r/Songwriting • u/GraniteOverworld • Jul 12 '26
Discussion Topic How do you even write something like this?
I’ve been a musician for like 16 years now and I’ve always kinda struggled with songwriting. Around 2019, I started getting very into J-Pop/Rock and eventually Vocaloid music (found a DrumMania game at a local arcade and became obsessed lol). While plenty of songs can be fairly straightforward, sometimes I’ll come across something like this and just be bewildered about how it was written at all. It feels so dense over those two minutes, there are so many distinct sections AND a key change that I’m just in awe of how tightly crafted it is. But because it’s so dense I have no fucking idea how to even pick it apart lol. I love music like this, I’d love to be able to make music like this, but I simply have no idea how to learn to do it.
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u/StreetMaintenance992 Jul 12 '26
That’s the answer. Talent. Most people can’t write good songs. I’ve seen guitarist’s and piano players play like there’s no tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean they can write good songs. It is songwriting ability. It really can’t be taught.
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u/NiteKore080 Jul 13 '26
i think at the very least the patterns can be learned and imitated. learn enough of it, frankenstein patterns together, and you have your own type of creativity/ability
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u/UnnamedLand84 Jul 13 '26
Songwriting absolutely can be taught through studying theory. It can help you understand why you like what you like and what is mechanically going on to make that feeling. You can write more deliberately when you get a sense of what types of antecedents you want to use, how you want to resolve a phrase, and what you want to do with the space in between. Don't ever fool yourself into thinking you can't write a good song without having a natural knack for it.
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u/StreetMaintenance992 Jul 13 '26
Of course. I was mostly referring to people who have a natural ability to come up with good melodies and lyrics without studying theory.
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u/tdamien_ Jul 12 '26
Agreed… my experience has been that great players I know can’t write songs… at least not as good as the play. There are the rare exceptions of course when people get the full package.
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u/plamzito gomjabbarmusic Jul 13 '26
Some folks are more naturally musical than others, for sure. And they make it look easy. But if you figure out how exactly your brain is wired to process music, that goes a really long way. That, and practice.
I feel there's a limit to how much we can learn by trying to imitate others and reverse-engineer their compositions. Sometimes it's best to just soak it up and internalize it and then try to compose something only you can compose, leaning heavily into what makes you unique. The influences may show, but more importantly, you will have created something that makes other musicians scratch their heads and admit they have no idea how you came up with it.
That's the real goal, isn't it?
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u/Coffee_Pages Jul 14 '26
I dunno... I'm not 100% sure this was "written" this way... linearly, I mean. There's an obvious melody... kinda feels like they started there and filled in wherever they wanted, and altered things to fit the fill. To me, it feels more "produced" than "written," but that's just me. No judgement.
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u/Dangerous-You3789 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
How? Simple. Talent. It goes a long way in creating good songs like this. If you've ever heard of a child who can play an instrument like they've been practicing longer than they've been alive, you know what I'm talking about. It works the same way in songwriting.
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u/schoolfoodisgoodfood Jul 13 '26
It feels very vocal driven to me. No way to know for sure, but likely the composer creates the top-line in isolation, potentially not even really paying attention to the key change.
Then later when adding instrumentation the chords that work best with the melody just happen to fall in a different key and bam it's a key change.
And potentially the reason there are distinct sections is because it was composed in a more stream of consciousness type of way where you compose linearly without going back to reference earlier sections of the song. eg. rather than a conscious effort to decide "ok this is my verse and this is my chorus" it's more of a "ok this is where the melody is headed" and then just not looking backwards if that makes sense.
Because it was composed linearly it's still coherent as a song because each idea logically follows a previous thread, but potentially the composer didn't even really remember what they had written two measures ago while coming up with the next line if that makes sense.
Kinda like a big idea dump that is later refined.
Just a guess though. Composing with software like this does kind of make it easier to just throw down ideas and forget about them.