How to write a song on guitar

Four chords, sixteen bars, played until your hands stop needing attention. Anything you must concentrate on will pull attention away from the melody, and the melody is where the song is.

In the key of G the useful set is G, Em, C, D; in C it is C, Am, F, G. Both put the relative minor next to the tonic, which is why they carry so many songs.

The order matters more than the chords. G–Em–C–D and C–G–Am–F contain similar relationships and feel entirely different, because the first starts settled and the second starts moving.

A strumming pattern is a decision about the song's character, and it is easier to change now than later. Down-down-up-up-down-up is the default for a reason; playing the same progression with muted eighths or with fingerpicked arpeggios produces a different song from the same chords.

Record thirty seconds of the loop on your phone. Playing over your own recording frees the hands and the ear, and it is the cheapest way to find out whether the groove holds attention for a whole verse.

The trap of songwriting on guitar is that melodies drift toward the notes your fingers are already playing. Those notes are already sounding — doubling them makes the tune disappear into the chord.

Sing while you play, and aim for notes that are not in the shape under your hand. The most useful ones are the second and the sixth degree of the key: they belong to it, they are absent from the basic triads, and they give the melody its own identity.

If singing while playing is hard, sing over the recording instead. Separating the two tasks is not a compromise — most writers do it deliberately.

Write in the shapes that sound good under your hand — usually G, C, D, E minor, A minor — and then move the whole song with a capo until it sits right for your voice.

This is why so many recorded songs are in unusual keys: they were written in G and capoed to B flat. The fingering stayed comfortable, the singer got the key they needed.

The reverse order costs you the shapes. Choosing the key first often means barre chords for the whole song, and barre chords make the hand work where the ear should be working.

Change one chord. Replace the D with a Dsus4 or a D/F#. A single altered chord changes the character of a progression more reliably than adding a fifth chord.

Change the bass. G–D/F#–Em–C walks the bass down by step and turns four chords into a line.

Change the length. Two bars on the first chord and one each on the rest is a different song from four equal bars, without touching the harmony.

Change the tuning. Drop D or open G puts different notes under the same fingers and produces ideas you would not have found otherwise. It is the fastest way out of a rut, at the cost of relearning where things are.

Get to a last chord with placeholder words if necessary. A complete rough song can be judged; a perfect first verse cannot.

Then check the joins — verse into chorus is where guitar-written songs usually stall, because the hand keeps playing the same pattern. Changing the strum, dropping to single notes, or leaving a bar of silence at the join fixes more than rewriting the chords.

The same song started at a keyboard comes out differently — see writing songs on piano. Which chords are available in the key you have chosen is the chords of a key, and a capo is the guitarist’s form of transposition.