Hi fellow songwriters!
I wanted to share some insight into the current state of song writing and pitching in the Pop, R&B and Pop/Rock world for those of you that may not be familiar with how the process tends to work nowadays.
I work with many very talented songwriters at my studio and am myself a writer that has to adapt to work with publishers and labels, and have found that many songwriters don't know the best way to get started...
First off, there are always exceptions to the rule, but from my point of view the main 'engine' for writing and pitching songs nowadays is a form of collaboration known as beat writing and toplining.
Making the beat is left to the producer, who may not be able to write lyrics or a melody but is great when it comes to writing a piece of music.
Topline is the process of writing the melody and lyric to the beat (instrumental).
In practice here's how it works. The producers send there material to publishers. The publishers recognise talented topliners and send them the best beats. There may be 10 topliners working on any given beat and the best melody/lyric is chosen by the publisher, who in tern gets the ok from the producer who made the beat!
Then the publisher pitches the track to all the relevant artists that are looking for material.
This is how many of today’s top songs are written. The topliner and producer never meet, it work well as you specialise and increase your output.
If you are a songwriter and have written everything, ie. the chords, baseline etc I would strongly recommend getting a pro production because when your track is sent to the decision makers for an artist, it is up against all the productions from the beat makers - and they are good .. and 90% it IS the overall sound and not just the song that sells .. why? because there are hundreds of great tracks with stunning production ready to be released straight away landing on the desks of extremely busy people who don't really know what will be a hit.
Hope that helps... and like I said, there are always exceptions ... but talent doesn't always shine through, us musicians have to be realistic and think about the business and treat our craft as a business.
If you would like to learn music production, please contact us as we offer one to one music production lessons.
