How to Write Acoustic Guitar Songs

Note: This story is intended for beginners who are familiar with playing basic chord combinations and rhythms.

People want to learn to play the guitar as a hobby or for making a career in the music industry. However, the first thing that they look forward to is writing acoustic guitar songs. When it comes to composing song for guitar playing, you need to consider two aspects.

First is the lyrics, as in any other song; and second is the tune and chords for the lyrics. You simply need to be as creative as possible in the tune and lyrics.

Professionals and song writers do not follow a specific pattern in composing a song. They simply record a tune which they think is cool while jamming, and later add lyrics to it to make a song. Guitar enthusiasts can either compose tune of the song first and then the lyrics, or write lyrics first and then add the tune. However, first we will discuss deciding on a tune and setting up the chords.

A majority of people, before coming to the lyrics for the song, decide on the tune. Since you are already good at playing guitar chord combinations, you can start to try out different tunes. Since this is most probably your first song, keep playing bars of simple chords such as G-C-D or D-G-A on a particular strumming pattern. After the flow of the bars is set, start humming to the tune of the chord.

For example, start humming at the start of the G chord with a sound that fits in the G scale. As the chord changes to C, change the humming tune accordingly. Likewise, change the humming tune as per the D chord. Keep humming throughout several bars and experiment with different notes in the primary G scale.

Instead of humming, you can even use a repetitive dyad of letters as a way to compose freestyle tunes. For example, 'La La La' or 'Tu Ru Ru' are the most common ones. It is a good idea to keep an audio recorder handy for recording what you try out. Who knows you may suddenly come up with an interesting tune.

After several bars of humming, stop the recording and choose a bar which consists the tune you think is best. You can make some modifications to the selected music piece as you like. You can save the piece for the verse, and compose another related tune as the chorus.

You need to follow the same chord playing and humming procedure. However, for composing a chorus tune, change the order of the chords a bit such as G-D-C instead of G-C-D. This will give the chorus a different sound altogether. Now that you have set the tune and chords, you can now move on to the lyrics.

The lyrics of a guitar song are to be written exactly in the same manner as writing any other song. First think of a simple theme or story to write the lyrics. Write down the verse and a short chorus. Here, the most important point is to distribute the words in the lyrics according to the beats and a bar.

While composing a rap song, you can adjust the wordings anyhow as per the musical bar. But in a standard song, you additionally need to consider individual beats to know where to place a particular word. Sing the wordings as per the tune set for verse and chorus and record it.

Make adjustments to the tune and lyrics, if you think it would make the song better. Sing the song, and make sure the lyrics fit into the tune and rhythm smoothly.

When composing a tune, always be ready to record the valuable tunes, if not for making money out of it, then, to study and improvise it later on. Many a time, we miss out on a great tune simply because we did not record it. Another method for writing songs to play on an acoustic guitar is to write down the lyrics first and then compose the tune.

A good way to come up with new tunes is to listen to a song from a distance. The distance should be so much that the tune will be heard faintly, but not clearly to be identified. So, you should know the song being played, but not be able to identify which one. This will make your mind think different tunes that were never composed.