Taking Notes

Hopefully by now you have been inspired to begin writing a song and perhaps even have some ideas for a subject. Now you need to expand your ideas into material that can be used in a song. For that, you'll need a piece of notebook paper and a pen (or a word processor) to write on.

First, decide what kind of song you are going to write. Will it be praise and worship? Encouragement? A scripture song? Write it down at the top of the page. As you write more, you will probably lean toward writing a certain kind of song, so writing that down won't be necessary.

Second, determine the subject of your song. Every song should have a theme. Resist the idea of writing a song with whatever pops into your head. Songs written in this way are very disjointed and difficult to follow. Everything in the lyrics should flow smoothly together. Write a sentence or paragraph--or more if you need to--to define what your song is going to be about.

Finally, identify key words that you want in your song. If it is a song about the name of Jesus, write down "Jesus" as one of the key words. If you want to specifically talk about the authority in the name of Jesus, you could also write down "authority." You can put some more specific words in there too. Also, you may have an entire line, such as "The name of Jesus is above every name" that you will use as a line of the song. Write it down.

Now you have something to work with. It may not look anything like a song, but it gives you something definite to build on. So what are you waiting for? Close your internet browser now, and start taking notes!

Tim Heider