The Story of Music An intructional guide on the steps of songwriting described by Noelle Hampton and John Branch.
By Ella Brotman
Y
ou sit down at your desk feeling creative, the pen gripped firmly in your hand. You’ve written many songs before, but tonight it’s different. For a long time you’ve worked on this song, but all you could do was stare at the blank page, waiting for inspiration to hit. But suddenly, almost out of nowhere, the words seem to start writing themselves. Writing a song is a lengthy, difficult process. There are many steps along the way that you have to go through to create a good song. Ideas can happen anywhere at any time, but writing them down to create something can be easier said than done. Songwriting can be a healing process for some people or just a way to get emotions out of their heads. Anyone can write, but if
you want to, you need to put in was playing a chord progression. the work to learn how to write and Then, she would make up a melproduce your own music. ody and start singing “nonsensical words over the melody.” She Noelle Hampton is a singer-song- would keep going until something writer in Austin, Texas. She has started to happen, when those been writing songs for over 20 nonsense words would begin to years, and has a band called make sense to her, and then she the “Belle Sounds” which has would finally write them down. been around since 2013. The Belle Sounds are one of the most She says that “It felt more kind recognized Austin bands. Hamp- of pains” with her old process. ton writes and produces all of the She said it was more painstaking songs her band puts out. She because she felt the pressure said that the program “Logic Pro” of coming up with a whole song changed her life. right then and there. Now that she uses Logic she doesn’t feel Logic Pro is a music production that pressure anymore and can software that makes it easy to just play with the music more. create and record songs. Before using Logic Pro she would sit “It starts to become something with an instrument and, “just start very tangible, it’s like you can feel playing music, [until] something a song actually happening alwould come.” ready,” Hampton says. Hamptom adds her lyrics last, so she can Her first step in her old process figure out “what the story
