?
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Scrap box. Anything you cut above, don't throw it away. Write it here or in your notebook. Half of what didn't fit this song is the start of your next one.
_________________________________ _________________________________ _________________________________
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That's it. It's not a long list. Songs aren't long things, or shouldn't be. If you've checked most of these boxes honestly, you've got a made thing, not just a feeling with some chords under it. That's the whole job. 🌞
HandoutHandout 4: Troubleshooting Guide
Handout 4: Troubleshooting Guide
Every song hits a snag somewhere. Here's what usually goes wrong for beginners, and what I do about it. None of this is theory. It's just what's broken every time somebody's brought me a stuck song.
1. The song won't end. Most of the time this means you already said the thing two verses ago and kept going out of momentum. My first finished song had eleven verses about my father's tractor. Jill listened to all of them and said "that's a lot of tractor." I cut it to three. It got better, not worse. If you're not sure where to stop, find the line where you already made your point, and stop one line after that.
2. It's too long, generally. Related problem, bigger scale. Cut it down. Say the thing, then quit talking. Nobody has ever complained that a song was too short.
3. You can't find the right chord. You probably don't need a new chord. You need to use the three you've got differently. I wrote a whole song around a chord I liked, and it turned out to just be a G with one finger in the wrong spot. I kept the finger where it was. The wrong version sounded better than the right one.
4. The words sound like a song instead of like you. This is the big one. If you're writing about heartbreak you never had, it shows. Write what you actually know. A washing-day song your grandmother hummed. A tractor. Traffic at the point of the mountain. Real holds up. Borrowed doesn't.
5. The melody wanders off and never comes back. Keep it plain. I still struggle with melody more than anything else I teach, and my fix is always the same: simplify until it's almost boring, then see if it's still boring once you sing it with the words. Usually it isn't.
6. The timing feels off but you can't say why. Record yourself. Just your phone, nothing fancy. I did this once expecting nothing and found out I'd been rushing every chorus for years. Nobody had told me. Twenty minutes of listening fixed something I'd been doing wrong for decades.
7. You've lost the line you had in the car. You will lose it. Everybody does. That's why you keep a notebook, in your truck or your pocket, and you write the line down the second it shows up, even if it makes no sense later. Half of what I've saved that way never got used. The other half became the best line in a different song.
8. Somebody in class says it's amazing and it isn't. Ignore that. Ask what's working and what to cut instead. Praise that isn't specific doesn't help you and it wastes your time, which bothers me more than almost anything.
9. You wrote something rough and you're embarrassed by it. Good. That means you actually wrote something. A song is a made thing, same as a jar of tomatoes. The first jar of a season is never your best one. You don't throw out the whole batch over it.
10. You can't finish, and it's been weeks. Parker's been sitting on one verse since the Saturday we worked on it together, and I bring it up every time I see him. Some songs sit unfinished a long time. That's fine. Set it down, keep the notebook open, come back to it. It's not going anywhere. Neither are you, probably. 🙏
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 1
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —and I said, Steven, you cannot end the podcast episode with "anyway, that's it, bye." People need a landing.
LESLIE: I don't see the problem.
JESS: I know you don't. That's why I'm the producer. Okay. We're rolling. Welcome back, everybody, this is the podcast for Songwriting Workshop at Utah Community Learning, I'm Jess, I run the recording booth and generally keep Steven from wandering off topic—
LESLIE: I don't wander.
JESS: You told a story about tractor oil for four minutes last week.
LESLIE: That's background.
JESS: Sure. Okay, so, session one happened. People wrote songs. Bad ones, on purpose, which I still think is a wild way to start a class.
LESLIE: It's the only way. You don't learn a song by hearing about a good one. You learn it by writing a bad one and looking at what's wrong with it.
JESS: So how'd it go?
LESLIE: Fine. Everybody's got three chords and a rough verse. Some of it's not great. That's expected.
JESS: Not great how?
LESLIE: One fella wrote a chorus that rhymed "heart" with "heart." Four times.
JESS: Did you tell him?
LESLIE: I told him it was a start. Which it was.
JESS: You're not gonna soften that for me either, huh.
LESLIE: I don't think it helps anybody, telling them something's amazing when it isn't. Wastes their time. They came to make something real, not to be told nice things.
JESS: Okay, tell the story. You said you had one for this episode.
LESLIE: Which one.
JESS: The fast, cheerful song.
LESLIE: Oh. Yeah. So a while back I decided I was going to prove I could write something upbeat. Snappy. You know, clap-along kind of thing.
JESS: How'd that go.
LESLIE: Terrible. Just terrible. I sat down determined to be cheerful about it and it came out like a jingle for a product nobody wants.
JESS: [laughing] Come on.
LESLIE: I'm not exaggerating. Jill heard about four lines and just looked at me.
JESS: What'd she say?
LESLIE: She didn't say anything. That was the review.
JESS: So what'd you learn?
LESLIE: That I write slow and plain, and fighting that doesn't get me anywhere. Some people can do fast and bright. I can't. Never could. So I stopped trying to force it and just write what actually comes out of me, which is... slower. Sadder, some of the time. That's just how it lands.
JESS: See, that's what I want people listening at home to hear, because I think folks assume you have to sound like somebody else to be doing it right.
LESLIE: No. You write what comes out. If what comes out is plain, it's plain. Nothing wrong with plain.
JESS: Okay — give me something useful. One thing somebody at home can use today, no class required.
LESLIE: Cut it down.
JESS: That's it?
LESLIE: That's it. Whatever you've written, it's probably twice as long as it needs to be. Take a verse out. See if the song even misses it. Most of the time it doesn't. Nobody has ever complained that a song was too short. I've never heard that complaint in my life.
JESS: You've said that to me about my own emails.
LESLIE: And I'll keep saying it.
JESS: Fair. Okay — next session. What are we doing.
LESLIE: We're gonna talk about melody. Which... I'll be honest with everybody now, since I'll be honest with them in the room. Melody's the part I struggle with most. Words come easy to me. Chords, fine. A tune that actually sticks in somebody's head — that one's hard for me, every time.
JESS: So how do you teach something you're not great at?
LESLIE: Same way I teach everything. I show people what I do, which is keep it simple, and I show them where it goes wrong for me, so they're not scared of it going wrong for them.
JESS: That's honestly a pretty good pitch for the class.
LESLIE: It's not a pitch. It's just true.
JESS: Alright. Bring your rough verse from this week if you're coming next session, and — Steven, you want to close us out?
LESLIE: Just... come write something bad with us. That's the whole invitation. 🙏
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 2
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —and you just left it there? The whole verse just cut off?
STEVEN: That's the one. Great-great-grandmother's hymn. Words on a page, no tune, no explanation. I found it in the family history stuff and just... sat with it a while.
JESS: Okay, wait, back up, for people just joining us. This is Jess, I produce the class podcasts here at Community Learning, and I'm sitting with Steven King, who teaches Songwriting Workshop, and he just casually dropped that he found a hymn written by a dead relative.
STEVEN: Great-great-grandmother. On my mother's side. She wrote hymns, apparently, or at least this one. Nobody in the family remembered it. It was just sitting in a folder of papers nobody had gone through in maybe eighty years.
JESS: So what'd you do with it?
STEVEN: Put a tune to it. Had to. Words without a melody just sit there.
JESS: How do you even start that? Like she's not around to tell you if you got it right.
STEVEN: You don't get it right. That's the part that bothers me a little. Whatever tune she had in her head is gone. Nobody living will ever know if mine is close. I just... picked something plain, something that fit the words without fighting them, and that's what exists now.
JESS: That's kind of a lot of responsibility, honestly.
STEVEN: It is. I thought about that a long time before I touched it. But the alternative was it stays words on a page forever, and that's worse, to me. A song that's only ever read isn't really a song. It's a plan for a song.
JESS: Okay, I want to sit with that a second, because I think that's actually a really practical thing for anybody listening who isn't even taking the class. If you've got a poem, a old letter, anything with words but no music—
STEVEN: Try three chords under it. That's the tip. Don't overthink the melody. Pick something simple that doesn't get in the way of the words, and just say the lines out loud first, listen for where your voice naturally goes up or down. That's usually your tune, roughly. You're not inventing it. You're finding it.
JESS: That's good. That's genuinely useful and I don't even play guitar.
STEVEN: You don't need to play well. You need three chords and a willingness to sound bad in your own kitchen for twenty minutes. I still can't do melody the fancy way. Never could. I just do it plain, and plain's gotten me further than I expected.
JESS: Can we talk about last week for a second? People have been asking me how it went, the first class.
STEVEN: Everybody wrote something. That's the assignment, first night, always. Something rough. A few people looked at me like I'd asked them to do long division.
JESS: But they did it.
STEVEN: They did it. That's the only part that matters. You don't learn a song by hearing about good ones. You learn by writing a bad one and looking at it honestly.
JESS: Did you share the tractor song again?
STEVEN: Eleven verses' worth. Somebody laughed, which is the right response.
JESS: I still think about your wife telling you "that's a lot of tractor."
STEVEN: She wasn't wrong. Three verses fixed it. I keep that story around because people need to see somebody do it wrong first, or they won't risk doing it at all.
JESS: Okay, so, next session. What are we building on?
STEVEN: We're going to take whatever rough thing they wrote and cut it in half. That's the whole class, really. Most songs are twice as long as they need to be. We'll go line by line, find what's doing work and what's just sitting there, and cut the rest.
JESS: That sounds brutal.
STEVEN: It's kind. Nobody's ever complained a song was too short. We'll also touch chords a little more, but the cutting's the real lesson. Say the thing, then stop talking.
JESS: I feel like that's advice for podcasts too, honestly.
STEVEN: Probably is.
JESS: Alright, we should probably stop then.
STEVEN: Probably should. 🙏
podcast_scriptClass podcast — episode 3
Audio coming soon — show notes below.
JESS: —so he just left it. Four verses, no ending, sitting in his truck notebook for two weeks.
STEVEN: Well, it wasn't my song to end. That's the problem. My mother-in-law's song, and she's picky.
JESS: Okay, wait, back up, tell people what we're talking about, because I jumped in mid-story again.
STEVEN: You do that.
JESS: I do that. Go ahead.
STEVEN: So Nelda—my mother-in-law—used to hum this washing-day song when she was little. Nobody wrote it down, no recording, nothing. She remembers most of it but the last line's gone. Just gone. So I thought, fine, I'll finish it for her.
JESS: How hard could it be.
STEVEN: Right. That's what I thought. Took me two weeks. Wrote four different endings. She rejected four endings.
JESS: What was wrong with them?
STEVEN: Didn't say, exactly. Just... no. Not that. Try again.
JESS: That's rough.
STEVEN: Then the fifth one, she says "that's close enough." And from her, that's a standing ovation. That's the whole review. Close enough.
JESS: I love that you kept going for four rejections.
STEVEN: Well, it mattered to her. That's the difference. If it's just a song I made up out of nowhere, I'll cut it after one try. This one had a person attached to it who was going to tell me the truth. Made it worth the two weeks.
JESS: That's kind of a good lesson, actually, for anybody listening who isn't even taking the class.
STEVEN: Sure.
JESS: Like — what would you tell somebody who's stuck on an ending right now?
STEVEN: Don't force it in one sitting. Write it, walk away, come back. I do mine in the truck, honestly. Notebook in the glovebox. If a line comes to me at a stoplight I write it down even if it doesn't fit anything yet. Half of it's garbage later. But some of it isn't.
JESS: And you're not precious about the garbage.
STEVEN: No reason to be. You save the scraps because you don't know yet which one's the good one. Might be two years before it fits somewhere.
JESS: Okay, that's the practical tip, I think — keep a notebook, even just in your phone, write down the line before you lose it, don't judge it yet.
STEVEN: That's it. Don't judge it standing at the stoplight. Judge it later when you're not trying to also merge into traffic.
JESS: [laughs] Fair. Okay, so, last session, week two, you had everybody bring in something they actually know. How'd that go?
STEVEN: Good. Better than the first week, honestly. First week everybody's writing about heartbreak they never had, or some big feeling that sounds like a song but isn't theirs. Week two I said write about something true, small, yours. Somebody wrote about her dad's shop. Somebody wrote about canning, actually, which I liked.
JESS: Of course you liked that one.
STEVEN: Well. It was real. That's the whole thing I keep saying. Real lasts. Made-up-to-sound-like-a-song doesn't.
JESS: Okay, so next session — what are we doing?
STEVEN: Chords. Just three of them. People get nervous, think they need to learn a lot before they're allowed to write anything. You don't. Most songs that outlived the people who wrote them ran on three chords. We're doing three, and everybody's leaving with a verse set to something, even if it's rough.
JESS: It'll be bad.
STEVEN: It'll be bad. That's the point. You don't learn a song by hearing about a good one, you learn it by writing a bad one and looking at what's wrong with it.
JESS: I feel like that should go on the flyer. "It'll be bad, that's the point."
STEVEN: Might scare people off.
JESS: Might get the right people in the door.
STEVEN: ...maybe. Bring your guitar if you have one, otherwise we've got a couple to borrow. And bring whatever scraps you've got in your notebook. Even the ones that don't make sense yet.
JESS: Especially those.
STEVEN: Especially those. 🌞
Videos worth your time
Hand-picked by your instructor, with notes on what to watch for.
- Free Songwriting Course for Beginners (Creative Development Tutorial)Skillademia
A full free course walking through the creative process of writing a song from scratch, good for building a workshop lesson plan.
- How To Write A Song (A Beginner Guide)Mike Kennedy
Watch for the simple step-by-step structure it gives absolute beginners on how to start a song.
- Songwriting For Beginners - Write Your First Song Now!JustinGuitar
Focuses on getting students to actually finish a first song, useful for an in-class writing exercise.
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